WE-ARE-FAMILIA’s global network of creative individuals from all disciplines exhibit one-of-a-kind Keepsake Boxes,
WE-ARE-FAMILIA was launched in a Parisian design store in December 2007 and has grown into a collaborative, cross-disciplinary, global family of artists contributing “mementos” from found, recycled or surplus materials. Each memento is a work of art meant for a Keepsake Box, which contains up to forty pieces.
The significance of each box – retro, ad hoc creations of the sort new antiquarians would go mad for – is to “explore the powerful, complex ties which consciously and unconsciously touch all that we experience as humans,” per the collective.
It’s an ongoing project capped at 25 one-of-a-kind boxes that encapsulate a “new and exotic understanding of ordinary things.”
To date, eleven boxes have been actualized. Sold for up to $10,000 apiece, all of the contributing artists then split the profits to really prove that they are familia.
On display now through Wednesday at Fritz Hansen are boxes twelve through twenty-five, which were completed and exhibited with support from Fritz Hansen, the legendary Dutch design company that donated rejected, damaged and unmarketable materials to the project. Their premise being sustainability means creating products meant to last forever, with useful remnants as well.
The complete list of participating artists (fifty in all) can be found at the WE-ARE-FAMILIA website.