Rosie Wallpaper 01

Rosie Wallpaper 01 is a sculpture installation including a hand-bound grid of silky ribbon, and a repeating element made of hand-forged steel, tiffany-glass, cast-aluminum and porcelain. The artwork deals with identity, an experience of exoticization, the feeling of generalization and simplification; to be on display and under pressure at the same time.

The work examines these questions by looking at the materialization of the Chinoiserie in the wallpaper industry: How visual culture of the East began to be utilized in the wider industry in Western countries, whereby the taken forms and references become a reduced version of the origin. 

The installation plays with Chinoiserie style aesthetics, based upon European imitation of Asian aesthetics that was (and is) applied in design and arts since the 18th century. Chinoiserie, which comes from the French word “Chinese”, does not make a separation between what is Chinese, Japanese, or Indian, but rather generalizes its content under a presumably all-encompassing categorization, “Asian.”

Rosie Wallpaper 01 was exhibited as part of Mänttä Art Fair XXVI exhibition in 2022, and at the exhibition “Nuoret” at Kunsthalle Helsinki in 2023.