How can design shape our future?
What ideas, questions and strategies occur to designers as they develop future visions? How do we want to live tomorrow? The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) often engages with these pivotal questions, asking artists, designers and exhibition makers for their input.

Now, for the exhibition “Ask Me If I Believe in the Future”, the renowned Milanese curator Maria Cristina Didero has invited a group of international designers to reformulate their expectations and visions for the future: the Greek design studio Objects of Common Interest, run by designers Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis; designer Erez Nevi Pana from Israel; Carolien Niebling from Switzerland; and the multidisciplinary design studio Zaven from Italy with designers Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno. The curator gave the designers and studios carte blanche for new productions created especially for the exhibition at MK&G. Although they take quite divergent approaches and vary in their views on the challenges posed by global crises, the solutions proposed by these designers attest to an astonishing coherence – a shared faith in the future.

Ask Me if I believe in the Future
“Food production is one of the main causes of CO2 emissions. Our eating behaviour influences climate change, meaning that individual actions can already have an enormous impact in the short term. Niebling’s installation “Future-Proof Plating” gives us a fresh look at natural foods that are not yet part of our daily diet. Macro photographs of algae and edible plants printed on textiles beguile the eye with their striking textures and shapes. Stylised arrangements of wild plants are imprinted on ceramic plates or cast in relief. Rather than adopting a moralising tone, Niebling’s installation lodges an aesthetic appeal for us to think about an alternative future for food and for our planet.“ Curator Maria Cristina Didero

Exhibition on display at the Museum für Kunst un Gewerbe Hamburg until 23-10-2022

Images ingredients by Lorenz Cugini and images exhibition by Henning Rogge