Friedman Benda LA exhibits contorted bodily furniture by Barbora Žilinskaitė

Inside Lithuanian designer Barbora Žilinskaitė’s solo exhibition at the Friedman Benda’s Los Angeles gallery, contorted furniture forms with bodily nuances invite visitors to observe them, talk to them, and perhaps cry with them. The Brussels-based product designer and artist presents Chairs Don’t Cry – an intriguing showcase of everyday objects in anthropometric forms that blur the boundaries between animate and inanimate. Crafted in reclaimed sawdust and exhibiting brightly coloured dyes, intertwined fingers in bulbous geometries that fit like puzzle pieces and en pointe references in sculptural compositions double as chairs, mirrors, shelves, racks, and tables.

The ‘uncanny’ that surrounds the pieces is rooted in the designer’s ‘unsettling’ experience of navigating the design school. A graduate in product and spatial design from Vilnius Academy of Arts in Lithuania, Žilinskaitė found it difficult to translate the school’s traditional design knowledge into something that she could make and call her own. During school, she found herself unarmed by material knowledge, a realisation that led her to do internships with different creatives in the field – one of them being German furniture designer Valentin Loellmann. The tryst at Loellmann’s studio gave her the confidence to experiment with new materials and to express her voice in creating functional art. Roommates, her first collection was curious and unsettling at the same time. Comprising a hand-shaped rack and a foot-shaped table, the collection exemplifies the designer’s fascination for objects that take up the role of a friend or pet with long-term use.

Chairs Don’t Cry brings together her pieces from Roommates in addition to new works. These include Keeping Things to Myself —a plump navy blue cabinet shaped of intertwined fingers and soles of the feet; Storyteller Aquamarine as a long wavy vertical shelf with three shelving bars and a closed storage space at the bottom veiled by the recurring fingers motif; and the riveting yellow bench While We Hide Our Secrets, They Hide Theirs featuring contorted limbs slotted in a horizontally stretched form. Seemingly central to the showcase is the Crying Chair, a provocative beastly form with sculptural dribs and drabs that allude to tears dripping down the body. The pieces, within the gallery space, are placed above a fluid aqua-toned base as tiny pockets of tears.

Speaking about her bizarre yet equally fascinating forms, Žilinskaitė shares, “Human-like features attract us, evoke emotions and feelings, they create this weird still friendly atmosphere," she explains, "but also human-like objects become more significant - and that helps me to advocate for them.”

A mixture of sawdust, pigment, and wood glue compose the furniture which Žilinskaitė believes urges the users ‘to relate to their objects as if they were entering into a dialogue between two parties’. Hand-sculpted, the pieces with their strange semblance to our everyday lives make them artefacts one would hate to love.

‘Chairs Don’t Cry’ is on view at the Friedman Benda Gallery in Los Angeles till March 30, 2024.