Tracing cultural journeys of diasporas at Frieze LA with 'Souvenirs of a Forgotten Past'

At Frieze Los Angeles 2025, taking place from February 20 – 23, 2025, SolidNature and Secrets of the Universe bring together a tabletop installation as part of the travelling exhibition, Souvenirs of a Forgotten Past. While SolidNature, a boutique natural stone and design brand founded in 2011, is known for creating luxury interiors and exteriors for various global projects, Secrets of the Universe is known for platforming collaborations between specific businesses and a select group of artists, architects and designers to probe common ideas and present them via experimental architecture, objects and installations. Correspondingly, Souvenirs of a Forgotten Past, too, explores the cultural journeys of diasporas via objects made out of natural stone.

The group exhibition, showcased at Luminaire's Los Angeles furniture showroom, includes nine sculptural pieces of varying shapes, sizes and colours, each inspired by the concept of souvenirs as "artifacts that bridge memory and moment," as the press release mentions. Having initially emerged as an exploration of cultural identity and the usage of natural stone in design, the project soon evolved to encapsulate not only the heterogeneous cultural backgrounds of the selected creatives but also the migratory experiences of the diasporic designers. The final pieces in Souvenirs of a Forgotten Past, hence, invite audiences to explore the cultural journeys of diasporas through the lens of design and become part of substantial discussions about identity, belonging and the human connection to different places.

David Mahyari, chief executive of SolidNature, shares, "The themes of identity, migration and cultural heritage resonate deeply with SolidNature's core mission of revealing the earth's natural beauty. Our work often involves sourcing materials globally, much like the cultural journeys represented in this exhibition." While SolidNature typically works on projects that focus on slightly large-scale outputs, the stones brand has, for the first time, embarked on a project that focuses on producing art objects on a smaller scale.

The participants of Souvenirs of a Forgotten Past include Jimenez Lai of Bureau Spectacular, Chris Adamick, Natou Fall, Stephanie Lin of Present Forms, Saba Salekfard, Saba Yazdjerdi, Frank Clementi and Julie Smith-Clementi of Smith-Clementi, Wonhee Arndt and John Arndt of Studio Gorm and Chris Cornelius of Studio Indigenous.

Jimenez Lai, founder of Taiwan-based architecture and design practice Bureau Spectacular, conceived the sculptural art piece, A Guardian Monster. Inspired by Taiwanese ancestral worship practices, the stone sculpture, stilted on four legs, embodies a gentle monster that guards souls for their return to the next life. With slight references to the multifaceted experiences of grief and peace, the anthropomorphic piece stands tall like a guardian angel.

Chris Adamick, a US-based designer, monikers his creation Lenticular Vessel. Embodying a dominant green shade, the vessel, with three holding slots, evokes early 20th-century American commercial advertising, reflecting his grandfather's immigrant journey from Poland to the United States.

Natou Fall, a Senegalese-American interdisciplinary visual artist and creative director working across sculpture, film, makeup artistry and design, utilised her divergent experiences to shape Souvenirs à Nous: Mother & Child. Made out of marble and travertine, the sculpture is an abstraction of Senegalese mother and child totems. Inspired by personal history, the object, made out of three different stones, is a play on the Deleuzian definition of a face, with the profiles facing each other and transforming—lengthening, shortening, disappearing and reappearing around the sculpture to mark a shifting relationship between a mother and child across different cultural landscapes and time.

Brooklyn-based Present Forms, founded by Stephanie Lin, presents Cloud Vase at the design exhibition. Shaped in white marble, the abstracted vessel holds space for flowers. Lin pays tribute to her Taiwanese grandmother, who immigrated to multiple places across the world with her family during her lifetime and was skilled at Japanese ikebana—the art of flower arrangement. Saba Salekfard, an architectural designer and educator, reimagines the Persian saffron mortar and pestle for Sofrah. The piece, inspired by the rituals and performative acts of care and maintenance in Iranian culture, is adorned with fissures that attract tactile engagement.

US-based Iranian architect and artist Saba Yazdjerdi's The Qalamdan is a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional Persian pen case. Originally considered an object that embodies deep knowledge, artistry and intellectual tradition in Persian culture, Yazdjerdi's interpretation of this traditional object bears a modified and constrained demeanour, which reflects the struggle against authoritarian forces that seek to silence creativity and thought. The design is marked by a symbolic rope, encapsulating the tension between cultural preservation and the struggle for free expression.

Frank Clementi and Julie Smith-Clementi of Smith-Clementi explore the complex nature of immigrant experiences with E la Nave Va. Inspired by the experiences of the designers in Venice, it encapsulates the distorted circumstances of belonging to a different place while living in America.

Wonhee Arndt and John Arndt, founders of Studio Gorm, conceived Bath Stool for the exhibition. The stool design is inspired by everyday objects that reflect the Korean bathing culture. By combining the practicality of plastic stools with the traditional elegance of the Dadumi ironing stone from Korea, Studio Gorm elevates the bathing experience into a ceremonial and meaningful act.

Lastly, Chris Cornelius of Studio Indigenous, with Souvenir of Citizenship, presents a spatially elaborate sculpture that reflects the service of the Indigenous Americans in the US military and their struggle for recognition and identity. Souvenir of Citizenship is conceived in two halves that are coloured in black and white. While the bottom half depicts the time of wars, the top half reflects the time of peace. Concurrently, both halves are marked with striations and protrusions that abstractly host the timeline for all the conflicts and years of peace that have taken place from the American Revolution till 2024.

'Souvenirs of a Forgotten Past' is on view from February 20 – 23, 2025, at the Luminaire showroom in Los Angeles during the sixth edition of Frieze LA.