Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum Project
Sid and the World Below
It is also a world of fun and wonder. If you like exploring imaginary worlds, welcome to the world of Sid, a little acorn, and the World Below."
– matali crasset
French designer matali crasset reinvents everyday life. She creates new situations and gestures for daily living, designing fun and creative spaces. For the vast area of the Creativity Gallery at the Centre Pompidou × West Bund Museum Project in Shanghai, she has created "Sid and the World Below", a space dedicated to the spirit of exploration, creation and imagination.
Sid and the World Below, exhibition view, West Bund Museum
"It started with the desire to discover a new territory from the perspective of a seed, one metre below ground with its own ecosystem, plant species, animal kingdom, smells, sounds, etc. It is a whole new world with its own characters: little seeds that guide the visitor.
It is a unique work that focuses on the acts of exploration and questioning of an unknown underground world. Experimentation helps us understand the existing interactions with the surrounding environment and promotes reflection on the ecological challenges facing our society. The installation calls for creative and respectful behaviour. Each person contributes to its construction yet at the same time it is a place of collective adventure.
Sid and the World Below, exhibition view, West Bund Museum
matali crasset studied at ENSCI - Les Ateliers in the 1990s and since then has upheld a form of design that combines artistic, anthropological and social practices, incorporating creation, living beings and daily living to contribute to the art of community life. For the past thirty years she has worked “in motion”, conducting hundreds of projects involving architecture, scenography and object, furniture, public-space and interior design. Her works are exhibited in cultural institutions in France and abroad and feature in major museum design collections, including at the Centre Pompidou.
Sid and the World Below, exhibition view, West Bund Museum
Her designs know no borders or territory and are the expression of her deep conviction that the creative process should be seen as a social, ecological and people-centred project. The purpose of her works lies not in their creation itself, but in the process itself and the capacity to produce the link, to create a system of exchange and reciprocity between individuals and with the natural environment.