Virgil Abloh's Alaska Alaska Crafts Cardboard Chairs That Double as Works of Art
With designs from Tawanda Chiweshe, Or Gal, Klara Zepp, and Francisco Gaspar.
Virgil Abloh‘s London-based studio Alaska Alaska is a lesser-known offshoot from the multidisciplinary creative, but it provides us with some of the designer’s (and his team’s) most interesting objects to date. In a new series of sculptural cardboard chairs, Alaska Alaska taps team members and designers Tawanda Chiweshe, Or Gal, Klara Zepp and Francisco Gaspar to each make their own limited editions of the chair, with all being made from three core materials: corrugated cardboard, vinyl tape and a plastic pouch.
Chiweshe’s Dark Is Lovely chair is served up in the traditional cardboard color we all know, and is decorated with yellow vinyl tape that reads “Women of African Descent.” Alongside this are vintage graphics of hair treatment and conditioning advertisements, noting qualities such as “shea butter” and “fade resist.”
Or Gal’s Sacrifice of Isaac yet again sees a base of brown card, but this time it’s printed with abstract snapshots of Caravaggio’s painting of the same name, Sacrifice of Isaac. Changing things up is Klara Zepp with their RHEINISCHER FROHSINN chair, which combines white card with orange tape reading off a phrase in German. This is accompanied by texts reading “für Ihre Notizen” or “for your notes” in English, while a large graphic adorns the rear.
Rounding out Alaska Alaska’s quartet of editions is the Grandolada chair by Francisco Gaspar, which again uses brown card but adds blue vinyl tape that reads “Grandola Vila Morena.” This Portuguese saying comes from a song by José Afonso, but rose to importance after it was used as a radio-broadcast signal by the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement during their military coup operation that sought democracy in Portugal. This links to the imagery on the chair, which sees the soldiers coming together.
All of the chairs from Alaska Alaska can be seen above and purchased from canary—yellow, costing $350 USD apiece. All profits are also being donated to Feeding Britain, which fights hunger in Britain.
In case you missed it, check out the Saint Laurent Rive Droite x Memphis collection.
