Evolutionary thinking at the camping site

Evolutionary thinking at the camping site, tells a story about a mountaineer that encounters a problem while camping – a hole in the blow-up mattress – This problem creates a chain reaction which fallows several changes in the camping gear/environment resolving itself into a final solution- the problem itself.

Ana Rita António (1980) is a multidisciplinary visual artist. – She holds a Master degree from Bergen National Academy of Arts and a diploma from the Design Lab department at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Her works moves between Art and Design, doing projects in both fields that are most of the time entangled in each other. When doing art projects, design methodology is very present and her art practice influences her design projects in similar ways. Her work shows that there is often a sense of playfulness and joy in everyday objects once its context gets challenged.

By using and composing analogies between the trivial and random, her work utters simultaneously the bold and unexpected with a great feeling for improvisation, self-sufficiency and temporality – Directly or indirectly, in a concrete or poetic way, avoiding dominant economic strategies and production models. Questioning the coerciveness that derives from the more profound meaning and the superficial aesthetic appearance of an everyday context, object or image.

“Because of my extremely stubborn and idiosyncratic attitude and from the belief that design is evolutionary and not always have to solve the right problem, I never managed to find perfect solutions. After some time, I began to regard this inability as something to work with.

As an artist, I like to embrace the objects and situations of everyday life as my field. Often, I give myself tasks to be applied in a range of familiar everyday challenges and casual components. From my – imperfect – perspective of humorous procrastination, suggestion and conception logic I explore all kinds of possible responses to an issue.”