superREUSE
Collaborative reuse research, RCA Platform, 2024
Developed within the superREUSE platform led by Graeme Brooker, this collaborative project investigated processes of repair, transformation, and subversion. Working in a group with Eda Coskun, Mariana Carmo Costa, and Surin Seo, we were given four discarded artefacts — two fragments of cigar presses, a shotgun stock, and a brass doorstop — each carrying traces of colonialism, masculinity, and habitual violence embedded in material culture.
Our aim was not to erase these histories, but to subvert them through tactile making and reinterpretation. My work focused on one of the cigar press fragments. I restored its wooden surface, cleaned and oiled it, then deconstructed and reassembled it to study its inner “keys.” I also examined the form of the key, recreating its drawing to better understand its structure and rhythm. Through replication in new materials and printing with coffee, I explored its tactility and negative space — freeing it from its industrial and gendered associations.
The project culminated in a collective installation titled (A)MEND, exhibited as part of BASE 2025 during Milan Design Week, and later featured in Meanwhile Space, the superREUSE exhibition at the Roca London Gallery. Through acts of spatial reuse and poetic reconstruction, we reimagined these discarded objects as artefacts of reflection and resilience, challenging systems of value and proposing repair as a form of resistance.
Releasing the Elements
This short video explores a fragment of a cigar press, focusing on freeing its deconstructed elements from their original fault and function. Through play, movement, and anticipation, the pieces find new meanings and relationships, extending the project’s reflection on repair, transformation, and the poetic potential of discarded materials.
