At NYC x Design Festival the exhibition Re-Craft combines traditional craftsmanship and modern design

The "Re-Craft Exhibition" opened on May 19-21 at ICFF, featuring outstanding craftworks from Chinese traditional crafts brands and artist.

Under the main theme of "Thinking through Handicrafts: Future, Craft and Mass Market," the event shows furniture and home decor combining traditional craftsmanship and modern design. The event is supported by ICFF, the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation, and the NYC x Design Festival. 

The goal is to seek global traditional crafts and bring them to life through new designs and businesses. At the NYCxDesign festival, the exhibition showcases traditional Chinese techniques to the public as a starting point, introducing traditional Chinese crafts with thousands of years

of history, for example, weaving in Yunnan, Texture in Beijing, Metal making in Hangzhou, etc. These works are interpreted with modern design, allowing the public to see that the works are no longer old objects but brand-new works containing rich historical stories. The exhibitions at NYC x Design Festival are more diversified, not only displaying traditional craft but also including young artists' interpretations of traditional Chinese culture. More importantly, the integration of traditional craft and modern design creates a series of popular products. The show will promote this series of works at ICFF, including furniture, textiles, fabrics, and home decor, among others.

The Re-Craft project showcases traditional crafts to everyone and allows people to understand that traditional crafts and traditional cultural elements are only one aspect. In fact, what I want to do is to explore traditional crafts and combine them with new design methods. Through brands and artists, I can create works that are more suitable for public life and give new life to traditional crafts.

A better way to promote and inherit traditional crafts is for the public to like and use lifestyle products with traditional crafts rather than just letting the public know these stories through museum/gallery exhibitions.

At the same time, the commercial value brought by daily necessities will help brands and craft groups to develop better. This is a new lifestyle concept that combines craftsmanship and design and is promoted by the re-craft platform we established. Therefore, Re-Craft is not just an exhibition. It will have greater comprehensive development value in culture, art, life, design, business, etc.

Participating Artists

The curator

Bo Zhang is an artist, designer, and co-curator. He studied Industrial Design at Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan, Italy, and later at the Savannah College of Art and Design, USA, where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts. In 2019, Bo founded Desz office, a young creative studio that mixes art, design, material, and communications to balance art and design, expressing the relationship between people and space, and stimulating people's imagination of contemporary art and design.

He has received international recognition for his outstanding originality and unique work. His work won the Honoree of Best Of Year Awards 2021 of Interior Design, the NYC X Design Awards in the New York Design Week in 2021 and 2022, and was nominated by the German National Design Council in 2022 for the German Design Awards "Excellent product" Design". In addition, his works are invited to be exhibited at Design Miami, Dutch Design Week (DDW 2022), ICFF & Wanted Design in New York Design Week, Beijing International Design Week, and by other art institutions.

Please elaborate on the general concept behind the Re-Craft project. How does it aim to navigate the intersection between traditional crafts and contemporary design methodologies? 

With the theme of "Thinking about Crafts: Future, Craftsmanship, and Mass," Re-Craft's goal is to explore global traditional crafts and local culture, use modern design methods to give traditional crafts new vitality, and let traditional crafts, culture, design, and mass market achieve healthy functioning.
Re-Craft is organized and executed by artist, designer, and curator Zhang Bo. The exhibition was held at ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) from May 19th to 21st during NYCxDesign 2024. It brought together outstanding works from traditional Chinese craft brands and emerging artists, displaying furniture, home accessories, textiles and fabrics, and decorative works that combine traditional craftsmanship with modern design. The event is jointly supported by ICFF, BCAF (Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation), and NYC x Design Festival.
In the past, when people were protecting and promoting traditional crafts, they were limited to learning and display. The current situation we are facing is that traditional craft products are gradually no longer adapting to the new public life and modern environment. This has caused traditional crafts to be out of touch with people's objective needs and become further and further away from production and life. The emergence of Re-Craft is the first time in the world to think about and explore the combination of traditional crafts, culture, art and the mass market, using new design methods to inject vitality into traditional craft.
Re-Craft believes that the best way to inherit and protect traditional crafts is to bring them into public life. This pioneering inheritance and promotion practice model has attracted widespread attention in the design, art, and industry markets and has had a huge influence. This exhibition alone attracted more than 20 traditional craft brands and independent artists in the industry to participate, and several traditional craft brands have successfully settled on the Re-Craft platform, connecting the global public's lifestyles.

As the original creator of the project, Zhang Bo organized traditional craft brands and friends from artists and designers to devote their time, thought, and creativity to using modern design concepts to create innovative works that balance traditional elements and modern design. On the one hand, they wonderfully present ancient handicrafts with thousands of years of history to the public.  Let the public see that the works are no longer old things but brand-new daily necessities that contain the skills and profound history of the ancestors of craftsmen, bringing quality life experience to the public; on the other hand, new works by contemporary young artists are also unveiled here, who explore traditional cultural and technical connotations, combined with modern design methods, present new lifestyle works, which can be well integrated into public life and serve as the best and most practical way to inherit traditional crafts.
Zhang Bo is cooperating with more traditional craft groups, artists, design institutions, and brands around the world to provide the public with more items with stories, designs, and textures on the Re-Craft global lifestyle platform, opening up a new way of life experience. At the same time, it helps more traditional craft groups to promote the integration of traditional crafts and contemporary design and form a healthy development of multi-culture, craftsmanship, design, and mass market. This approach is more sustainable. His innovative model and Re-Craft lifestyle platform are the first to appear in China and even the world. The Re-Craft platform is also continuing to recruit and settle more handicraft brands and artists around the world.

Within the multifaceted landscape of culture, art, life, design, and business, what goal does the Re-Craft project aspire to accomplish through its exhibition and platform? In other words, what broader societal or industry shifts does it hope to catalyze or contribute to?.

Design is different from art. Design will eventually be oriented to the public and meet the needs of a wider range of people, including aesthetics, functionality, emotional value, etc. This is derived from the connection between the public and consumer goods, but consumer goods focus too much on function, appearance, price, and brand power. They ignore the spiritual level of the product and the interaction with the public. This spiritual level comes from the cultural connotation or technical attributes of the product. Only culture and spirit can deeply impress the public. Re-Craft's goal is to combine culture, traditional skills, design strategies, and business, and finally, provide the public with products that have more connotation, historical experience, and humanistic value. The public can also touch the craftsmanship while applying it, seeing the details, experiencing artistic aesthetic satisfaction, and even gaining recognition and understanding of different cultures, learning about the land, water, people, and stories of each thread so that objects are no longer objects, but should be meaningful to people, nourish and accompany them. 

From the perspective of culture and traditional crafts, compared to a simple cultural protection organization, Re-Craft is more proactive in promoting and integrating these products with culture, art, crafts, fashion, and functional attributes into public life, making traditional crafts truly Entering into people's daily life, people can naturally feel, use and understand it personally. To a certain extent, the coverage and influence of this method of inheritance and protection surpass the communication methods, such as people having to queue up to enter museums and exhibitions.
From a consumer perspective, many young people now do not recognize ancient things, pay more attention to price and brand, and are willing to pay for fashion. The products selected from Re-Craft not only have contemporary fashion attributes as carriers but also have excellent spiritual connotations of culture and craftsmanship. In essence, people unconsciously inherit spiritual qualities such as culture, skills, and ingenuity. This power is silent yet subtle and huge. The new generation has the right to enjoy and inherit the crystallization of the wisdom of their ancestors, and Re-Craft has the responsibility to build this bridge well, promote the diversification of public consumption views, and activate the market value of crafts, design, art, and culture. Commercial returns can also feed back the cultural, technical, and artistic groups, who will continue to create creations that can make our society and the public better.

How does the Re-Craft project navigate the integration of works from various entities, such as companies, brands, and independent artists, into its exhibition platform? And how did you keep the exhibition cohesive and impactful while presenting such diverse contributions?

In the past many years, the problem that traditional craftsmanship brands and companies have faced is that the mass market is not interested in traditional craftsmanship works. Companies and brands focus more on commercial value. However, daily public daily necessities have become more homogenous, and more of them rely on functional presentation and price. Gain a competitive advantage in the market with low prices. These works with simple cultural attributes are mostly sold as cultural and creative products in tourist areas or commercial streets, which is not a sustainable business model. Re-craft solves such pain points. In re-craft, product categories are expanded. Traditional techniques can give more value to daily necessities, and their works can easily be endowed with craftsmanship and cultural attributes. As real daily necessities, they are closely related to public life. In this way, they are not as common as ordinary functional items. The differentiation of daily necessities has emerged, creating greater opportunities for commercial realization.
Traditional crafts or artist groups also need to promote and inherit traditional techniques, but sticking to ancient techniques is far from enough. Re-Craft allows them to combine craftsmanship, modern design concepts, and business to derive new works and take the lead into public life. As mentioned before, it is a model that combines traditional skills, culture, design, and business, which is the most practical way to promote and inherit. A perfect combination of the above, Re-Craft can do it.
Re-Craft hopes that more craft groups from different places, different periods, and different cultural backgrounds will join. Diversity and difference are exciting things.

On the same note, how did you approach the selection process for artists, companies, and brands featured in its exhibition? Can you outline the specific criteria or considerations involved in curating these participants?

The theme of our exhibition is innovative thinking on traditional skills, so when inviting artists and brands, we first consider the attributes of their traditional skills. Fortunately, China has many traditional craft brands and artists. Thanks to the long cultural history, it is not easy to convince them to participate in the project. I need to let them expand their global vision and thinking. Traditional skills come from China, but they are not only displayed in China. They should move to a broader stage. Culture and skills have similarities around the world.
On the other hand, we need to examine whether there is any innovative design. Or are we just replicating traditional objects? Repeat traditional craftsmanship? This is not enough. What we need are works that carry traditional skills and aesthetic genes, are made with modern design methods, and can reach the public. The young Chinese artists who came to North America this time have performed very well in this regard. This is an important factor that we must consider and must be innovative.

In what ways does the Re-Craft project reimagine the traditional modes of promoting and preserving heritage crafts? Did you adopt any particular strategy to engage a wider audience?

Compared with the traditional promotion model, we focus on product innovation. The biggest problem with traditional skills is that it is difficult to integrate with modern public life and enter the mass market. The main reason is that it is not suitable for the new aesthetics and lifestyle of the public and to handle the relationship between inheritance and creative development. We consider and explore the following points: First, we require modern design works to have traditional craft attributes or local cultural attributes. The second is to explore how to integrate tradition and innovation, which is also the key to our promotion of Re-Craft. The third is to consider from the market perspective the most practical way to protect and promote traditional skills is to reach out to the public. We have established a joint promotion strategy between online channels and offline stores. Especially for offline stores, we will do some forums, experience activities, pop-up activities, workshops, etc. Only by allowing the public to truly understand and experience traditional skills will they become more interested. Re-Craft's online promotion includes the promotion of crafts, art, cultural activities, and other content, as well as product sales. The fourth is to cooperate with a large number of media friends to gain their recognition and support, which also makes the project more convenient and smooth to connect with the public and the market.

Beyond serving as a platform for showcasing artworks, how does the Re-Craft project envision its role in fostering comprehensive development? Are there specific initiatives aimed at promoting lasting impacts beyond the confines of the exhibition space?

The Re-Craft New York Design Week exhibition is the best promotion and advertising opportunity for the entire Re-Craft project. I hope that more people will not only be fascinated by the exhibited works but also hope that they can pay attention to the globalization of the Re-Craft project. Development and more events in the future. For example, during New York Design Week and Milan Design Week, we can come into contact with more buyers, distributors, brands, and interior studios. In the later stages of the exhibition, we will have more opportunities for business cooperation. While promoting Re-Craft, we will also take commercial actions, which has a lot to do with my previous R&D and sales experience. The healthy operation of Re-Craft's marketization and popularization will, in turn, allow traditional skills and designers and artist groups to create better.
We promote the exchange of design and art in different places, different groups, and different cultural backgrounds through various activities such as conducting research and development with designers and brands, conducting interviews, mining brand or craft stories, and collecting traditional crafts.

And lastly, how do you wish this project to develop in the future? Do you aim to transform this into a recurring event, and what partnerships would you like to establish through it? 

The Re-Craft project is a complex one. We have planned influential exhibitions around the world. For example, we promote our concept of combining new designs with traditional techniques at international exhibitions such as Milan Design Week, New York Design Week, Dutch Design Week, and Paris Design Week every year. At the same time, we will expand from exploring traditional skills in Asia to exploring traditional skills in more regions around the world so as to benefit more groups and let more people enjoy the charm of cultural heritage. Therefore, we very much look forward to more design professionals, media, enterprises, brands, traditional skills groups, and craft organizations joining the Re-Craft project.

Interviews with the artists