Join Design in the Moment exhibition co-curator Aparna Rao for a presentation on the reinterpretation of the Geoffrey Bawa furniture collection. The talk will address questions around re-crafting iconic furniture designs, examine the meaning of authenticity, and discuss how the process of creating these prototypes has illuminated a design significance beyond the individual pieces.  

This hour long event will include a presentation followed by questions from the audience.

Aparna Rao is a part of Indo-Danish art duo, Pors & Rao, since 2002. She lives and works between Bangalore, India and Zurich, Switzerland.
The two make objects and installations often incorporating physical animation and responsive behaviors. After toiling with computer simulations, the internet, and gameplay in the early 2000s, they both abandoned the screen to work with objects that engage the body. Many of their works are conceived as a kind of 'being' with basic behavior patterns such as shyness, fatigue and dependency, highlighting absurd and involuntary aspects of human behavior and relationships. Some works imply a kind of pre-conceptual way of perceiving the world, where emotions and thoughts are projected onto the things around us — as if everything was conscious.
Exhibitions include the Art Encounters Biennale, Romania, 2023, Art Basel, 2017, 2nd Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Whorled Worlds, India, 2014/15; METAMATIC Reloaded, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland, 2013; 21 Rooms, Nam June Paik Art Center, Seoul, South Korea, 2011; Pors & Rao, CAB – Centro De Arte Contemporaneo, Burgos, Spain, 2011; Indian Highway, The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. Oslo, Norway, 2009, and the 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan, 2009.
In order to realize each work technologically, the two embarked on an uncharted course facilitated by the Swiss university network. This led to the start of project PATHOS at the Wyss Translational Institute, Zurich in 2017, with the aim of making robotic puppeteering radically accessible to artists and non engineers. This culminated in the formation of the 2 Year lab at ETH in 2020, Zurich: the RAUC (Robotics Aesthetics & Usability Center). In 2017, Aparna was honored as an Ambassador of Indo-Swiss Friendship by the Swiss Federal Council.
Talks include the Closing Keynote at Swiss Robotics Day 2022, ETH Pavilion, World Economic Forum, Davos, 2020, Artist Talk, Art Basel 2017, TED Talk 2014, Whistler and Ted Talk 2012, Edinburgh.
In 2015, Aparna co-founded furniture company Phantom Hands in Bangalore. Since 2023 she has played an active role in pursuing experiments at the intersection of material, craft and machining techniques.