Mexico, Trash and Crafts A design project by Thierry Jeannot

One of Thierry Jeannot’s customers, a well-known interior designer who had purchased one of his gorgeous Rococo-style chandeliers for a very wealthy client’s home, was in despair. When, during the installation of the piece the buyer realized that it had been manufac-tured out of trash collected by scavengers in Mexico City, she refused to have it hung.
I take exactly the opposite stance. And while I would never allow an authentic Rococo chandelier anywhere near my living room, I do proudly display one of Thierry’s delightful creations in the place of honor, above my dining table. The esthetic strength of the piece stems precisely from the tension created between the salvaged disposable materials and the historical style that influenced it. The fact that it was painstakingly assembled by people who used to live off the garbage in Mexico City but are now manufacturers of high-end design pieces imbues it with a meaning that goes far beyond the usual recycling and sustainability tropes.
I met Thierry in Mexico City while researching ideas for our exhi-bition about Beauty that was about to open in Vienna, Frankfurt, and Munich. We wanted to prove that beauty is no mere surface decoration inasmuch as it seriously impacts not only the way feel emotionally but also the way we behave. In the section devoted to transforma- tional beauty we tried to show how lots of attention, love, and care can turn something useless and ugly into its opposite. Thierry’s chandelier represents the perfect proof of that concept. Through a most elegant example, it ratifies that the achievement of grace does not necessarily require precious materials: discarded Pet bottles and other humble household debris will do just fine. It is, in one word, Beautiful.

Stefan Sagmeister