True matter

Dutch Invertuals Academy

Dutch Design Week 2020, October

After the Eindhoven collective Dutch Invertuals presented and induced progressive new design within bold, daring, poetic and, sometimes, confronting exhibition contexts for many years they recently launched a course.

20 young design professionals from all around the world joined the first Dutch Invertuals Academy this Summer, exploring the theme ‘True Matter’. During Dutch Design Week 2020 we present the processes and results of this intensive 6-week program.

'True Matter' shows an expression of the global shift from a careless to a caring attitude. Participants were challenged to work with raw materials from their local context, and to play with their surroundings. Not only in terms of resources, but also in terms of techniques, craftmanship, politics and traditions. Because designers joined from Colombia to Israel and from Thailand to Chile, the exhibition sheds a light on a diversity of local identities and gives us insight into what truly matters globally.

The final pieces are a reflection of each designer's truth at this moment, a material artifact of their experiences. Neither these works or the Academy itself present perfect answers or solutions but suggest new beginnings. As Mieke Meijer hopes that ‘Like previous Dutch Invertuals exhibitions it won’t be about individual final results but it will be about the story as a whole: how a pandemic can inspire to spark new initiatives like this academy.

Experienced designers from our vast Invertual network guided participants through this inspiring journey by sharing their knowledge in a wide range of workshops, lectures, and meetings: Raw Color, Mieke Meijer, Xandra van der Eijk, Philip Fimmano, Jólan van der Wiel, Niek Pulles, Nina van Bart, Jeroen Wand, Bram Vanderbeke, Tijmen Smeulders, Dienke Dekker, Edhv / Architects of Identity, Daphna Laurens, Carlo Lorenzetti, Julian Ellerby and Wendy Plomp.