Cappadocia landscapes and historical past encourage Galerie Philia’s newest designs

Cappadocia, within the Central Anatolia area of Turkey, has been repeatedly inhabited for the reason that Palaeolithic period. For millennia, residents carved their properties into the mushy tuff stone – hardened volcanic ash from long-dormant volcanoes – that dips and swells alongside the arid valley, sometimes erupting into slender towers often known as fairy chimneys. The area exists as a pure sculpture park, with abstracted stone configuration dotting the panorama and remnants of civilisations buried inside it.

It was this expressive, enchanting view that impressed Galerie Philia founder Ygaël Attali to base the third instalment of roving design residency Transhumances right here (earlier iterations touched down in Florence and the south of France). In November 2023, they gallery introduced 4 designers – Andres Monnier, Morghen Studio, Laura Pasquino and Elsa Foulon – to stay and work in Cappadocia for per week, in the end creating new work that might be exhibited on the Taskonaklar lodge, the place the residency befell (the exhibition runs from 15 February to 16 March 2024). 

Galerie Philia’s Cappadocia residency

Taskonaklar inhabits a collection of caves that spill down the sting of a ravine often known as Pigeon Valley, named after the rows of dovecotes carved into the rock that when housed the domesticated birds – and the place flocks of untamed ones nonetheless roost. Peering over the sting of the cliff, the valley unfolds beneath you. Conical fairy chimneys surge from the earth and the cliff face reverse ripples like a pleated skirt. 

Every of the 4 residents was given carte blanche at first of the residency and ultimately discovered a solution to incorporate this surrounding atmosphere into their apply. 

Mexican designer Andres Monnier, as an example, arrange a studio inside an area quarry, the place he labored with cast-off travertine and gray native stone. He’ll present two items within the exhibition. The primary, a cantilevered aspect desk normal from a single tough block. The second is a standing candelabra that takes the type of a cluster of stone columns. To grasp his items Monnier labored alongside the quarry’s artisans, familiarising himself with the supplies in addition to native craft data.

In the meantime, a stroll by means of the valley was sufficient for Rodolfo Viola from Morghen Studio to seek out the type of his piece. ‘I needed to create a chandelier as a result of that is what we often do,’ explains the Milan-based designer, who, alongside his studio accomplice Roberto Tarter is thought for elaborate abstracted lighting, often created from treasured supplies like brass. ‘So I climbed to the underside of the valley and introduced again this tree.’ Viola used the spindly type because the physique of the hanging mild, which is suspended from the roof of Taskonaklar’s cave exhibition area and whose branches terminate with small ceramic petals that soften the brilliant LED lights.

Estonian ceramic artist Laura Pasquino sourced terracotta clay from an area provider to create her hand-built, orb-like vessels. ‘The pink clay comes from the native rivers,’ she says. ‘We had been lucky to have an excellent reference to an area pottery grasp, who makes the clay himself.’ Nevertheless, the pure materials got here with its personal challenges. ‘The clay is textured, with a lot of little stones. It’s extremely delicate to the local weather. When the solar dries the components with bigger rocks it tends to crack, so we have now to maneuver to items because the solar shifts. However it’s been an unimaginable expertise to find out how this materials works.’

French designer and ceramicist Elsa Foulon additionally labored with clay. From her room overlooking the valley, she was taken with how the sunshine shifted, bringing out new colors and kinds because it fell and rose. ‘I used to be so shocked with how the sunshine modified the panorama each second of the day,’ she explains. Her white concave ceramic lamps are completed with gold paint on the inside, making a heat glow from inside, envisioning how mild would have appeared when this land was first settled. ‘I think about 1000’s of years in the past,’ she says. ‘That is how the Palaeolithic mild would have appeared.’