SkinCities by Frank&Frank

For the first time in Milan, Frank & Frank intends to present the SkinCities project, as an important opportunity to reflect on how design can offer a contribution to the understanding of our time.

The exhibition will take place in Milan during the Fuorisalone event, from April 9th to April 14th, 2019, at:
- Fabbrica del Vapore, Spazio Fattoria (every day from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. / Saturday from 10 a.m. to midnight)
- Brera, C.so Garibaldi 89/91 (from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.)

The project would like to restore equal dignity to the places of the Earth. This will occur in a provocative way, by combining, through the city maps laser-etched on leathers, the places we live in with those dreamed, hated or forgotten venues across the world; for each of them, their precious and desperate diversities will be enhanced.

By SkinCities project, Frank & Frank proposes a courageous thinking, that is representing the maps of some places next others whose beauties have been forgotten. For instance, the map of Milan next to that of Aleppo, New York next to the one of the Israeli / Palestinian cities of Hable and Matan, Venice next to the ancient capital of Afghanistan Kandahar, the one of Tokyo close to Tjuana.

SkinCities reinterprets the rules of cartography by re-reading the urban landscape; likewise the maps of ancient explorers, SkinCities maps tell about our culture and history, like nerve cells that have been growing over time. Cultures, labyrinths and different spaces where the “skin color” on which they are laser-etched, is only a pleasant opportunity.

Moreover, maps have the power to lay bare cities from any bias: thanks to their neutrality, they give dignity back to their inhabitants and make history and dynamics emerge again on their common values, as living witnesses of what we were, what we are and what we will be.

The leathers that have been used, come from different contexts: sometimes they have been chosen for some “imperfections”, thus enhancing the beauty of diversity, respecting the life they had, exactly like those places they represent.

The project wants to give dignity and consideration even to animals that shared their own existence with man. For example, the Asian camel skin, which the Kandahar map has been made of, still shows signs of insect bites while crossing the desert.

Engraving something on skin stands for an indelible act of awareness. When it comes to the skin of Aleppo city, we find ourselves before a vision that, if at first sight may seem only aesthetic, then invites us to make the following consideration: these places belong to an important past and present, whose marks and memories they have been carrying, such as the East, the cradle of civilization, even conflicts.

Visually speaking, the most explicit examples might be Hable and Matan, so close one to another and so different at the same time, they are almost unique, were it not for the border between Isralele and Palestine dividing them, violently cut in half by the wall. However, their beauty stands in this symbiosis, in their desperate diversity.

May those fascinating traces that cultures have left on the planet lead us to close the gap between us and others?

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Gobbo Salotti is technical partner of Frank&Frank project

Venice Design Week has selected in 2018 for the section inSHOP Frank&Frank and now support the event.

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