Marta Bakowski, French design meets Balinese craftsmanship

Marta Bakowski is a designer and colorist. A graduate of Saint Martin's School and the Royal College of Arts in London, she worked alongside designer Hella Jongerius in Berlin, before returning to France to set up her own studio and join Les Ateliers de Paris. She collaborates on creative projects for publishers and limited-edition craft projects. Since September 2022, her studio has been based at JAD. 

From September 7 to 29, her "Fragments" collection , created as part of the ADIR (Artist Designer In Residence) project in partnership with the Institut Français d'Indonésie and CushCush Gallery, will be on show at the Galerie des Ateliers in Paris. During the Journées Européennes du Patrimoine at JAD, she will talk about this experience at a round table devoted to the dialogue between French design and Balinese craftsmanship. 

On this occasion, we discussed the foundations of his design practice, from color to folk traditions and the dialogue between craft and industry.

In September 2022, you returned from a month-long residency in Bali. Today, you're getting ready to present your creations from this residency at the Galerie des Ateliers in Paris. How did you come up with this collection? How did the Bali residency inspire you?

During the summer of 2022, I spent a month in Bali as part of the ADIR (Artist Designer In Residence) project: a three-year program initiated by CushCush Gallery, during which three French designers are invited to discover Balinese craftsmanship, with a view to creating a collection of objects.

It was in this context that I spent a month immersed, discovering the materials, skills and, above all, the culture and environment that nourished the pieces in my "Fragments" collection. The collection is in fact conceived as a travel diary, in which each piece tells a story, as a sort of three-dimensional collage combining image, drawing, text and so on. 

These include the visual elements that impressed me most during my trip: kites, markets, objects and symbols associated with religious ceremonies, boats and their carved bows, etc. As for the structure of the pieces, I drew inspiration from elements of traditional Balinese architecture, while proposing a reinterpretation of 17th-century European curiosity cabinets. As for the materials and techniques employed, they are directly inspired by local craft and cultural traditions: bas-relief wood carving by a master of ceremonial mask-making, hand-painting by a master of traditional Kamasan painting, marquetry of tinted palm leaves and the use of assembly systems inspired by the undagi structures used for cremation ceremonies.
With the finalization and presentation of the pieces in the "Fragments" collection, a stage has been completed. Now it's the turn of designer Pierre Charrié, whose trip to Bali took place this summer, to create his own pieces to complete the collection. It's an opportunity to put our respective residency experiences into dialogue, and to delve deeper into the question of design and the French view of Balinese craftsmanship.

This collection is fairly representative of your work: we find in it the notion of narrative, a strong presence of color as well as the hijacking of traditional know-how. What are the roots of your design practice? 

I think what guides me, deeply, is my fascination with folk and popular arts. I grew up surrounded by antiques, handcrafted artifacts, treasures from all over the world. That's where my love of objects and, above all, their stories comes from. That's why my design proposals are always imbued with a story, whether they're inspired by Amerindian ritual dolls, traditional Gabonese masks, or even Burkinabe buvettes.  

Then comes color, which for me is a spark in creation and the most powerful tool for giving objects their expressive qualities. It too comes from my childhood and my father, a painter, who taught me that with color comes the soul.

Finally, my practice is characterized by reflection on the materials and techniques I use, and in particular by my interest in the use of industrial materials processed in the traditional way: for example, wickerwork made from polyester thread, or vases combining goat's leather with braided nylon. A dialogue between know-how and industry that gives rise to an interesting aesthetic, nourishing the industrial world with the language of craftsmanship, and thus bringing a living, vibrant dimension to the object.

Research plays a central role in your various projects. What does research time mean to you? 

In my creative process, there's always a period of immersion, of pure research, during which I immerse myself, explore different avenues, experiment intuitively, without any precise goal and with a focus on doing. And then I let it mature, until the creation emerges on its own.

Until now, I've been able to take advantage of this precious time through residencies abroad, in Burkina Faso in 2016, Italy in 2019, and Indonesia last year. From now on, it's JAD that provides me with a framework conducive to research and creation, where exchanges and stimuli are a daily occurrence.

In fact, this is the approach you've favored with olfactory designer Carole Calvez, with whom you're working on an olfactory color chart project that's being presented as part of the Pages Blanches exhibition. Can you tell us more about this collaboration? 

Carole Calvez and I decided to work on the dialogue between the olfactory world and the world of color through the prism of design, in order to give materiality to odors: color charts, scenography, installations, objects: the forms are multiple. We decided to approach our research intuitively, integrating the sensitive and cultural dimensions of our relationship with scents and colors.  

As our discussions progressed, new ideas emerged, such as the need to integrate notions of linearity, fluctuation and the architecture of scent: impressions that we sought to translate into playful objects inspired by the world of early childhood, setting colors in motion. It's this early research that the exhibition White Pages.

This vast and ambitious project will undoubtedly see many developments in the months to come, such as the integration of sound design or research into the common language of scents and colors - luminosity, depth, roundness, saturation: so many exciting avenues yet to be explored.

Interview by Brune Schlosser

In charge of cultural and heritage projects at INMA

and INMA correspondent at JAD

Practical info

Round Table - Saturday, September 16 - 4pm

Moderated by Hélène Ouvrard, coordinator of the Institut Français' Franco-Balinese residency program "ADIR, Artist Designer In Residence", this round table will feature designers and French residents 2022 and 2023, Marta Bakowski and Pierre Charrié, to reflect on their encounters with Balinese culture and local crafts, alongside Suriawati Qiu and Jindee Chua, founder of CushCush Gallery, an Indonesian gallery that encourages interaction and crossover between art, design, materiality, techniques and crafts. 

Fragments, Balinese impressions" exhibition

From September 7 to 29, Marta Bakowski presents the exhibition "Fragments, impressions balinaises" at the Galerie des Ateliers in Paris, on the occasion of Paris Design Week.

30 rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Paris 12ème (métro Bastille)

September 7 to 29

Monday to Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

White Pages" exhibition

JAD's manifesto exhibition, this first highlight of the 2023-2024 cultural season presents the projects of JAD's collaborative research and innovation program carried out by its creators

The JAD showcases a wide range of excellent crafts: object design, furniture design, saddlery, wood carving, cabinetmaking, rotogravure, olfactory design, weaving and textile design, and invites you to discover projects resulting from the hybridization of arts and crafts and design.

Opening September 14 at 6:30 p.m.