Wallpaper

contributors

IBRAHIM MAHAMA Artist Mahama’s jollof rice, a dish synonymous with West African cuisine, features in our monthly Artist’s Palate series (page 178). Mahama was the youngest artist to feature at the inaugural Ghana Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. He remains closely involved in his hometown of Tamale, in Ghana, where he founded the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in 2019, and is in the process of converting an abandoned midcentury grain silo into a cultural centre. SAM FROST Photographer The LA-based Frost took the portrait of art collector Eileen Harris Norton (page 102) for us this month. ‘I was moved to hear about Eileen’s foundation, Art + Practice, which supports young adults who have aged out of the foster care system,’ says Frost. ‘Standing among master works while hearing about her activism to support…

editor’s letter

Visions of a life Nine years ago, when Cao Fei first featured in the pages of Wallpaper*, she was already at the forefront of technology, but relatively unknown among an audience that wasn’t familiar with the Chinese art scene. Commissioned by our then guest editor, Ole Scheeren, to share her impressions of Beijing, Cao riffed on her RMB City project (2008-11) – a fictional Chinese city constructed in the online virtual world Second Life, an experiment in avant-garde urban planning – to create a dynamic, dreamlike collage of architecture and landscape, including four of Scheeren’s designs. As the architect told us at the time, ‘Cao Fei has long intrigued me with her depiction of the new China through scenes of fantastic perpetual construction and a virtual world in which everything seems…

paint the town

Bold, eyecatching colours were big on the catwalks this season, with a host of brands offering up tailored, utilitarian or sportswear-centric outerwear in bright shades. Prada perked things up in hot pink, Virgil Abloh injected pillar box red into his collection for Louis Vuitton, while Salvatore Ferragamo and Dunhill dabbled with oceanic hues in creamy tints of sea foam and cerulean, channelling an otherworldly style seen in the likes of The Matrix and Doctor Who. For maximum style impact, we suggest experimenting with tactile fabrications, like leather or high gloss, which emphasise the multifarious shades of A/W21’s palette of prismatic tones. Model: Leo Comanescu at Chapter MGMT. Hair: Chloe Frieda using Living Proof. Make-up: Rachel Freeman using Chanel Beauty Fall-Winter 2021. Interiors: Jacqui Scalamera…

wild side

Designed to complement a renovated and extended 1920s black timber chalet in the countryside outside Geneva, this lush garden is the handiwork of Belgian landscape architect Erik Dhont. A deft hand at blending nature and architecture to produce rich compositions, Brussels-based Dhont created this design for Karin Handlbauer, founder of Galerie Mezzanin, whom he first met ‘on a sunny afternoon in Geneva at a dinner under the oak trees’. Fittingly, nature became a recurring theme in their relationship and this project. Working against a backdrop of the contemporary addition to the existing structure, designed by Frey Architectes, Dhont composed an arrangement that promotes ‘a new spirit of art, nature and balance’. About two thirds of the 1.86-acre garden are dedicated to greenery and reforestation, including a leafy, undulating terrain and ponds…

melting moments

Designer Hedi Slimane loves to sail into uncharted waters. And this November, Celine’s creative director ventures once again into new territories with the launch of the brand’s first candle collection. The eight candles in the range will sport familiar scents from Celine’s fragrance collection, such as Nightclubbing, which smells of nicotine and ‘the nape of a neck fragrant with vanilla’, as well as new fragrances, like Palimpsest, a blend of gallica rose, pear, ivy and moss, and Grands Lys, an intriguing combination of pimento, ylang-ylang, and heliotrope. The candles have been created by the label’s in-house wax maker, whose dual training in perfumery (something of an anomaly in the wax-making trade) has given him unparallelled understanding of how fragrance and wax work together to pervade a room. Each wax is…

toilet humour

There are toilets, and then there are toilets. At the redeveloped Studio Voltaire site in Clapham, designed by architects Matheson Whiteley, The Institute For The Magical Effect Of Actually Giving A Shit (a note to our future self) falls into the latter category. This permanent installation, created by artist duo Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, runs across three toilets, and gives a conventionally utilitarian space an unexpected twist through playful figurative motifs in hand-glazed ceramic tiles. ‘It started as a joke,’ says Tatham. ‘Then, a week later, Joe [Scotland, director of Studio Voltaire] emailed to say that perhaps this was something we could make happen.’ The not-for-profit arts organisation, which reopens on 15 October with a solo show by William Scott, will also unveil a new public garden designed by…