Bulky trash, waste, cheap materials: pure gold! At least in the eyes of many active designers. “PURE GOLD – Upcycled! Upgraded!” explores the subject of rubbish and presents approaches to using trash to create valuable products.

PURE GOLD – Upcycled! Upgraded! – an exhibition by ifa (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart, Germany) in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Hanoi will be opened in Hanoi from Apr 20.

Global industrialisation and ever greater levels of consumption make upcycling an urgent matter, and ifa is therefore addressing this issue in a design exhibition, a platform, workshops and conferences. The cornerstones of this project are ethics, responsibility, internationalisation and co-creation. The PURE GOLD exhibition consists of two complementary parts: the physical and material exhibition and the virtual platform as a space for dialogue, discussion and the storage of knowledge.

The materials used in the presented examples are nearly all easily available anywhere and more or less “free” – and yet they are often seen as trash with little value. The same is true for the techniques used to rework them, the artisanal knowhow that in many cases is based on traditional methods and bears the stain of the backward. The aim of our exhibition is to disarm all the bad names that reuse has, and to achieve a new notion of raw materials and thus also a new appreciation of these products.

Working with seven curators from Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the Near East, East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, ifa has brought together 76 exhibits and a total of 53 designers for the exhibition, of which a special selection will be shown at Heritage Space, where they present added value and appreciation within many perse contexts.

The exhibition is accompanied by a local workshop, which took place at the beginning of April at Heritage Space. Here, 10 local upcycling artists were invited to share their upcycling creations and to contribute these to the exhibition. In addition to the exhibits, there are making-of-videos of the objects from the workshop in Hanoi and former workshops, which took place during the touring exhibition. As a further level for discussion and knowledge, these so called instructable video clips will be on view in the exhibition as well as on the Pure Gold platform.

In addition to the workshop, it is part of the concept of the exhibition project that at every venue of the tour local artists are invited to contribute their own upcycling works to the exhibition. In Hanoi, for the first time during the tour, local designers were asked to apply within an open call. Their objects are integrated in the exhibition next to the exhibits from all over the world as well as the exhibits from the workshop.

The event will be held from Apr 21 – May 26 at Heritage Space, 1st Floor, Dolphin Plaza (6 Nguyen Hoang / 28 Tran Binh, My Dinh 2, Hanoi)

ifa (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations) is Germany’s oldest intermediary organisation for international cultural relations based in Stuttgart, Germany. ifa supports artistic and cultural exchange worldwide. It is part of a global network and relies on sustainable, long-term partnerships. The ifa is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, the state of Baden-Württemberg and its capital Stuttgart./.

VNF