Christien Meindertsma
Christien Meindertsma was born in Utrecht in 1980 and graduated from the prestigious Eindhoven Design Academy in 2003; his work explores the life of products and raw materials in depth. In some cases, the result of his projects could be the recording of a process itself, in others, his investigations lead to commercial products; careful investigations and documentation, issues of local production and underexposed resources characterize his work.
The designer tries to reveal the processes that have become distant in industrialization and encourage a deeper understanding of the materials and products that surround us. His first work was a 2004 book called Checked Baggage, where Meindertsma purchased a container filled with a week of items confiscated at Schiphol airport security checks, meticulously classified and photographed, reaching 3267 items. Later, his 2007 PIG 05049 book documented all products made with a single pig, exploring the connection between raw materials and everyday products that surround us, revealing a network between source and consumer that has become increasingly invisible.
Another documentary project called Bottom Ash Observatory in 2015 involved Meindertsma in sifting a bucket of Bottom Ash incinerator, an abundant and until recently devalued by-product of the large-scale incineration of household waste, to reveal and present the precious materials to the ‘internal; this project came together in a precious book and a limited edition series of images.
Works such as the 2012 Flax Project, and its many offspring, are also typical of his approach: Meindertsma purchased an entire crop of a Dutch flax grower with the ambition to explore how flax products could remain locally produced ; the result is an extraordinary collection of objects such as lamps, rugs, poufs, chairs, fabrics … made solely with this batch of Dutch linen, the same used for the tops in the port of Rotterdam.
Many Dutch scholars and politicians therefore invited Christien Meindertsma to transform his particularly investigative method of design and documentation on a specific topic, exploring far-reaching topics such as Forestry in the Flevopolder region of the Netherlands, the relationship between Japanese porcelain and Dutch linen and the landscape of northern Canada. The designer’s work is in the collection of the MOMA in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rein. Among the numerous prizes and awards: three Dutch Design Awards in 2008 and an Index Index in 2009 for the PIG 05049 project; the Flax chair won the Dutch Design Award and Future Award in 2016.