Of all trade shows, festivals, exhibitions, Homo Faber is the one you need to experience in person. This was my first visit to Homo Faber. And I already know it will not be my last, coming up every two years also gives you some time to breathe and prepare.

Some exhibitions are easy to understand through photographs. You see the objects, save a few images, perhaps watch a video, and you get a reasonably good idea of what the experience was like. Homo Faber is not one of them.

The fourth edition of Homo Faber, An Island of Light, curated by Es Devlin, took place at Fondazione Giorgio Cini on San Giorgio Maggiore, just across the water from Venice, it’s a five minute ride.  Under the artistic direction of Es Devlin, more than 700 objects by over 500 artisans from more than 70 countries were brought together across 15 immersive installations. And the word immersive really matters here.

Room after room, something happened to the way you looked at the work.

Light moved. Reflections changed. Sound appeared and disappeared. Objects were isolated, multiplied, suspended or almost made to disappear. The architecture of the former monastery became part of the exhibition rather than simply its backdrop; that’s always the charm of Italy, still, it keeps impressing.

Es Devlin does something with light that photographs cannot capture. Her approach was not simply about illuminating craft.

She used light as a material in its own right,  together with water, mirrors, movement and sound, to create a sequence of environments in which craftsmanship was experienced rather than simply displayed. Homo Faber itself describes the exhibition as an exploration of the relationship between light, materials and the human hand.

The result was surprisingly theatrical without turning the craftsmanship into a backdrop.

700 objects. 500 artisans. 70 countries. 15 rooms.

I kept thinking about the logistics. Imagine choosing more than 700 pieces from over 500 artisans around the world. Receiving them. Unpacking them. Checking them.

Installing them. Creating relationships between objects that may have come from completely different cultures, materials and techniques.

And then, at the end, taking everything apart and sending it all back again in just four weeks. The sheer amount of coordination behind this exhibition must have been extraordinary.

And yet, as a visitor, you don’t experience the logistics, but you experience the beauty. You couldn’t touch anything, of course. But in this edition, sight and sound were more than enough to create a sense of wonder. And you could talk to artisans, too; a few were present.

Here are nine works that left an impression including a few stories of provenance, accidents and techniques:

1// A Feast of Light

One of my favorite rooms was A Feast of Light. The magnificent Palladian Refectory was divided by a vertical beam of light, almost as if sunlight were entering through a crack. White objects in porcelain, glass, paper and textiles were displayed against this almost otherworldly setting. Above them, delicate paper cut-outs floated over a luminous table. It was quiet, almost sacred, though at least a hundred people were walking through at the same time.

And then you realize that this single room contains work from completely different makers, materials and traditions, yet the light gives everything a strange sense of coherence. That was one of the things I found most interesting about this edition: the scenography did not compete with the objects. It created a new way of seeing them.

2// Trey Jones’ Nerikomi Dresser

At first, I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at. It has something of a soft, almost textile quality to it; the layered surfaces look like folded fabric, cushions or even geological formations. But this is actually wood, which you find out, once you see the open drawer.

Trey Jones created the dresser using a technique inspired by nerikomi, a traditional Japanese ceramic technique in which different colored layers of clay are stacked and sliced to reveal patterns.

Jones translated that idea into furniture by taking  salvaged plywood offcuts, laminating them into patterned blocks and then carves and sculpting those blocks into furniture. The surface is wire-brushed to reveal the grain and finished with a hand-dyed blue-to-white ombré.

But the material story is perhaps the most interesting part. This particular dresser was made almost entirely from plywood scraps collected from neighboring cabinet shops. According to Jones’ studio, the piece diverted more than 400 pounds of plywood from landfill. It took more than 1,000 hours of work to make.

Courtesy by Homo Faber

3// Raffia Chair by Made For A Woman for Chloé

Raffia  wrapped around a metal structure and shaped into flowing layers, the piece reflects a shared commitment to celebrating craftsmanship, cultural preservation and the empowerment of women.Presented by Chloé under the creative direction of Chemena Kamali, the material is hand-braided, knotted and crocheted by Malagasy artisans, giving the chair a remarkable sense of movement.

For Chloé,

explored raffia not simply as a traditional craft material, but as a structural material for collectible design. It is a subtle shift, but an important one: instead of reproducing a traditional object, the project asks what else the material and the knowledge behind it can become.

Made For A Woman is a Madagascar-based atelier working with traditional techniques including braiding, weaving, crochet, embroidery, knotting and macramé.

The craft was alive at Homo Faber, rather than simply represented by a finished object. During the exhibition, Malagasy artisans demonstrated raffia braiding and macramé, making the techniques and gestures behind the material visible to visitors.

4// A Luminous Ark, an installation of paper sculptures by Chinese artist Wen Qiuwen

This installation was impossible to ignore. Once you read the story behind, you appreciate it even more, and that’s why it is included here.

Suspended above the monumental staircase leading to the Palladian Refectory, A Luminous Ark consists of large-scale paper birds created by Chinese paper artist Qiuwen Wen based on drawings by Es Devlin.

Kestrels, egrets, herons, terns and other Venetian birds were transformed into glowing lantern-like sculptures. Each bird combines a hand-forged metal skeleton with Tyvek paper, whose feathers and details are meticulously cut by hand. I love the idea behind it.

The birds are not simply decorative forms. They are part of a dialogue between Venice and its natural ecosystem. And Qiuwen Wen has a particularly beautiful way of describing her practice: she sees paper as the body and light as the soul.

Image credit: Photography by Giulio Ghirardi ©Michelangelo Foundation

5// Apollo and the Muses by Jacques Monneraud

This was one of my favorite discoveries because it plays with perception. At first glance, Jacques Monneraud‘s vessels look like cardboard packaging.

They are not. They are stoneware.

Monneraud mixes different stonewares to reproduce the color and grain of cardboard, then leaves most of the pieces unglazed. Small glazed details imitate tape, creating an extremely convincing trompe-l’œil effect. He even uses craft knife blades to make the precise cuts.

Monneraud originally worked in communications and art direction before becoming a ceramicist. He came across a stoneware color that reminded him of cardboard and became fascinated by the contrast: ceramics can last for thousands of years, while cardboard is designed to be temporary.So he decided to make something fragile-looking out of something extraordinarily durable.

He says that when people realize they are not looking at cardboard, he sees a kind of recognition in their eyes, a small return to childhood wonder.

6// The Shell Beach Where the Rays Live by Tetsuya Nagata

This was one of those pieces where the technique makes the final image even more fascinating. Japanese artist Tetsuya Nagata works with washi paper and a remarkable collection of traditional wooden moulds.

He has accumulated more than 2,000 wooden moulds originally used to make Japanese wagashi sweets. Some are hundreds of years old and carry the forms of auspicious creatures such as cranes, turtles and sea bream.

For  this work, Nagata took impressions from these old wooden moulds and arranged the resulting washi forms into a large composition. The work recalls the traces left by waves along a shoreline and evokes the idea of searching for something hidden in the sand.

What I find beautiful is that the moulds have already lived another life. They were once tools for making sweets, and now they have become tools for making a different type of  art. The material is carrying memory from one use into another.

Courtesy by Homo Faber

7// #20 by Heechan Kim

This was one of the pieces I found particularly intriguing because its structure is almost hidden. #20, by Korean-American mixed-media sculptor Heechan Kim, is made from layered maple wood strips held together with copper wire. There is no internal armature: the sculpture remains standing through the tension and compression created by the strips themselves. The result is a large, hollow form that feels somewhere between a piece of furniture, a body and a landscape.

What I like most is that the construction method is not just a technical solution. The structure becomes the language of the piece.

You can see how the strips bend, overlap and hold one another in place, but you never quite understand where the beginning or end of the structure is. It has a surprisingly organic quality for something built from such a simple combination of wood and wire.

Kim’s practice is particularly interesting because he deliberately moves away from function. Rather than starting with a conventional object and decorating it, he explores what happens when form itself becomes the subject.

Ph:Jacob Snavely

8// Water by Xiaodong Bian

I kept coming back to this one asking myself how that could possibly be done. Water by Chinese porcelain artist Xiaodong Bian looks like a splash frozen in time.

But the process behind it is much more interesting than the image suggests.

Bian applies Dehua porcelain slip onto a silicone mould and lets gravity determine the movement of the material. A calligraphy brush is then used to refine the droplets before firing. The final high-temperature firing creates the piece’s pearlescent surface. As a ceramics nerd, I can only say that: you must be a master to achieve that.

The really curious part is that Bian’s technique came from an accident. An unexpected mishap in his studio showed him what gravity could do to porcelain. Instead of trying to eliminate the accident, he learned how to recreate it deliberately. The accident becomes research, and the research becomes technique.

His work is now held in collections including M+ Museum in Hong Kong and the China Ceramic Museum.

Courtesy by Homo Faber

I am selecting very carefully now the trade show and exhibitions I visit, some of them even two years now as there is so much information on the net now. Homo Faber is one of those rare exhibitions you don’t simply see,  you experience it, and then keep thinking about it long after you leave.