‘The Age of the World’ by Parisian designer Mathieu Lehanneur is a set of jars and urns that each map the ages of the population in a given country.
The ceramic containers are built up of 100 layers, each representing a year of life with birth at the bottom and death at the top.
The circumference of each level is dictated by the number of people of that age in the relevant country.
From the Mathieu Lehanneur:
‘France, USA , Japan, Egypt, Russia. The age-pyramids of the populations of five countries moulded in 3D, opening a perspective designed to freak us all out. Statistics quit charts and graphs to reincarnate in a curious set of containers, whether jars or urns, creating a radical representation of our human bondage in this world.
Birth is the base and death the apex of these enamelled terra cotta pagodas, whose contours change in phase with the age rings that translate life expectancy. From bottom to top there are 100 strata, shaped in solid or void, but the top end is always a sharp tip. What we have here is a fascinating twin-scope view of the state of living, a look at our own life-span in a sculptural surround view.
Death is the motor of architecture… Spooky, creepy, prose-poetry.
What level are you at neighbor? How many you got left brother? Where you been all this time honey?‘
Material: enamelled ceramic made at Vallauris by Claude Aiello.
The exhibition ‘The Age of the World’ by Mathieu Lehanneur will take place at Issey Miyake (11 rue Royale, 75008 Paris, France) during Fashion Week in October 2009.
