Café Curtains
Café Curtains consists of seven overlapping hanging panels made from the detritus of our daily coffee and tea rituals: used tea bags, coffee filters and coffee packaging. It was created as a site-specific window installation in Hamers coffee shop for the 2023 DesignTO Festival, and echoes the curtains of Viennese coffee houses in the 1800s, where intellectuals congregated, and radical ideas fomented. These cafés often hung lace curtains halfway down the window frame, affording some intimacy and privacy while allowing sunlight to enter.
This re-interpretation suggests a new kind of radicalism in a subtle critique of our throw-away consumer culture, elevating the humble origins of these cast-off materials, and giving them an unexpected new existence.
Café Curtains
2023, 66" x 84"
Used coffee filters, used tea bags, coffee packaging, cyanotype print, Solarfast dye, botanical dye, ink, yarn, thread
