11:11 Design Festival 2023

11:11 was a show of design excellence curated by Jan Hendzel Studio for the London Design Festival 2023. Featuring the works of 11 leading established artists who each selected 1 of the 11 emerging artists from an open call.

A RUM FELLOW selected emerging furniture designer Mariangel Talamas Leal

Mariangel is a designer based between London and Los Angeles. She has a background in interior design and previously worked for AvroKO while living in San Francisco. She holds a MA in furniture design from Central Saint Martins and a BFA in interior design from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Desciption of submitted artwork: Liminal Identities - As the intersection between globalization and immigration becomes more prevalent, having a cultural identity crisis is now a common lived experience. I strived to create a collection that spoke to these emotions and a multi-hyphenated identity. Each piece of furniture is made of two different parts, with each part needing the other to fully embody its true identity. This emphasizes the concept of two separate identities coming together to create a stable and productive third.

We were instantly drawn to the rawness of Mariangel's work, her pieces have at once a familiar organic nature and an otherworldly almost alien quality. We felt the narrative of reshaping identities which informed Mariangel's pieces came across very powerfully in the designs. We look forward to exhibiting alongside her work at the 11:11 show.

The Periscope Rug was inspired by the timeless art of patchwork and handcrafted mending exploring the process by which small individual fragments coalesce to form a unified whole. The creative journey begins with infinite possibility of arrangement and passes through stages of disorder as elements are ordered and reordered until finally a complete harmony shifts into perspective and serenity if emerges from the tumult.