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OTIUM & ACEDIA
DESIGN BIENNALE
LONDON
2015
South Africa's installation Otium and Acedia celebrated liberation and joy as fitting statements from a country reborn from a convoluted and visceral history. Porky Hefer designed a series of hanging nests in the shape of animals, in which visitors could climb. The animals were quite ferocious: aquatic predators like the killer whale and piranha whose gaping jaws bristle with teeth. But Hefer's underwater utopia was also quirky and joyous. For a country "emerging" from its past struggles, a pervasive sense of liberation and innocence took on an emboldened meaning along with the theme of utopia.