Uncover the winners of the MullenLowe NOVA Award 2020
Each year, the MullenLowe NOVA Award honors the most innovative work by BA and MA students at Central Saint Martins, one of the world's leading art and design colleges. Last year, womenswear designer Fredrik Tjærandsen won the grand prize for his transformative inflatable rubber designs, while Elissa Brunato, who completed the Material Futures course, received the Creative Innovation award for her sustainable sequins.
Among the 1,300 students who graduated from Central Saint Martins this year, the winners of the five prizes were selected from 14 selected entries. BA Fashion Print graduate Sandra Poulson took first place as well as the People & # 39; s Choice Award for her project An Angolan Archive.
An Angolan archive by Sandra Poulson
An Angolan archive by Sandra Poulson
An Angolan archive by Sandra Poulson
Poulson's interdisciplinary work encompasses around 200 pieces, divided into clothing, photography, performance, sound and video. It draws on other materials such as written texts, research images, and common Angolan items included in the final piece that examine the relationship between family and inherited social memory from colonial Angola and the civil war.
“This project started with a research trip to Luanda, my hometown, where I covered the daily life of the city from informal settlements to downtown Luanda for a month. I documented around 3,000 pieces of information through photography, video and voice recordings, ”explains Poulson.
An Angolan archive by Sandra Poulson
The work, she says, “recognizes that an archive is colonial. Therefore, the task of decoloniality is of central importance for an Angolan archive, as the concept of Africa's own archives still consists of dealing with the current realities presented by external agencies. “An Angolan Archive not only won the grand prize, but also received the YourNOVA award, which was decided by a public vote.
Runner-up for the main award is Joseph Standing, a MA Industrial Design graduate whose work Aqua No More questioned what England would look like in the face of diminished freshwater supplies. The speculative project takes the form of a public engagement campaign that uses a combination of voicemails and graphics to warn the public about water pollution and fragile water ecosystems, as well as the future effects of these dangers.
Picture above and here: Modular Augmented Capsule by Mathilde Rougier
Runner-up Mathilde Rougier, who graduated from the BA Fashion Design Womenswear course, created a fashion collection exploring ideas for circular models, namely, how recovering damaged data can act as a form of creation. The underlying concept aims to explore how existing materials and inspiration can be used for new ideas by using a modular arrangement inspired by pixels on a screen.
The final award – Unilever #Unstereotype – went to BA Graphic Communication Design graduate Jahnavi Inniss, whose Representation project examines the contribution blacks have made to British society. Inniss explored methods of creating visibility and representation regarding Black British history, creating a five-meter quilt and an online story-sharing directory, as well as a range of educational resources.
Influenced by Stuart Hall's representation theory and Roland Barthes' semiotic theory, the project used studied public monuments and memorials, as well as the educational system. Commenting on the project, Inniss said, "What I've researched is just a small fragment and there are so many more stories and stories that need to be told."
Represented by Jahnavi Inniss
Represented by Jahnavi Inniss
Aqua No More by Joseph Standing
Aqua No More by Joseph Standing
mullenlowenova.com