49 x 32.5 x 43

Ceramic, Plastic, Rubber Caps, Steel

The title is a question, a choice, and a statement is coming from the “object” itself. Can We Be Friends creates tension and confronts the viewer. We can choose to respond however we like, but the object's statement remains whether acknowledged or not. The use of figuration emphasizes this ambiguity and blends elements of the body with contemporary furniture design to create something that sits somewhere in between a body and a thing. The form was inspired by Francis Bacon's painting of a paralytic child walking on all fours (from Muybridge) and embodies a sense of mortal fragility while also being a functioning object. It asks: Can any object be sentient? What is sentience? Maybe objects have a way of thinking and feeling that are different from the way animals think and feel, and also how plants think and feel, but does that mean that they – the objects – don't?