La letra E está por doquier / The Letter E is Everywhere

In November 2012, Studio Manuel Raeder developed the three display structures and furniture that made up La letra E está por doquier (The Letter E is Everywhere) with fellow studio designer Santiago da Silva for Centro de Diseño de Oaxaca, in the capital of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The exhibition was first shown there before touring in winter 2013.

Centro de Diseño de Oaxaca was the first public institution of its kind in Mexico. It understood design as a tool for social change: not only as a product, but also in relation to social structures and identity. Together with Studio Manuel Raeder, it shared the understanding that form relates to production, and production to alternative economic relations based on dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

The Letter E is Everywhere worked as a book containing different stories, letters, texts and images that unfolded into space. Instead of pages, display structures and furniture pieces allowed books, prints, objects and textiles designed by Studio Manuel Raeder to be juxtaposed with other objects found during an exploration of local handcraft production in Oaxaca. Two wooden cubic structures displayed a selection of catalogues and artist books produced by, and central to the practice of, Studio Manuel Raeder over the previous ten years. Rather than presenting a straightforward back catalogue, say in the pages of a book, the publications were exhibited spatially and integrally amongst collected and found objects. These included pieces of Barro Negro (Black Clay), a style of pottery originating from Oaxaca, which the designers gathered through encounters with Oaxacan handcraft workshops during their prolonged stay in Mexico and their interaction with local artisans and ancestral craft techniques.

The exhibition also featured furniture pieces developed as a result of this research, most of them dealing with the question of how to re-adapt objects that come out of a globalising context back into local production. The seating was made from plastic and wooden stools and upturned buckets, as well as the ubiquitous white plastic Monobloc chairs, which had been reconfigured and covered with woven palm leaf. The modular cake table was produced in collaboration with a furniture factory and local wood producers in Oaxaca. All of them were developed in close collaboration with Oaxacan artisans.

The Letter E is Everywhere was shaped by these objects and by display structures developed especially for the exhibition. Presented at Centro de Diseño de Oaxaca; Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura, Mexico City; km Kunstverein München, Munich; and Galerie Neu, Berlin, the exhibition also incorporated objects whose production hovered between craft and design practice: industrial, mass-produced popular objects (many without clear author credits), handicrafts, and furniture pieces whose form-function relation showed great attention to detail and technique.

The exhibition proposed an open narrative through the objects on display and questioned the position that contemporary design plays in the dialogue between people and everyday objects. At the same time, it reflected the approach that Manuel Raeder and his studio take toward their practice, in which design is a tool that is constantly reconsidered and customized.

Due to the nature of this exhibition, this is not 
a comprehensive list of displayed works. In particular, the publications that were on display have not been listed here.

Wooden display structure, 2012,Unidad Comunal Forestal Agropecuaria y de Servicios 
de Ixtlán de Juárez, Oaxaca, 250 × 250 × 250 cm

Adrián, 2012, Banquito de plástico con cubierta tejida en palma / plastic stool with woven palm cover, 17 x 58 x 58 cm; producido por / produced by Adrián López, Santa Cruz Papalutla, Oaxaca

Eusebia (petate), 2012, petate de junco tejidas y fundas para banquitos, woven reed blankets and stool covers; producido por / produced by Eusebia Lucas, San Luis Amatlán, Oaxaca

Cake Table (Versión Oaxaca), 2012, mesa y sillas, diferentes tipos de madera / 
table and chairs set, in different kinds of wood, 100 x 100 x 80 cm, 
producida por / produced by Unidad Comunal Forestal, agropecuaria y de servicios de Ixtlán de Juárez, Oaxaca

Arránca, 2012, wood and metal stool, 45 × 45 × 52 cm; Eduardo Ojeda, Oaxaca 
de Juárez, Oaxaca