When a Chair Is More Than a Chair

New York Times

14-05-2025

New York Design Week always inundates the city with sumptuous materials and one-of-a-kind objets — coffee tables made of imported marble, custom lamps with brass hardware and sofas upholstered in wool. But 'OUTSIDE/IN,' a show at Lyle Gallery on the Lower East Side, offers something more, with pieces that lean into the makers' heritage and backgrounds. Lighting fixtures are inspired by the Indian tradition of hair oiling, a chair is meant to soothe anxiety and wall art is made of construction materials tied to a childhood memory. Here, the stories are what matter.
'Everything has some sort of background to it, or it has layers and guts to it. It's not living just to be a fancy-ass chair for rich people,' said Lin Tyrpien, who co-curated the show with Jenny Nguyen, the founder of the public relations company Hello Human.
Now in its 13th year, the annual NYCxDESIGN Festival brings together designers and manufacturers to exhibit new furnishings and home décor, with events taking place all over the city. On view through June 1, the show at Lyle Gallery features 12 designers, most of whom are emerging. The gallery held an open call for furniture makers and artists, which received over 200 submissions, through which Ms. Tyrpien and Ms. Nguyen selected the works to be featured. The designers come from across the globe, including Senegal, Nigeria, India and more.
Ms. Tyrpien, who is a co-owner of the gallery, said that the recent anti-D.E.I. movements have been another impetus for the show. 'With funding being gone from a lot of D.E.I. initiatives, what a timely thing to be combating that,' she said.
Here's a look at some of the designers in the show and the stories behind their work.
The interviews below have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary
Studio: soft-geometry
Location: Los Angeles
Work: 'Long Haired Sconces' made with hemp and lime composite
How do your pieces speak to the significance of hair in your culture?
Utharaa Zacharias: Palaash and I both grew up in India, and we have this shared memory. My mom and two sisters would line up on a Sunday afternoon, apply coconut oil on each other's hair, massage each other's head and then braid the hair to let it soak in. Palaash has a similar memory of massaging his grandmother's hair with oil. And now that we're in the U.S., really far away from home, we do these same rituals for each other — it's become our Sunday ritual to oil each other's hair. The idea for these pieces was to create a portrait that is inspired by that choreography of caring for your hair and caring for each other's hair and finding softness in that ritual.
Steffany Trần
Studio: Vy Voi
Location: Queens
Work: 'Kite In-Flight' lamp made with Dó paper
This piece was inspired by the Vietnamese whistling kite. What drew you to the kite as a subject to explore?
It's a kite that's over 2,000 years old. It's very historic to Vietnam and very unique to Vietnam. It has jackfruit wood whistles, so when it's actually in the air, it creates this really beautiful moment of sound and whimsy. I was really delighted by this idea of, how do we capture this rich piece of history into a piece of modern design that honors that spirit?
And why a lamp, as opposed to a chair or table or something else?
I think lighting is one of those things that we really take for granted. It's something that we live with every day — whether that's overhead lighting, desk lighting, floor lighting — but there's something really nice about creating this sculptural moment where I felt like we could capture the idea of a kite flying in the air against the sun.
Monica Curiel
Location: Denver
Work: 'La Mari' sculptural painting made of spackling paste
You chose spackling paste as your medium because your father works in construction. What was your family's reaction to you creating art with this material?
During Covid, materials were expensive and stores were closed, and I reverted back to spackling paste and plaster, because they were materials that I grew up using because I would go to work with my father to his job sites. I thought I'd use it for experimentation, but I had this love for the material again.
It wasn't until I did my B.F.A. show in 2021 that my parents were like, 'We don't really understand what you're doing. Like, you sketch?' They don't have a higher education, and so to them it was foreign. Then he looked at a painting and he was like, 'I don't get it, but I understand how you made it.' And I realized that this material is a language; it's bridging a gap.
Then he read my bio statement, and he said, "You know, I really would like you to take out the part that you're an immigrant and Mexican.' And I was like, 'What? I thought you would be so proud of it.' And with tears in his eyes, he said, 'I don't want you to face the racism your mom and I have faced.' And it was in that moment that I thought, wow, what did this material just do?
Tanuvi Hegde
Location: Brooklyn
Work: 'Reflect' chair made with cherry wood and leather
This chair is meant to be fidgeted with — you can roll the ball from one arm to the other. What is the purpose of that movement?
I am a very anxious person, and I like to fidget a lot. So I was thinking about how anxiety physically shows up in the body. And I kept coming back to little fidget moments with respect to your hands, like either you're tapping your fingers or you're rolling something in your hands. I wanted to combine all of that and design a chair that leans into that. I also was working with the idea that a chair, more specific than any other form of furniture, is meant to keep you still, like it stills the body. But what if, instead of asking the body to be still, you let the furniture meet the body where it already is — and it wants to fidget, and it wants to play around with you.
Sandia Nassila and Toluwalase Rufai
Studio: Salù Iwadi Studio
Location: Dakar, Senegal and Lagos, Nigeria
Work: 'Zangbeto' side table made of iroko wood
What story are you trying to tell with this piece?
Toluwalase Rufai: It's rooted in the culture of the Zangbeto masquerade of Benin. They are coined to be the protectors of the night — they hover and then they rotate to protect the people in the community — and we were mesmerized by this oscillating motion. It's a very mystical, mysterious masquerade. So we wanted to embody that — how could a furniture piece educate you on a part of the culture and also bring different meanings to it? And how can we capture movement in a static object?