Nini Zhou

This project examines the notion of objects and their use as part of our common experiences.  Familiar objects like cutlery are easily overlooked in our everyday lives, but in banal situations there lie many untold stories.

These objects shape our daily scenarios, drive our behaviour and state of mind.

The space “in-between” cutlery - the space that is created with and around their use, the intimate, the social as well as the cultural space - lies at the heart of this project. It celebrates their commonplace role and at the same time challenges engrained rituals.

 The mixture of old and contemporary objects creates an interesting dialogue within the history of cutlery manufacture. The craft that's inherent to the object itself links the project to the site: For 500 years, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry has been a centre of industrial craft.

The project will adopt the building's complex fabric and without overwriting its history it activates a series of new narratives all about cutlery. Here museum, experience and retail merge to enable a new awareness about an object that mark so much everybody's life.