Fernando Laposse

Fernando Laposse is a Mexican artist who studied product design at Central St Martins, London. Following his study, Laposse returned to Mexico and completed a residency at the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín, Oaxaca. The designer has gone on to create major installations to great acclaim, including ‘Sisal Sanctum’ at the CitizenM, East London, 2018 and the forty metre tapestry, ‘Conflict Avocados’, for the NGV Triennial, at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2024. Laposse has presented his furniture works in the V&A, London, the MoMA, New York, and ‘Pink Beasts’ at Design Miami, 2019.  He worked in collaboration with Maison Perrier-Jouët and Design Miami in 2023 towards a major installation. In 2024, Laposse was nominated by The Apollo Magazine for their decisive 40 Under 40 list and was recipient of the distinguished Bentley Lighthouse Award.

Community and agriculture are intrinsic to Laposse’s practice and research. Ethereal, even comedic, his pieces actively contribute to local economies and ecologies. Fernando has previously drawn the public’s attention to the collapse of 20th century industries in Mexico such as ropemaking. The designer’s collaboration with Tonahuixtla, Mixtec farmers in the South of Mexico, is the generative exchange at the heart of this focus. Via their collaboration, plant fibers such as sisal, loofah, toxomoxtle and avocado, are re-invigorated. New planting and harvesting techniques of ancestral plants give way to collections such as the designer’s ‘hairy furniture’. In this material context, Laposse posits his tactile forms as ‘solutions against erosion’; as designs that endeavors towards resilience and hope. Endured focus on sustainability, ethical contexts around cultivation and Central American cultural history, constitute Fernando Laposse’s work.