Design Indaba Emerging Creative 2018: Tiaan S Beukes

INTERVIEWED BY Lindi Brownell Meiring IMAGES courtesy of Tiaan S Beukes

Johannesburg-based designer and artist Tiaan S Beukes, one of this year’s Emerging Creatives at Design Indaba, chats to us about being a designer, what inspires his work and what we can expect from his upcoming collection.

What do you love most about being a designer?

The freedom and endless possibilities. I am not restricted to a particular field of making or material. I make leather goods, jewellery, furniture and art and when I feel like making something different, I can do that. As a designer, I have the opportunity to make an impact on the world or just to make someone happy with a beautiful object.

Why did you decide to design a chair?

The chairs in the Department of Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University were my inspiration. I looked at the broken and unused chairs that were standing around. They were without any practical function or use, but for me, they were more than that. They were objects that have significance whether or not they had the primary function of being a seat for one’s ass!

In my third year of studying jewellery design, as a jewellery designer that doesn’t even were jewellery, I started making jewellery with a function other than that of mere adornment. These pieces could be used as practical tools to loosen nuts and bolts and as screwdrivers or allen keys. The idea of taking an object with a practical use, such as a chair and turning that into jewellery, fashion or sculpture, without a traditional practical use, was an interesting idea.

What was it like being an Emerging Creative at Design Indaba this year?

I have been going to Design Indaba since 2014. I have been inspired and motivated by dozens of creatives in attendance over the years and to be part of that is incredible. The opportunities that the Indaba affords young designers like myself is humbling and attending the workshop presented by Thato Kgatlhanye was transformative.

You’re working on a range of homeware items. What can we expect from this range?

At this stage, I am building a workspace for making that will be completed in the coming months. Ideas and material experiments are ongoing, but the manufactured products will be limited to 100 of each item. With these pieces I want people to return to a frame of mind where objects are valued in and of themselves. In a sphere where objects are mass-produced and consumed without regard for anything other than immediate satisfaction for the user, I want to design, create and make objects that have some sort of “substance”.

View more of Tiaan’s work at tiaansbeukes.wixsite.com/salmon or follow him on Instagram.