This exclusive interview is presented by SNA Displays.
CODAzine is highlighting the public art community to share stories about leading creative professionals and the innovative art they are creating. This month, we feature Nancy Hou and Josh de Sousa of Hou de Sousa —an award-winning multi-disciplinary studio focused on creating innovative architectural installations and large-scale sculptures. We asked Nancy and Josh to answer a few questions about their creative process, inspirations, and what’s next. Here’s what they shared with us:
We want to create experiences and sensations that the public hasn’t experienced before because this is what we enjoy about art as well. We love intricately detailed objects and art, but when it comes to creating our own stuff, we’ve always been drawn to working at larger scales. It allows us to temporarily immerse people in a new environment and sets the stage for a wide range of unexpected social interactions. Our job is to create joyful and welcoming spaces. The public takes it from there and breathes life into the work.
We keep things pretty simple and use Rhino for almost every task. This includes 3D modeling, rendering, drawing sets, and fabrication prep. There are many extraordinary digital tools out there, with lots of merits and advantages, but we tend to stick to presenting static images. We’ve found that a careful selection of rendered perspectives and drawings is really effective at clearly communicating a project’s potential.
Among others, we really love the work of Olafur Eliasson, James Turrell, Tara Donovan, Tony Craig, Rachel Whiteread, Nick Cave, Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, and Gordon Matta-Clark.
We would love to install a temporary piece within a large public space like Grand Central Station, the Ford Foundation, or Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan. It would also be amazing to build a permanent piece close to home, somewhere in Brooklyn, so we could see how the public interacts with it over time.
We keep an open mind while researching the context and goals that surround each individual project, and really focus on the constraints that make the project unique. We enjoy this problem-solving aspect as it pushes us to unexpected and novel lines of thought and material selections. Once we’re unanimously excited about a design strategy, we work through the nuts and bolts of how it will likely be fabricated before proposing it. We want the built work to at least match, if not surpass, the concept images.
Ideally, every project should resonate with its immediate and greater context. One example of this is a pair of suspended sculptures that we installed within glass-enclosed stairwells at Kansas City International Airport. They had to make a dramatic visual impact, occupy two 75ft tall spaces, and weigh less than 500 lbs. Our solution was to weave together a syncopated pattern of airfoils/bird feathers that run parallel to the switchback stairways. In a single move, the design acknowledges the immediate architectural context of the stairways, the act of flight, and the improvisational character of Kansas City jazz.
See more of Hou de Sousa's work by checking out their CODAworx profile.
This exclusive interview was made possible thanks to SNA Displays. Check out their other artist interviews with Ferdi Alici and Susan Narduli.
To learn more about advertorial opportunities, contact Suzanne at suzanne@codaworks.com