Week 6: Furniture made of guns by Mozambican designer Gonçalo Mabunda (A picture a day)

Chairs Made out of Weapons

Chairs Made out of Weapons

Chairs Made out of Weapons

These beautiful work of furniture are designed and built by Gonçalo Mabunda. He is interested in the collective memory of his country, Mozambique, which has only recently emerged from a long and terrible civil war. He works with arms recovered in 1992 at the end of the sixteen-year conflict that divided the region.

Mabunda is most well known for his thrones. According to the artist, the thrones function as attributes of power, tribal symbols and traditional pieces of ethnic African art. They are without a doubt an ironic way of commenting on his childhood experience of violence and absurdity and the civil war in Mozambique that isolated his country for a long period.

I love the juxtaposition between the weapons and chairs. I feel that the comparison is that furniture such as chairs in this case are supposed to be used as a form of comfort. However, guns are often a representation of violence. I feel that the irony of comfort versus violence creates a strong contrast that allows me to see these works of arts as more than just a furniture itself. And also given the artist's history, I admire how he has confronted his childhood experiences of violence by creating works of arts using these violence itself, to expresshis strong feelings against the civil war.