Exhibition | External location - | 25/06/10-05/08/10

From 7 March to 5 August 2010 the exhibition Taking a Stance – 8 Critical Attitudes in Chinese and Dutch Architecture and Design has been travelling in China. In this exhibition the NAI and Dutch Design Fashion Architecture (DutchDFA) present eight leading designers from the Netherlands and China. All eight offer their own individual answer to the major issues of our time. The Taking a Stance tour will conclude with an exhibition in the NAI in Rotterdam at spring 2011.

Dutch designers: OMA (architects), Hella Jongerius (product designer), Alexander van Slobbe (fashion designer), Irma Boom (graphic designer). Chinese designer: Urbanus (architects), Ai Weiwei (architect/artist), Me We (graphic design agency), Ma Ke (fashion designer).

The eight selected designers are all highly acclaimed in their field thanks to their originality and boundless capacity for innovation. Each one of them is driven to challenge conventions and codes within their discipline, recasting standard conceptions with audacity and creativity. Operating in an area rife with tensions, the designers are constantly compelled to balance competing interests: mass production versus traditional artisanal techniques, commissioned versus personal work, tradition versus innovation, the human scale versus large-scale planning, globalization versus the need for identity.

Despite many common traits, the eight designers are all highly distinctive. Distinctions that reveal the contrasts inherent in Dutch and Chinese design and that shed light on design culture in the Netherlands and China. In 'Taking a Stance' all eight adopt an individual position and enter into dialogue.

Taking a Stance tours China
Taking a Stance could be seen in the Dutch Culture Centre in Shanghai from 7 to 28 March, where a cultural programme of exhibitions, performances, concerts, lectures and more will present a picture of Dutch culture during the entire World Expo 2010 period. Taking a Stance will tour China for the duration of World Expo 2010. The exhibition will be in the Today Art Museum in Beijing from 24 April to 16 May, after which it will be in the OCT Art & Design Gallery in Shenzhen from 25 June to 5 August. The exhibition will come to the Netherlands afterwards. In a modified form it will be presented in the NAI in Rotterdam 2011.

> For an impression of the construction of Taking a Stance, watch the video below.