Artist:
Laura Lima (born 1971 in Minas Gerais, Brazil; lives ad works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

Materials:
Knoll Saarinen Arm Chair, Eames Lounge Chair, Red and Blue Rietveld, Le Corbusier lc1 armchair, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh Willow Chair; each placed on wheelchairs.

Description:
“The seats of five wheelchairs have been replaced by five modernist design classics. Placed in a museum setting and used by members of the public that might need them during the exhibition, this apparently simple intervention has given the wheelchairs an uncanny character. Sometimes the results are eerily ‘natural’, as is the case with Le Corbusier’s lc1 armchair, and sometimes, with the enormous Willow Chair by C.R. Mackintosh, they are utterly contrived and become a sort of rolling monument…. Saarinen and Eames chairs look like strange practical contraptions that escaped their former place in a high-level conference room. Of course, the series would not be complete without the red and blue Rietveld chair from 1918. Rietveld’s saying ‘To sit is a verb’ can certainly be applied to this mobile variation. The extraordinary thing is that these ‘pimped’ wheelchairs also ironically call into question the ‘health’ of the modernist body of ideas.”
–Exhibition guide, “Laura Lima: the fifth floor,” Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2014.