During the research for Danh Vo’s exhibition at Denmark’s National Gallery (SMK), ‘Take My Breath Away’, a retrospective exhibition first showing at Guggenheim, New York in 2018, Danh Vo wanted to create new social furniture works for the entrance area of the museum covered with textile by the Danish textile company Kvadrat.
In this process Danh discovered a textile by Nanna Ditzel at the company’s archives, a textile with direct link to the famous and commercial very successful ‘Hallingdal’ fabric (1965), it is just as looking at Hallingdal through a magnifying glass, woven with thick, voluminous woolen yarns.
Kvadrat consented to produce the fabric for the stools at SMK and a few years later it was decided to put Sisu into production and hence this became the first collaboration between Danh Vo and Kvadrat.
In August 2021 Sisu was launched to the world at ‘Birgers Herretøj’ in Stubbekøbing, Denmark, and old Men’s Wear shop which we together with Danh took over in 2020, preserved as painted and installed by Birger and his wife Bodil during their 47 years ownership.
Image credit: Nick Ash
