VEG #97 Chairs, shavers & toys: designs for the female body

On Sunday, September 22, the museum will host the fifth Van Eesteren Talk on the theme of For Women Only: the current exhibition about how product design reflects women's social role. For the conversation, the museum invites designers Nienke Helder, Anna Aagaard Jensen and and Judith van Bezu, collection management coordinator at NEMO Science Museum to reflect on product design for the female body.

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Nienke Helder is a designer, graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven and HKU. With her research and designs, Nienke makes sexual trauma and female pleasure visible and negotiable. Sexual problems resulting from trauma can be highly complex and often involve a combination of psychological and physical symptoms. Nienke designed, among other things, a brush to explore touch at your own pace and a mirror to view your own vulva. In addition, she designed in collaboration with The Pelvic People various sexual health tools.

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Anna Aagaard Jensen is a designer, graduated from the Royal Danish Academy and Design Academy Eindhoven and teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Her best-known design is the series of ten feminist Lady Chairs. In her view, a chair is not just a chair, but a symbol of patriarchy: a form of society where men predominate. The series of chairs are a statement of gender politics and speak out against manspreading: the phenomenon of the wide-legged man who literally and figuratively takes up space.

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Judith van Bezu is a heritage specialist, working as a collection manager at the NEMO Science Museum. For the exhibition, the museum has collaborated with the NEMO and many loans from the For Women Only exhibition come from their depot. They have a large collection of household appliances and a special collection of Ladyshaves by collector Peter de Weijer.

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In the conversation, Nienke and Anna reflect on what it means to design for the female body these days. Judith talks about the Ladyshaves collection and the importance of preserving everyday utensils. Before or after the conversation, there is the opportunity to view the For Women Only exhibition and to visit the other locations of the GLUE Design Route.