DEC13_SUPERDUPERFINAL

Mona Alcudia’s Peacock Chair
Mona Alcudia is a professor of Fine Arts at the University of the
Philippines Cebu where she teaches product design subjects and
manages the operations and programs of the Fablab UP Cebu. In her
project The Peacock Chair, she pieces together insights and reflections
around her practice as a product designer and interrogates the place
of the Philippines in the expansive landscape of the design world
and how the country plays its role in the export-import commodity
exchange.
Examining the historical, cultural and economic value of the
Peacock Chair, Alcudia cast a critical eye on the very industry that
she happened to be in by tracing the modes of production of the
iconic peacock chair and elaborating on its eventual exoticized
reception in the West. Alcudia aims to decolonize Filipino design by
questioning normalized valuation of Filipino craftsmanship that has
created unjust labor conditions for local artisans, relegating them as
mere laborers rather than cultural bearers.
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