Porky Hefer

Porky Hefer’s collections of sculptural seating environments are speculative interventions, a series of playful proposals that take their cue from nature’s unerring adaptability, resourcefulness and interconnection. Born in Johannesburg in 1968, he completed a Diploma in Graphic Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 1992, which was following by an award-winning career as a creative director. In 2007, Hefer left the advertising industry to set up his own design studio, Animal Farm, and two years later contributed a work to Southern Guild’s inaugural collection.

Fascinated by the reactions and energy a piece can generate in a space, Hefer embraces Africa and the skills and processes that are readily available indigenously, rather than trying to emulate foreign processes. Making use of traditional techniques and crafts that focus on the hand rather than machinery, his work ensures that age-old skills are preserved and kept relevant in a modern age.

With an eco-activist mindset, Hefer is a designer deeply immersed in animal behaviours, natural phenomena, organic forms and ecosystems. His work is steeped in a fascination with biomimicry: a patch of forest floor, an anthill, the movement of lava – in Hefer’s mind, each unravels a parallel universe that offers a metaphoric lens through which to view our relationship to each other and the world at large.

His iconic human-sized nests, woven in Kooboo cane, arose from his fascination with the nest-making skills of the sociable weaver bird, made relevant for a human audience. His work’s progression into other materials – including leather, hand-felted wool, textiles and recycled materials – has further evolved this exploration of ways in which seating environments can be presented.

Hefer has had numerous solo presentations of his work and is a two-time winner of the Design Foundation’s Icon Award. His first solo exhibition, Monstera Deliciosa, Volume I (2015), at Southern Guild in Cape Town was an underwater fantasy-scape of zoomorphic seating pods handmade in collaboration with local leather artisans. In 2016, he represented South Africa with Southern Guild at the inaugural London Design Biennale, which was followed by a solo exhibition, Heart of Lightness, at R & Company in New York in 2017.

His Endangered collection of sculptural seating pods made of eco-friendly and recycled materials was exhibited to widespread acclaim at Design Miami/ Basel in 2018. Co-presented by Southern Guild and SFA Advisory, proceeds from the project benefited conservation programmes at the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

Hefer’s large-scale installation, Plastocene – Marine Mutants From a Disposable World, made its world premiere at the 2020 NGV Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Commissioned by the museum, the collection of large-scale handmade seating environments draws attention to ocean pollution by imagining mutant sea creatures evolved from plastic bags, straws, and coffee cups. The installation was named Best Cautionary Tale at the Wallpaper* Design Awards, 2022.

Hefer’s fourth solo exhibition with Southern Guild, Volume IV. Chaos Calamus – Interspecies Reciprocal Altruism (2023), reflected on the phenomenon of mutually beneficial symbiosis between species. Woven entirely in Kooboo cane, the collection of seating pods explored a new fluidity in shape inspired by microbiological movement of amoeba and incorporated sculptural timber supports by artist Adam Birch.

His most recent solo exhibition, no bats, no chocolate (2024), at Galerie56 in New York celebrates the intelligence and ingenuity of wild creatures. Here, Hefer develops his concept of “animal architecture”, approaching the collection as a series of prompts inviting various ways to interact with the works. The dance of exchange between the user’s body and the work is at the crux of Hefer’s project, rooted in the disruptive power of play as a means to ignite a more creative, connected and humane way of relating to our environment and each other. In this regard, his forebears are the Radical Design Group of thinkers, architects and designers for whom the idea of play was paramount in opening up new types of social interactions.

Hefer currently works between Cape Town and his current home in Arles, France.