Homeo
In his thesis project Homeo, George Ganno explores how furniture can convey queer histories and preserve gay semiotics through ornamental design. The bookshelf Polari and its companion scarf Show Me The Ropes turn the home of the homosexual man into a stage, asking whether an object can transition from a passive artefact to an active narrator in the room.
For Polari, hand drawn motifs were translated digitally and milled in birch with a CNC, hand-finished, and lacquered in a deep blue, high-gloss finish; a glossiness Swedish taste might dismiss as “tacky”, but which camp embraces as decadence and theatricality. Together the bookshelf and scarf form an ecosystem of gay semiotics in which hidden codes become furniture and a wearable piece, carrying the project from space to body.
At the project’s core is “radical specificity”, Ganno’s own methodology: by designing uncompromisingly for a narrow audience, an authenticity emerges that resonates beyond that audience.