AMebe
The Amebe duo, Alessandra Mantovani and Eleonora Barbareschi, have been partners since 2005, when the two (then twenty year old’s), began to work together in the fields of Art and Design under the appellative Amebe. Their name was inspired both by their attitude and their profoundly ironic approach to their work. Indeed, the two designers are anything but amorphous. Rather, their work assumes the versatility of an amoeba: dynamically mutable and perpetually transforming.
Amebe’s projects straddle the line between folly and rationality, rigor and disorder, intellect and heart, sacred and profane. The studio reliably produces work with a unique style that is easily identifiable as their own. Alessandra and Eleonora define each other as complementary and indispensable to one another. They say "we are the bomb and the other the fuse, we give the best together".
Their collaborations vary from the design of new pieces for major Italian brands, to the production of Limited-Edition design pieces, to the creation of Site-Specific sculptures and installations on commission. They have exhibited projects and works in different contexts among the most important: Chelsea Art Museum of New York, USA (2007), lnstitute of Contemporary Arts - London, UK (2009), Biennial of Design Interieur by Kortrijk, Belgium (2010), Triennale di Milano Bovisa (2010), Red Dot Design Museum of Essen (2010) and Singapore (2013), Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries in New York City (2014), Fuori Salone in the 5vie District of Milan (2015), Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan (2016), MUSA di Salò, Italy (2018), ‘Superufficio’ for Supercolla Project Curated by Guido Musante and Maria Chiara Valacchi – Milan Design Week (2019), ‘Marilyn’ on show at Museo Leone di Vercelli, Vercelli, Italy, (2019), ‘Cupola’ series for David Gill Gallery at Masterpiece London Art Fair, London, UK, (2019), ‘Cupola’ series at Salon Art + Design, Park Armory, New York, USA, (2019).
Among their various awards: Siggraph Space-Time Award, Red Dot Product Design Award in 2010, Movin-Up award for young Italian Artists abroad GAI in 2012, Red Dot Concept Design Award in 2013, they were the 2019 finalists of the 13th Art Laguna Prize, Venice (Italy) and were ‘EXTRA VIRGIN’ DNA Design Award Winner, Paris (2021).
