LOS ANGELES, CA.- Friedman Benda is presenting, Chairs Don’t Cry, Lithuanian designer Barbora Žilinskaitė’s inaugural solo exhibition opening at the gallery’s Los Angeles location.

Stifled by the constraints of a traditional design education at the outset of her career, Žilinskaitė sought to distance herself from boundaried definitions in the field. Investigating relationships between owners and their objects, she questions human-centered worldviews and consumption habits. Seeking to create a bridge between people and things, she urges the user to relate to their objects as if they were entering into a dialogue between two equal parties. Imbuing design with representative figurative shapes as a mode of generating agency, Žilinskaitė experiments with brightly colored dyes and surrealistic organic corporeal forms crafted from her signature medium of reclaimed sawdust.

“Human-like features attract us, evoke emotions and feelings, they create this weird still friendly atmosphere," she explains, "but also human-like objects become more significant - and that helps me to advocate for them.”

Born in 1996 in Kaunas, Lithuania, Barbora Žilinskaitė is a designer living and working in Brussels, Belgium. Seeking to distance herself from boundaried definitions of creative practices, Žilinskaitė’s output approaches design through a sculptural lens with a focus on material experimentation. Žilinskaitė graduated from Vilnius Academy of Arts in Lithuania with a B.A. degree in product and spatial design.

Friedman Benda represents prominent established and emerging designers, as well as historically significant estates that span five continents and five generations. With the goal to expand the dialogue in design and explore perspectives that have previously been marginalized, Friedman Benda identifies and advances key narratives that intersect contemporary design, craft, architecture, art, and technological research. Since 2007, the gallery’s exhibitions, publications and collaborations with institutions have played a vital role in the development of the contemporary design market and scholarship. With locations in New York, Los Angeles and Paris, Friedman Benda’s engagement with the global design community promotes synthesis between leading thinkers and makers and seeks opportunities to advance new connections across the field.