Seetal Solanki on olive tree roots, cooking, and why materials matter.

Material Matters with Grant Gibson

Seetal Solanki describes herself as a materials translator and has been in the vanguard of material thinking since she launched her practice, Ma-tt-er, in 2015.

Three years later she produced the hugely influential book, Why Materials Matter, and she has gone on to work with a variety of brands, including Nike, Selfridges and Potato Head in Bali, as well as teaching at institutions such as Central Saint Martins (where, incidentally, she graduated from the Textile Futures MA) and the Royal College of Art.

Her latest project saw her joining forces with designer Jorge Penades in Madrid for Uprooted, an exhibition that explored Spain’s olive oil industry.

In this episode, we talk about: helping people build a relationship with materials; why she’s working with olive tree roots; interviewing materials; her fascination with cookery (and her love of a cheese soufflé); growing up in Leicester and feeling rejected from her home city; the spiritual side of materials; being ‘broken’ by Central Saint Martins as a student; material discrimination; how her practice was built on frustration; and why she’s in a hopeful place.

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