Julia Lohmann (born 1977, Germany) is a multidisciplinary designer, educator and researcher living and working in Helsinki, Finland.
From 2011 to 2018, Julia Lohmann taught as Professor for Foundations in Artistic Practices (Design) at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK).
Lohmann thinks that the design industry truly has power and it should not support the status quo, instead moving forward in a socially responsible and sustainable way.
[6] The 'Hidaka Ohmu' seaweed pavilion was commissioned for the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum exhibition 'Partnering with Nature' at the 50th World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.
It has been acquired by MoMA[9] and inspired the novelist Rob Magnuson Smith to write an imagined secret history of the work.
It consists of two representations of reclining human figures, made of 9000 Petri dishes mounted on back-lit acrylic panels.
The petri dishes contain images of bacteria colonies that are positioned within the artwork based on the parts of the human body in which they most commonly live.
[11] This project is based on the idea that dried strips of seaweed could replace typical materiality in the creation of everyday objects.
The visitor is led into the core, a room also made from fishing boxes and lighted by candles held in tuna vertebrae.
This piece challenges the way many assume there is a limitless supply of marine life, and the lack of action as a response of scientific research.