Sophia Taillet
Artist and designer
May-June 2026
- Craft & Design
- New York
“Like Steve Reich’s City Life, I explore the city as a score composed of fragments, fleeting gestures, worn materials, reflections, and sounds — a design in motion, responsive to urban dynamics.”
As an artist-designer, my work is woven at the intersection of gesture, material, and movement, in a fundamentally transversal approach. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and trained at the School of Visual Arts in New York, I have spent several years navigating forms, materials, and gestures, crafting narratives where design engages in dialogue with craftsmanship, and the body with space.
My practice is in constant motion: I immerse myself in workshops, observing the gestures and rhythms of skilled craft. Blown glass and metal become materials of tension, almost choreographic, through which I read stories of transformation.
I aim to reveal the gestural memory embedded in materials, the slowness of processes, and the ways in which matter interacts with the body and its environment. Each object is, for me, an active fragment, a threshold between use and perception — a form in the process of becoming. In this research, I collaborate with artisans, dancers, and composers, exploring the zones of friction between disciplines to construct a sensitive language, where design becomes experience and gesture becomes space.
Sophia Taillet is a French artist-designer, graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and trained at the School of Visual Arts in New York. At the intersection of art, design, and craft, she explores material, gesture, and movement. She creates objects and installations that weave connections between design, craftsmanship, and choreography. Her work has been presented at the Palais de Tokyo, the Fondation Ricard, and the Versailles Architecture Biennale. Her lighting piece Vénus, designed for the gallery 13 Desserts, has been acquired by the Mobilier National. A recipient of the Mondes Nouveaux program, she develops transdisciplinary research where material, sonic, and bodily dimensions converge. Her installation Spinning Around will be unveiled at the Musée de la Chasse during Paris Design Week 2025, and will be adapted into an exclusive collection for the Grand Palais boutique.
This project continues research I have been pursuing for several years on movement as a vector of creation. I am interested in the invisible dynamics that traverse the city: flows, everyday gestures, fractured temporalities.
My recent projects — Time Erosion (Fondation Ricard) and Spinning Around (Musée de la Chasse), in collaboration with a dancer — examine the relationships between form, gesture, and environment through circularity, repetition, and the slow metamorphosis of materials. This work marks a new stage in my practice, where space becomes the stage for choreographic, sensory, and poetic design.
The residency in New York continues this research, situating it on another scale: urban, rhythmic, and symbolic — at the intersection of the city’s visual and physical dynamics. Like Steve Reich’s City Life, which composes an orchestral language from the sounds of the city, I aim to compose a plastic grammar from its visual and gestural signals.
The process begins with a phase of visual archaeology, composed of fragments, fleeting gestures, worn materials, reflections, and sounds. All of these elements will form a sensory vocabulary from which choreographic objects will emerge. Between speculative fiction and functional design, between the performative and the plastic, these objects will serve as mediators of a poetic reading of urban life.
City in Motion is a situated, contextual project. How can design slow down, reveal, amplify? Can it translate an urban landscape?
New York is a territory of flows, tensions, and saturations. An urban ecosystem where gesture, material, and rhythm are everywhere, in the visible as well as the infra-sensible.
It is within this shifting terrain that I wish to anchor my research.
I aim to explore the relationship between the perception of movement in design and the singular dynamics of New York City. I perceive a strong connection between the flow of moving objects and the city’s vibrant, ever-changing rhythm.
The city also carries a valuable tradition of breaking boundaries between art, design, craft, and performance — a fertile ground for thinking about a practice at the intersection of disciplines.
This project does not seek to represent the city, but to translate it: to translate its tensions, its breaths, its histories into living objects. A design of movement, sensibility, and rhythm.
In partnership with
13desserts gallery
Bettencourt Schueller Foundation
Bettencourt Schueller Foundation strives to embody the will of a family, driven by the spirit of enterprise and awareness of its social role, to reveal talents and help them thrive, in three fields that contribute concretely to the common good: life sciences, the arts and solidarity. Both a family foundation and recognized as a public utility since its creation in 1987, the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation intends to give wings to talent to contribute to the success and influence of France.
WantedDesign
About WantedDesign:
Founded in 2011 in New York City by French New Yorkers Odile Hainaut and Claire Pijoulat, WantedDesign has evolved into a dynamic connector and amplifier for global design, fostering creative synergy and serving as a pivotal crossroad for the international design community. Following an important transformation for these past years, the multi-generational, women-led company now includes Colombian partner Daniela Giraldo Hinestroza and will continue to build on its foundation of community, education, and curation. Through its diverse array of programs- including residencies, workshops, immersion trips, and a membership program- WantedDesign connects designers at every stage of their career with key players of the industry across the Americas and Europe. Claire and Odile, based in New York, have also taken on the role of Brand Directors for ICFF since 2023. Daniela continues to lead from her hometown of Medellín, Colombia.
WantedDesign’s legacy includes the successful WANTED (previously known as the WantedDesign Manhattan), acquired by Emerald Expositions in 2019 to become a section within the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. Co-founders, Odile and Claire, stepped into their role as brand directors of ICFF in 2023 and will continue to do lead the show in 2024. WantedDesign will continue to support the WANTED section at ICFF to spotlight outstanding emerging design.
About WantedDesign’s Residency Program:
Presented in partnership with Industry City, the WantedDesign Residency program in New York offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for international creatives to immerse themselves in the city’s vibrant design scene. With the support of international cultural organizations, this tailored immersion allows residents to explore, research, network and gain a deeper understanding of the US market and of its opportunities.
Verrecchia Foundation
Formae
The steidz
Paris Design Week