French Algerian artist and designer Léa Mestres, 33, makes naive, whimsical furniture – think donut-shaped tables and bulbous benches – that’s inspired by designers including Wendell Castle, Kenzo Takada and Gaetano Pesce, and sculptors such as Kathleen Ryan, as well as her childhood growing up in Paris watching Looney Tunes, Wallace and Gromit and Missy Elliott videos. But she’s increasingly becoming known for her floor and table lamps – sculptural creations with exaggerated proportions (sometimes towering more than two metres in height) often rendered in acid-bright colours. “I like working with lamps – I use them as a pretext to apply my ideas to them,” she says. “They can be any size I want, gigantic or tiny, but they give an energy to the room.”
Mestres gravitated to the arts after struggling at school. “I wasn’t very focused. I was happier making things in my bedroom or having fun with my friends,” she recalls. She went on to study design at Ésad in Reims, France, and later, contextual design at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, where she would come to a revelation: “I learnt that you could make furniture like an art piece.”
