Brutalist functional art movement

Cristian (Selva) Huygens, an Argentinian artist based in Berlin, is redefining the concepts of functional art and fashion through his unique Brutalist-inspired designs. From repurposed car doors to Lady Gaga’s runway looks, Selva blends raw materials with bold creativity, pioneering the Brutalist Functional Art Movement. On September 19th, Selva Huygens premiered a hybrid art and fashion exhibition, Future Fossils, in Lisbon, Portugal. Curated by Haize, the exhibition opened with a sound installation and a unique performance by Lara Dâmaso. This autumn, the Berlin-based avant-garde fashion brand Selva Huygens will present its first-ever capsule collection, created in partnership with the Lisbon-based art and publishing house Haize. The collection will introduce ready-to-wear pieces that stay true to the brand’s signature aesthetic.

hube: Your use of discarded materials to create functional art is fascinating. What is the most unusual material you’ve repurposed, and what was the story behind it?

Selva Huygens: The most unusual material? That would have to be a car door. A real, heavy metal car door. It was the first piece I developed in this brutalist style. I found it on the street and made a bench out of it – well, more like a bench chair. The story is that it was my first-ever piece, and at that time, no galleries were interested in my work. So one morning, I took the bench to an ATM bank and just placed it there, thinking: ‘I’m going to make my own exhibition’. And then, believe it or not, it got stolen! Someone took it from the ATM. But after that, I actually ended up doing an exhibition at that same ATM.

That was how everything started – showing my work in ATM banks. So that car door bench was definitely one of the most important pieces for me.

h: What inspired you to create the Brutalist Functional Art Movement, and how do you define this concept in your work?

SH: It started when I was figuring out my work. I wanted to bring everything together into one movement. Brutalist architecture was a big influence because I studied architecture, but I wasn’t sure which discipline was mine – furniture design, painting, whatever. So, I mixed it all together, and that’s how the Brutalist Functional Art Movement came about.

It’s about putting Brutalism into every discipline I work with. Right now, it’s fashion – like putting car parts on people. It’s raw, but also functional in a way. That’s the core of the movement.