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Design

Body-Shaped Suitcases Marry Art and Luggage

Try getting Wei Li's leather luggage through airport security.
Wei Li's Encased suitcase collection. Images courtesy the artist

For San Francisco-based artist and designer Wei Li, the challenge of maximizing the "energy and sensuality" of the human figure provided the inspiration for Encased, a collection of suitcases that combine leather craft, 3D scanning, and CNC machining to make it look like there's a body trapped inside your bag.

"I wish to capture the body, and its poetry,” says Li, the creative lead behind studio Bold or Italic. The result is a three-piece collection in red, black, and blue, that feature impressions of a pair of legs, a curled back, and a woman's chest, respectively, and feature scanned versions of Li's own hands as their zippers. In "a poetic yet slightly disturbing way," the pieces succeed at Li's goal of capturing "the energy and tension at that specific moment, and recreating the emotions and sensations from that moment." All we're left wondering is: how does she get these things through airport security?

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Encased from Pier 9 on Vimeo.

Wei Li is currently an artist in residence at Pier 9 workshop in San Francisco. Click here to learn more about Encased.

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