Stools | Wood

Hubcaps ^{A critical analysis}

Materials:

Clay, Plaster,
Gelatine, Chocolate

Took place in:

Eindhoven,
The Netherlands

Date of completion:

January, 2026

Manifesto

This project proposes a critical analysis of automobile manufacturers' lack of responsibility regarding the loss and afterlife of wheel hub caps. While hub caps are legally the property of the buyer once a vehicle is purchased, they exist in a curious grey zone: objects designed to detach, disappear, and be replaced without consequence.

Through 4 material translations, the hub cap shifts from functional component to a carrier of meaning. It becomes a record of movement, loss, and disregard-a quiet witness to the systems that produced and abandoned it.

Process

Analysis

The city of Eindhoven was ridden through with the aim of scavanging lost wheel hub caps.

Each of the found objects were assigned to the archive.

Each critical lens was assigned with a material and vice versa.

Materials

Plaster

Plaster speaks to fragility and ornamentation. By capturing imprints of the environment-cracks, textures, impressions-it retrames the hub cap as a relic. Plaster preserves damage, elevating the object from utility ) artitact,

Gelantine

Responds to environmental contact.
Sensitive to heat and touch, it dissolves and melts, mirroring how industrial objects slowly disintegrate into the environment. This material emphasizes pollution not as an instant catastrophe, but as a gradual, almost invisible process.

Clay

Clay functions as an ode to the manufacturer. Before cars exist as polished commodities, they are sculpted in clay-malleable, revisable, and idealized.

Recasting hub caps in clay gestures back to this origin point - tradition of car model making in clay.

Chocolate

Represents an attempt at return. It symbolically "brings the hub cap back home" to the manufacturer, while introducing perishability and desire. Chocolate evokes consumption, indulgence, and decay, questioning whether return is possible or merely performative.

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