MILAN — Gabriel Hendifar, cofounder of the lighting firm Apparatus, has a talent for creating drama and emotion with his designs.
That talent has boosted his business, culminating in the firm’s first international opening in London in 2023. He’s now preparing to open in Miami in February, he said in an interview on Friday.
Hendifar said the firm is putting the finishing touches on a new showroom in the heart of the city, where the arts and design scenes are booming.
“We’ve got a lot cooking. Miami’s another great market for us and it’s another place with a really beautifully, deeply ingrained community of artists and musicians. And sometimes you just need a little heat.”
The former student of theater costume and scenic design at UCLA and fashion veteran is also gearing up to exhibit his first collection in five years at his Mayfair, London showroom.
Named “Act V: Afsaneh,” it will be exhibited in London on Tuesday. Through lighting and objects, he tells a tale of resilience, particularly the story of his family’s journey to the U.S. amid the 1979 Iran Revolution. The collection is rooted in a female perspective, especially Hendifar’s mother, for whom the collection is named. The collection explores the divine feminine, knowledge and the cycles of life through four series: Esfand: The Seed; Gol: The Flower; Rahvi: The Serpent, and Jahaan: The World.
The theater Hendifar projected through this particular act was influenced by his mother’s music. She sings and plays piano, and growing up, she was “the star of our very musical family,” he explained.
“So much of my adult life at Apparatus has been about creating a certain kind of stage. And now really sort of putting her and my own lineage and the musicality in my family and that tradition at the center of this stage feels really fitting. It feels like a really full-circle moment,” he said, adding that he commissioned four family portraits for the London gallery.
“When we opened, one of the things that was very important to me was a sense of bringing my family with me to that space, because I felt like I had something to prove and I had something to say in terms of Apparatus being on Mount Street and what that meant to the world,” he added.
The new collection combines lacquer, brass, blown and cast glass, fiberglass, bronze and aluminum, with water-formed brass and blown glass tracing the serpent’s movement. The designs from seed, for example, appear in lacquered hues drawn from nature — milk, honey, pomegranate, sky, dusk and night. Water-formed brass and blown glass trace the serpent’s movement, while amulets of tiger’s eye, black onyx, quartz, honey agate, red jasper and lapis lazuli adorn it.
The collection’s story will be told through five short films created with the Martha Graham Dance Company of New York, which celebrates its centennial this year. The films will be released Oct. 22.
Founded in 2012, the firm has risen on the international design scene for its collections that are designed at the headquarters in New York City, and brought to life at a dedicated Brooklyn factory.