Porky Hefer’s Alarm Call Is Whimsical and Fluffy—But You Have To Look Closer

A cheetah was Porky Hefer’s most recent household companion. He was in Namibia when one baby orphan feline grabbed his attention. “He lived with me for a while—we got along really well and fit together,” says Hefer. The South African designer has indeed been cohabitating with wildlife since growing up in a farm with Table Mountain views outside of Cape Town. In New York, “no bats, no chocolates,” his new exhibition at Galerie56’s TriBeCa space in collaboration with Southern Guild, is a call to make peace with wildlife. “Bats are the carriers of the cocoa seed and they pollinate the agave plant,” he warns of the subject matter, “so without them, we wouldn’t have chocolate or tequila.”

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Each of Hefer’s furniture pieces replicate a different animal with welcoming cartoonish features and plush textures. A playful function is the draw: beaver’s tale moonlights as a leather floor bed while the fat back of a walrus serves as a soft lounge. You can perch inside a giant red furred bat and cover its curtain-like wings for privacy. A bushbaby’s massive eyes offer the perfect size windows to crawl through and lay inside its head. “We have really lost our relationship with the universe and animals,” notes the designer, who runs his Animal Farm creative consultancy through a multimedia approach that includes furniture, architecture, and art. 

Hefner has been living in Arles, France for four years but travels across southern Africa to visit farms and explore the ways animals influence our existence. The view seems rather bleak though: “I have found that 85 percent of wild mammals have disappeared and wild mammals only make up 4 percent of animals on Earth—us humans used to have a very different relationship and harmony with them.” His new works’ lighthearted take on our connection to the animal kingdom is a comforting surface with deep concerns underneath. 

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For the NGV Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in 2020, Hefer created a group of mammoth sea creatures, titled Plastocene, made entirely out of hand-felted wool cigarette butts. Whimsical and fluffy, they lured the viewers with their colorful oddities, but upon closer look, they revealed their toxic nature. “Imagine walking around a beautiful beach and you immediately realize all the rubbish around you,” he says about pairing beauty with the urgent reality.

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In “no bats, no chocolates”, whimsy helps Hefer grab the attention of children before they establish damaging habits towards nature. “I was unaware of the understanding I was building for animals when I was growing up around an ostrich farm or a cattle farm,” he remembers, but those days laid the foundation of his relationship with the animal universe. Softness in touch helps Hefer attract children to engage with his objects. 

His process starts with a silhouette frame in which Hefer replicates the animal and later collaborates with stitchers, welders, and felt and leather craftsmen. Early on, the designer’s nest chairs only focused on the figures’ mouths to carve seating—his hippos and crocodiles for example had massive openings for users to sit. As he sketched around 40 animals over the years, he started working through their various body parts for potential spots of function. He learned, for example, that beavers have orange front teeth due to high content of iron; his two beaver couches, titled Kevin and Maria, have appropriately-colored big leather front teeth. The giant ladybug chair which Hefer built out of leather, sheepskin, steel and timber operates like a mini one-person car. The title My first beetle celebrates not only the very first bug furniture the designer has created but also salutes his first car, a red Beetle that Hefer had cut the roof off to fit in oil drums. 

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A former career in advertising taught Hefer to be “soulful” with his intentions in his current practice: “I broke off from that world but I still know you cannot just make something—you have to know your story and plan how to engage with your audience,” he reflects. Perhaps, the most enduring influence today is the childhood he spent roaming the farms around the Mother City. “I would disappear on Fridays to build my own home and come back on Sunday evenings,” he muses. “It was about living in harmony with nature, almost a survival thing.” 

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"Porky Hefer: no bats, no chocolates" is on view until August 26, 2024 at Galerie56 at 240 Church St, New York, NY 10013.