about us
groupsports is a Los Angeles based design studio that specializes in playful, tactile objects for interior spaces. Founded by SJ Naim + Annie Render in 2019, we design and create limited edition-based collections as well as custom commission work, with a focus on developing circular practices.
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Material origins and histories inform the meaning of our work. Implementing material and production practices that divest from extractive practices is an ongoing and central thread of research at groupsports. It’s a process! For our swamp collection, we focused on developing strategies that avoid virgin material and divert waste from LA county industrial streams. We work with deadstock or post-manufacturing “waste” (new materials that become remnants in the production process) whenever possible. For this collection, all materials aside from thread and trim are sourced in this way.
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groupsports understand objects as mediums. A medium like the fascia suspending our organs in place, the clairvoyant connecting to a beloved spirit, the ocean articulating the gravitational pull of the moon and sun. As mediums, objects have the opportunity to be conduits- holding, enunciating, and expressing- our embodied relationship to ourselves, to others, and to our environment. This, the relational possibilities of objects, is groupsports’ site of research.
Play is an important form of research for us, alongside rhizomatic inquiries into biopolitical, queer, ecological, and spiritual histories to guide and inform our work. Currently, all work is made by Sj and Annie.
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The theme of -playing, together- is a quick answer. A longer answer is that we arrived at the name during a conversation about art as a kind of social sport. An even longer answer is that this practice came out of a collective longing to make objects that are necessarily and critically experienced by touch. (See contact sports.)
