Shahar Livne's The Devil's Milk furniture exposes rubber's violent colonial legacy

Shahar Livne's furniture collection The Devil's Milk investigates rubber production's history of violence and abuse. Over two years, the designer produced a scale, a cabinet, and a bench from natural latex sourced in Indonesia and synthetic rubber from the film industry. The cabinet incorporates wood from rubber tree bark inlaid with species from Europe, Africa, Indonesia, and South America, symbolizing colonial extraction. The bench, mimicking human skin, challenges Western-centric 'plant blindness' and evokes botanical kinship. A scale alludes to rubber's economic might, which once rivaled precious metals but relied on brutal labor quotas that deformed Indigenous bodies. The project's title references John Tully's book The Devil's Milk. Livne is developing a related publication with curator Yev Kravt and Droog, which hosted a rubber symposium last year.