A red lacquered stainless steel hat with Mickey Mouse polished ears, adorned with jute fringes and a turquoise funnel, crowns an opaque terracotta body: Ô-Cult by Richard Yasmine is an enigmatic container for water.

An eclectic object that takes on the appearance of a fetish, Ô-Cult is made up of the assembly of different elements, each of which playfully blinks at different iconologies, distant from each other in space and time. A bit pop like Memphis, a bit rough in the use of terracotta and jute, its rings and spouts are repeated obsessively, almost like in a tribal decoration. As water adapts to what it contains, each element of Ô-Cult takes on a different function depending on its position.

Yasmine’s project was designed for "The Shapes of Water", an exhibition curated by Triennale di Milano and commissioned by the Italian ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. At a time when water is becoming an increasingly precious good, the two institutions have collaborated on this exhibition project, focusing on social and product design and covering the various uses of water.