Ethiopian American artist and industrial designer Jomo Tariku is defining a new language of modern African design by synthesizing his experience of the continent’s diverse landscape, indigenous cultures, architecture, colors, artifacts, dresses, and hair styles. Jomo’s designs offer a new line of inquiry and experience of modernity while venerating the rich historical palette of Africa. The Nyala, Qwanta and Meedo chairs as well as Watatu Stool series that were used as part of the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever stage design represent his bold approach to design. Jomo’s work is currently in the collection of major museums such as the Met and LACMA, and has been published in many shelter magazines. His data research on the lack of Black designers in the furniture licensing industry has been covered by many publications and is still quoted in various articles. Jomo is one of the co-founders of BADG (Black Artists + Designers Guild) which promotes the work of Black designers globally while addressing lack of representation in the design world.

Michael is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, DC with a degree in anthropology.  He has traveled extensively, in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North and South America as well as several trips to the arctic. His travels reflect his interest in the natural world as well as that of other cultural traditions.

He has taught extensively at many of the craft schools in the US a well as Parson School of Design and was an adjunct associate professor at the State University of New York at Purchase for 13 years.

He is a former trustee of the Furniture Society and in 2023 he received the Furniture Society’s Award of Distinction and was elected to the American Craft Council’s College of Fellows. 

Sheila’s professional expertise extends well beyond her thirty-year tenure in interior design, including hosting four seasons of Sheila Bridges: Designer Living on the Fine Living Network– a lifestyle show where she introduced viewers to new locales, design professionals and trends each week. She has also been a regular contributor on NBC’s Today Show, appeared on Oprah and was a contributing editor at MORE Magazine, where each month she showcased her impeccable taste in their home section. Bridges has been featured in numerous publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, House and Garden, Interior Design, Domino, and Traditional Home magazines. 

She has also been included in Gotham and New York Magazine’s Top Interior Designer’s lists, 1stDibs 50 (2021, 2022 and 2023,) House Beautiful’s “Top 100 Interior Designers,” as well as Elle Decor’s A List from 2011-2023, which recognizes interior designers who exemplify continually relevant design. Most recently, Sheila was inducted into Forbes’ 50 Over 50 2023 list, and has been consecutively appointed to Architectural Digest’s AD100 list of esteemed designers and architects from around the globe from 2021 to 2024. Sheila is also the author of two books– Furnishing Forward: A Practical Guide to Furnishing for a Lifetime (released in 2002,) and The Bald Mermaid, A Memoir, published in 2013.

Gail Anderson is a New York-based designer, writer, and educator. She is a partner, with Joe Newton, at Anderson Newton Design.

From 2002 through 2010, she served as Creative Director of Design at SpotCo, a New York City advertising agency that creates artwork for Broadway and institutional theater. From 1987 to early 2002, she worked at Rolling Stone magazine, serving as designer, deputy art director, and finally, as the magazine's senior art director. And early in her career, Gail was a designer at The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and Vintage Books (Random House).

Anderson’s work has received awards from major design organizations, including the Society of Publication Designers, the Type Directors Club, The American Institute of Graphic Arts, The Art Directors Club, Graphis, Communication Arts, and Print. In addition, it has also been included in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Milton Glaser Design Archives at the School of Visual Arts. Anderson has been featured in magazines that include Computer Arts (UK), designNET (Korea), kAk (Russia), STEP Inside Design, and Graphic Design USA. 

Barnes’ award winning research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences black domesticity.

Born in Chicago, IL Germane Barnes received a Bachelor's of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University where he was awarded the Thesis Prize for his project Symbiotic Territories: Architectural Investigations of Race, Identity, and Community.  

Currently he is an Assistant Professor and the Director of The Community Housing & Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University of Miami School of Architecture, a testing ground for the physical and theoretical investigations of architecture’s social and political resiliency. His work has been featured in international institutions most notably, The Museum of Modern Art NY, San Francisco MoMA, LACMA, Chicago Architecture Biennial, MAS Context, The Graham Foundation, The New York Times, Architect Magazine, DesignMIAMI/ Art Basel, Metropolis Magazine, Domus, Wallpaper* Magazine and The National Museum of African American History where he was identified as one of the future designers on the rise. 

Teague is a Chicago based designer and educator focused on projects and pedagogy that address the systematic complexity of urbanism and the culture of communities.  Specializing in custom furniture that delivers a personal touch to a specific user topped unique aesthetic detail.

Teague's past projects have included consumer products, public sculpture, performances, and specially designed retail spaces.  Working with common, locally sourced building materials and local fabricators to create objects and spaces that explore simplicity, honesty, and cleverness and relates to the culture of the client and/or community.

Teague graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and had his first solo show at Blanc Gallery and has worked with them to highlight new emerging artists as well as the community as it is where Teague grew up so the connections were nostalgic to say the least.  

Teague served as lead craftsman and co-founder of the Design Apprenticeship Program at the University of Chicago's Arts Incubator.  His retail ventures have included partnerships with KLEO Residences, Leaders1354, The Silver Room, The Exchange Cafe, DNA STL, Solange Knowles Saint Heron, Chicago Beyond, Hyde Park Art Center, Blanc Gallery, Chicago Park District, and South Shore Chamber of Commerce.

Born in Columbus, Georgia, and now based in the New York City area, Amy Sherald documents contemporary African American experience in the United States through arresting, intimate portraits. Sherald engages with the history of photography and portraiture, inviting viewers to participate in a more complex debate about accepted notions of race and representation, and to situate Black life in American art.

Sherald received her MFA in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art and BA in painting from Clark-Atlanta University. Sherald was the first woman and first African-American to ever receive the grand prize in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., she also received the 2017 Anonymous Was A Woman award and the 2019 Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. In 2018, Sherald was selected by First Lady Michelle Obama to paint her portrait as an official commission for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. Sherald’s work is held in public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Embassy of the United States, Dakar, Senegal; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; and Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC.

Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth 
Photographer: Kelvin Bulluck

Sheldon Scott (b. 1976, Pawley’s Island, SC) mines his experiences growing up in the Gullah/Geechee South and professional background in storytelling to examine the Black male form with particular emphasis on biases of usability and expendability in relation to constructs of race, economics, and sexuality.

Scott’s works have been presented at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; American University Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA and Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC.

The artist’s work is in following museum collections: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA.

Chicago native, Stephen Burks is an industrial designer, product development consultant, and educator whose innovative approach to design synthesizes craft, community, and industry. Independently and through association with various non-profits, he has collaborated with artisans and craftspeople in over ten countries on six continents. His socially engaged practice seeks to broaden the limits of design consciousness by challenging who benefits from and participates in contemporary design.

Stephen and his studio, Stephen Burks Man Made, have been commissioned by many of the world’s leading design-driven brands to develop collections that engage hand production as a strategy for innovation to express a more pluralistic vision of design including BD Barcelona, Cappellini, Dedon, MASS Design Group, Missoni, & Roche Bobois.

He has had solo exhibitions and led curatorial projects at the Studio Museum in Harlem (Stephen Burks Man Made, 2011), the Museum of Art & Design (Stephen Burks, Are You a Hybrid, 2011), and the High Museum of Art (Stephen Burks: Shelter in Place, 2022).

He has been visiting faculty and a strategic consultant to academic institutions around the globe and taught architecture and design at Berea College, Columbia University GSAPP, ECAL, the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture & Design, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Stephen is the only African-American to win the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Product Design and the only industrial designer to be awarded the prestigious Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Andrea Pippins is an illustrator and author who has a passion for creating images that reflect what she wants to see in art, media, and design. Her work has been featured in Essence Magazine, The New York Times, and O: The Oprah Magazine. She has produced artwork for brands such as ESPN, Five Below, Instagram, Sephora, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Malala Fund, Nick Jr., USPS and VH1.

Andrea is the author of: Who Will You Be? a look into the life of little boy and the people in his community who shape who he is; Becoming Me, an interactive journal for young women to color, doodle, and brainstorm their way to a creative life; and We Inspire Me, a collection of essays, interviews, and advice on cultivating and empowering one's own creative community. She also illustrated Young Gifted and Black, Step Into Your Power, and Big Ideas for Young Thinkers.

Andrea is based in Stockholm.

My definition of Mothering as an act of Resistance means to redesign ableist visual culture. The sole intention is to empower and activate change encouraging communities to engage in conversations about acceptance, rooted in how Black Neurodivergent children are valued and seen.

My work explores the erasure of black disabled children in digital and literary media.

The visuals I make using photo and design are my own reflections that amplify conversations with the Disability community. It ignites the continued need to develop anti-racist, anti-ableist media.

Mark Grattan is a multi-disciplinary designer working between New York, Mexico and Brazil. His work is a dialogue between color and texture speaking to upfront inspirations derived from tropical modernism, modern contemporary Italian design and the art deco movement. The studio is currently aligning with made to order collectible furniture, interior architecture, interior design on a full scope and design consulting.

A string of successes has propelled the Pratt Institute-trained designer to the next level, allowing him to both perfect his unabashedly eclectic yet cohesive design aesthetic and evaluate his next moves, but he doesn’t necessarily know what those are.

Mark was raised in Hudson, Ohio and has worked as a highly skilled woodworker for nearly two decades. He is the winner of HBO Max’s Ellen’s Next Great Designer show and is a pioneer and activist for the establishment of black bodies in design. 

Mickalene Thomas was born and raised in New Jersey and lives and works in New York. One of the most influential artists today, her innovative practice has yielded instantly recognizable and widely celebrated aesthetic languages within contemporary visual culture. Not only do her masterful mixed-media paintings, photographs, films and installations command space, they occupy eloquently while dissecting the intersecting complexities of Black and female identity within the Western canon. Outside of her core practice, Thomas is a Tony Awards nominated co-producer, curator, educator and mentor to many emerging artists. While embarking on her own monumental solo shows, she simultaneously curates exhibitions at galleries and museums. Thomas’s work has become an undeniable force within the contemporary art world and an indispensable inspiration to younger generations of artists.

Rachelle Baker is a multi-disciplinary artist from Detroit, MI with a background in Relief Printing (Screenprinting, Lino/Woodcutting), Illustration, Comic Art, Video Art, and Music. She is inspired by Shoujo manga, anime and comics bad girls, stoic women dancing in the backgrounds of late 90's/early 2000's R&B videos, and the sound cats make when they're yawning. She is a Capricorn with a Scorpio moon. Published books include: Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream by Blair Imani from Ten Speed Press, Shirley Chisholm is a Verb by Veronica Chambers from Dial Books/Penguin Random House, Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop by Clover Hope from Abrams Books, and Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds Little, Brown Young Readers.

"As a Photographic Artist, I am interested in the life of those individuals and communities that are often unseen in the world. My objective is to capture images that allow us to experience those who are unheard as they contemplate or voice their reaction to ideas and issues that are shaping their world. In this process, what I shoot creates contemporary stories about social, political and historical context not often seen in the visual communication of traditional media and fine art platforms. My work captures and presents aspects of our culture, and sometimes counterculture, that challenges the typical narratives of Western thought and power structures."

Tré Seals launched his diversity-driven type foundry Vocal Type in 2016. Its typefaces, which honor historical moments like the 1963 March on Washington and the Memphis Sanitation Strike, can be found on Black Lives Matter murals and the Amazon Labor Union logo. Seals has also consulted on typography for Spike Lee, Colin Kaepernick, Stacie Abrams and TIME magazine.

Lorna Simpson received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego. When Lorna Simpson emerged from the graduate program at San Diego in 1985, she was already considered a pioneer of conceptual photography. Feeling a strong need to re-examine and re-define photographic practice for contemporary relevance, Simpson was producing work that engaged the conceptual vocabulary of the time by creating exquisitely crafted documents that are as clean and spare as the closed, cyclic systems of meaning they produce. Her initial body of work alone helped to incite a significant shift in the view of the photographic art’s transience and malleability.