Reverberations: Lineages in Design History was curated by Brian Johnson and Silas Munro with the advice of curatorial advisors Randa Hadi, Lisa Maione, and Ramón Tejada. The exhibition was inspired by BIPOC Design History, a series of courses facilitated by the design studio Polymode.
The exhibition transformed the gallery into an expansive educational space, reimagining design history to feature Indigenous, Black, and People of Color designers and cultural figures. With a dazzling assemblage of historical and contemporary works of art and design by over fifty artists, Reverberations questioned the narrative of design tradition as a single dominant line. Reflecting on rich ancestries that reverberate across epochs, alphabets and graphic languages transmit contours of wisdom across cultures. Multidimensional maps reveal layers of experience and counter colonial flattening and erasures. Visual strategies deployed by Black designers are reinforced as motifs in present-day avant-garde data visualizations. And intricate Indigenous traditions of beadwork and textile art weave ancestral knowledge into the future.
Image submitted: Courtesy of Ford Foundation Gallery. Photo by Sebastian Bach.
