‘Reverberations’ reframes narratives of BIPOC design history from a pluriversal lens

Design, like culture, can never stand to be neutral—it often upholds existing power structures or dares to disrupt them. Reverberations: Lineages in Design History, the group exhibition at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York, makes this tension its central premise. The exhibition offers an educational space reimagining narratives of design traditions, with Indigenous, Black and POC voices as central to its history. From provocative displays of visual and spatial installations to interactive augmented reality experiences imagining a more equitable future, Reverberations is on view at the gallery from March 4 – May 3, 2025.

The exhibition literature echoes a succinct theme in revealing the function of design as a force that shapes not merely objects and spaces but also the social and cultural realities we inhabit, as well as a tool for envisioning more inclusive futures. Curated by Brian Johnson and Silas Munro with curatorial advisers Randa Hadi, Lisa Maione and Ramon Tejada, the exhibition presents an assemblage of historical and contemporary works by over 50 designers and artists. Diverse forms of design, from maps, graphic languages, Indigenous textile art to 3D printed ceramic vessels, evince ways of communicating ideas about community and of carrying collective memory and identity through design.

“Reverberations counters the narrative of design traditions as a single dominant line and seeks to undo erasures by reconnecting and rippling out to those who have been silenced, misrepresented, and miscategorised,” states the official press release. Apropos that, Christina Sharpe's In the Wake: On Blackness and Being from 2016 considers memory as “an act of resistance”; in that, documenting and acknowledging Indigenous agency becomes the final feat to challenging their erasure and to move towards decolonising design. The exhibition space thus becomes a site of remembrance and rebuilding narratives of Indigenous design.

Inspired by the ‘BIPOC Design History’ series of courses by Polymode, a design studio founded by the curators, the design exhibition traces these ‘reverberations’ in design over centuries and landscapes. Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson’s maquette—Because Once You Enter My House, It Becomes Our House (2020), for instance—is evocative of the communal spirit and resilience of the Turtle Island communities, bearing activist slogans, “The Future Is Present”. Paying homage to the earthen architecture of the Mississippian city of Cahokia, the sculpture’s title comes from a 1986 house song Can You Feel It by Mr. Fingers (Larry Heard), mirroring the inclusive spirit of nightclubs as a safe space for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC patrons. Another entangled history is made legible through the Navajo Dye Chart by Ella Myers, which spotlights the intrinsic relationship between textile art and the cultural role of the knowledge of place and ecology. This visual archive features Navajo textiles, coloured using 40 plants and vegetables, preserving a connection to ancestry that reverberates across generations.

Many of the works are made from or directly inspired by natural materials, focusing on humanity’s need to understand our environment and planet, as well as living within its means through symbiosis. – Brian Johnson and Silas Munro

By indicating Indigenous land as holistic—one of healing and deep historical continuity— not merely an abiotic channel for building, as is often proliferated by the West, the exhibition establishes an interconnected sense of responsibility with land to bring forth its multivocal histories. This undertaking of mirroring a fast disappearing tradition is also evidenced in the Bark Cloth Painting of the Mbuti People, overlaying asymmetrical geometric patterns, lines and dots. Traditionally painted by women to carry stories of the Ituri Rainforest, a dense ecosystem in the Democratic Republic of Congo, these paintings are not only an acknowledgement of the land and its resources, but also a close binding of nature and culture. Furthermore, Māori artist Hone Bailey’s woven panels, Tukutuku, reflect Māori traditions. Symbolic patterning, vibrant colours and materials underline the unique textile-making techniques and cultivation practices of Māori weaving and culture.

These design installations and displays point to acts of consciously shaping alternate realities and plural ways of existing in and as resistance. Resistance, thus, resurfaces as a central theme of the exhibition, which works to constantly dismantle and reframe notions of freedom as conveyed through the works on view. “To reverberate is our sonic metaphor for the passing on of lineages—outward and onward—for designs with a history of erasure or being sidelined from mainstream design and art discourses. These artisans, makers and their works have been deemed marginalised by academia and ‘professional’ practice. Still, they are, in fact, designers and not just artefacts of crafts,” the curators share in an exclusive conversation with STIR. Additionally, to combat present and ongoing oppression and ingrained colonial processes, collaborations with Indigenous people become vital to the processes, outcomes and protocols of design. They inform, “The focus of the exhibition is [BIPOC] design that has been quieted by colonisation, obstructed by capitalism and deemed ‘ethnographic’,” exploring themes of “mapping, futuring, communicating and storytelling”.

The juxtaposition of these works with multimedia artist and designer Munirah AlShami’s wool textiles underscores the resonance of form and material. The Kuwait-based designer’s exploration of identity as a woven tapestry, interlaced with rich cultural lineages, champions female kinship and the communal process of textile production. Historically, textiles and crafts have long been overlooked across the high art canon, often dismissed because of their links to Indigenous cultural traditions, domesticity or, more alarmingly, to women. These textile designs reveal different experiences of love, remembrance and familiarity of different communities across marginalised landscapes, demonstrating that the products of weaving, knitting or carving (Melissa Cody’s large-scale wool tapestry, Ziddi Msangi’s My Strength Is My Blood /Nguvu yangu iko katika damu yangu (2021), Nathan P. Jackson’s Raven Mask (1971) and the Lukasa Memory Board used by the Luba People) are not merely unassuming domestic decorations of crafts relegated to hobbies, affirming how “complex, multisensory systems of data mapping carry collective memory, relationships and history across generations,” as manifested in the Lukasa. They tell stories of local and global historical processes and serve as quiet acts of defiance, withstanding oppression across generations. This practice challenges and, in turn, subverts the gendered nature of traditional crafts, forging a new visual language of dissent across mediums.

Shapes, forms or patterns symbolise larger themes, allowing for lessons and stories to be taught in broad strokes, not relegated to ownership, authorship or specifics. It can be seen in Congress, especially with weaving/woven pieces throughout the show. – Brian Johnson and Silas Munro

In his book, Designs for the Pluriverse (2018), Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar also advocates a similar radical shift in perspective, reimaging design as a site of political intervention. In light of the latent environmental crisis, he offers that by considering design through the frameworks of feminism, queer theory, diasporic experiences and counter-colonial critique, we can nurture more plural and autonomous practices of world-building. This thought resounds across billboard vinyl by Alisha B. Wormsley and Anna Tsouhlarakis. Pittsburgh-based Wormsley’s ongoing project, There are Black People in the Future (2012-), takes inspiration from ‘afro-futurist artists and writers who highlight the need for Black people to claim their place’. Congruently, Tsouhlarakis’ inscription, ‘I REALLY LIKE THE WAY YOU RESPECT NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS’, addresses institutional oppression against Native Americans. The interdisciplinary artist's The Native Guide Project (2019-) features large-scale text that redefines representations of Native art, with some activations reading, ‘I’M GLAD YOU RECOGNIZE THAT BEING NATIVE AMERICAN IS MORE THAN A DNA TEST’ and ‘UNFORTUNATELY, YOU CAN’T SMUDGE OFF YOUR COLONIZER VIBES’. These works suggest a collective and individualistic self-imposed indifference of native identities across the United States.

In introducing a landscape of multiplicity and plurality, the exhibition also finds grounding in avant-garde data visualisations. For instance, Black Migration ½ (2025) anchors itself in sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois’ research on the lives of Black communities in America in the early 20th century. The infographic by artist William Villalongo and data scientist Shraddha Ramani maps forced Black migration to the U.S. from Africa. This futuristic experimentation can also be observed in the posters of Japanese graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo. His layered compositions feature surreal imagery, bold typography, even cosmic motifs, characterised by themes of death and rebirth.

Another work on display that deconstructs academia and questions the possibility of generating knowledge in design under an anti-colonial lens is the conceptual project Some Writers Can Give You Two Heartbeats (2019). The book design explores the past and future of Zimbabwean literature by presenting reflections from 150 writers, editors, academics and publishers. Edited by Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Tinashe Mushakavanhu, it resolves to foster transhistorical dialogue with diverse visual and typographic strategies.

Foregrounding the power of community-driven media, filmmaker Lívia Perez’s documentary Lampião da Esquina, Lighting up the Brazilian Press (2016), is also screened as part of the exhibition. Through archival footage and interviews, the documentary traces the legacy of the first Brazilian newspaper created for an LGBTQ+ readership. The exhibition further explores ways of conveying layered cultural and political stories across contemporary contexts—from Lebanese-Egyptian multidisciplinary artist and designer Bahia Shehab’s 2010 graffiti design, A Thousand Times No, to an infographic by the exhibition curators and designer Ben Warner titled GAYS, QUEERS, FAGS, DYKES, SISSIES, AND ABSTRACT ART (2020). While the former intertwines calligraphy designs with traditional Arabic and Islamic scripts to underscore an undeterred continuity of resistance, the latter underlines the “interconnections that resist erasures and violence”. Collectively, these demonstrate that resistance is not monolithic but intersectional.

The curators' pluriversal approach to design histories thus centres on platforming topographic voices, narratives and ephemera, memorialising BIPOC histories and figures across creative disciplines. Curators Brian Johnson and Silas Munro speak to STIR about this approach, the exhibition at large and the multivocal histories within the visual cultures of Indigenous peoples.

Asmita Singh: Could you delve into the curation process and elaborate on any challenges in presenting individual artistic voices while highlighting shared lineages?

Brian Johnson and Silas Munro: The gift of a deep, decades-long professional relationship and a friendship founded on 25 years of laughter and love allows the two of us to understand, anticipate and accommodate the other. Our values for uplifting marginalised voices, listening, sharing and supporting others are key tenets of BIPOC Design History and Polymode. We placed consideration, contemplation and collaboration at the centre of the show; it’s not ‘The Brian and Silas show’. We had sets of works, thoughts and chords that we then asked our curatorial advisors to consider and weigh in on. They offered additional perspectives, opinions and pushbacks that helped increase the impact.

Our biggest challenge was time. We had under five months to pull this show together, but we knew what we wanted: a maximalist, salon-style show that allowed the works to take up space (that they deserve) and be in close proximity and dialogue with each other. We delivered our “chonky checklist” just a few weeks after agreeing to the show. It got whittled down to what was available, what could be commissioned in a short time frame, and what we and the artists really wanted to say. During the mapping of the floor plan and the final installation, we still left room for change as well as chance, improvisation and play. Allowing for these uncontrollable possibilities and evolutions really helped the show; it made it stronger and allowed unexpected synchronies and reverberations to happen in real time.

Asmita: Reverberations’ pluriversal approach to exploring forms, symbols and patterns seems rather conscientious. Are there particular design motifs, materials or conceptual frameworks that repeatedly surface across works, revealing shared influences and drawing points of connection?

Brian and Silas: One framework we are pushing against is the relegation of highly designed and nuanced works into the realm of craft. The West deemed so many works of colonised peoples as inferior to denote a sense of otherness in the past, not as sophisticated or civilised. When, in fact, these creations take equivalent and often more time, planning, skill and dexterity than, say, operating a mechanised or industrial process like the printing press. This also dovetails with materials. Many of the works are made from or directly inspired by natural materials, focusing on humanity’s need to understand our environment and planet, as well as living within its means through symbiosis. It often requires a higher level of patience, study and understanding of our surroundings, but also deeper considerations of waste, impact and multipurpose use.

Another theme is the use of graphic or visual languages. Shapes, forms or patterns symbolise larger themes, allowing lessons and stories to be taught in broad strokes, not relegated to ownership, authorship or specifics. It can be seen in Congress, especially with weaving/woven pieces throughout the show. This is another pushback against the extractive European Modernist project that deemed Indigenous knowledge and making as primitive or less than. We see these designs as bottom-up systems that have rich cosmologies that long predate colonial and industrial processes.

Asmita: How do you consider the evolution of graphic languages, styles, methods, motives and motifs—particularly from BIPOC communities—shaping contemporary design? What traces of this lineage influence the visual narratives we see today?

Brian and Silas: The effects of last-stage capitalism, concepts of less is more, simple over complex, market value before human necessity, have seemingly left us devoid of a soul connection. When the purpose of creation is bereft of meaning, profit over people, appropriation and assimilation over appreciation, it leaves makers empty. Taking note of authentic ways of making, creating and sharing gives humanity a sense of awe and community again. It's shaping how we heal and strengthen fractured and struggling communities.

The traces are often fractal, making and studying in and with communities at smaller and more intimate scales, [which] then inform the larger discourse and trends in cultural spheres. Our courses, resources and the works by the designers and artists in the show are generative and generous to historically marginalised designers and audiences, but they also open up possibilities for allies and people of all lineages and backgrounds. They give us time and space to imagine new ways of connecting across different lived experiences and build bridge moments to contemplate our common humanity.

Asmita: The works in Reverberations showcase graphic design’s capacity to imagine alternative futures, translating ancestral knowledge into visual forms. Do you think this exhibition signals a shift in how graphic design engages with heritage and futurism?

Brian and Silas: Building off our last answer, yes, we believe the connections and investigations prompted by Reverberations are fertile seeds for future ways to learn about design and art, to redefine what constitutes classroom and practice, to version other possible outcomes for graphic communication, to broaden definitions of design and give reciprocal access to a wider field of human experience.

Reverberations: Lineages in Design History demonstrates how design, rooted in intimate and local contexts, influences and has always influenced larger cultural narratives. These design expressions are both reflections and catalysts, establishing how collective practices can mend fractures and reimagine representations across design communities in the face of systemic challenges—reiterating the notion of resistance as not a singular act but a dynamic, intersectional force—offering a fluid, pluralistic vision of existence.