14 DESIGNERS NAMED TO DORCHESTER INDUSTRIES DESIGN LAB

Sarah Lewis, Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies at Harvard University; Dr. Louise Bernard, director of the Obama Presidential Library Museum; and Kimberly Drew, Associate Director at Pace Gallery, joined Theaster Gates for a conversation about design and the arts.
Sarah Lewis, Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies at Harvard University; Dr. Louise Bernard, director of the Obama Presidential Library Museum; and Kimberly Drew, Associate Director at Pace Gallery, joined Theaster Gates for a conversation about design and the arts.

 14 designers named to Dorchester Industries Design Lab

BY TIA CAROL JONES
Theaster Gates, the world-renowned artist behind Theaster
Gates Studio, Dorchester Industries and Rebuild Foundation, and
Prada Group announced the 14 members of the inaugural cohort
for the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab.

The three-year program is meant to amplify the work of
creatives of color from different industries. The 14 people in the
inaugural cohort are artists in fashion design, architecture, product
design, dance, visual arts, culinary arts, fine art and design, agriculture,
graphic design and find jewelry design. Seven out of the
14 artists are from Chicago -- Norman Teague, Kendall Reynolds,
Damarr Brown, Maya Bird-Murphy, Brandon Breaux, Summer
Coleman and Catherine Sarr. The other artists are from London,
Miami, Niger, New York and Los Angeles -- Tolu Coker, Germane
Barnes, Mariam Issoufou Kamara, Kyle Abraham, Yemi
Amu, Salome Asega and Kenturah Davis.

Gates started thinking about the project a year and a half ago,
when he became a part of Prada’s diversity and inclusion team.
Prada was trying to find ways to manage and deal with issues
around diversity and inclusion. Part of that work was internal
work to ensure the team understands how race works around the
world, and the politics of racial representation. The project Gates
proposed was a cohort of great talent that would get to know each
other and be able to support each other. The goal is for the cohort
to be “more amplified, more networked and more cashed.”

The artists were chosen by Miuccia Prada, Prada S.p.A.
Co-CEO and Prada Creative Director; Ava DuVernay, writer and
director; Sir David Adjaye, architect; and late designer Virgil
Abloh, along with other dignitaries. There were 200 nominations
and from that, 14 were chosen.

“Prada has been an amazing ally to me,” said Gates. “In
some ways the arts and the fashion world are coming together.”
At the event on Tuesday, April 5, at Stony Island Arts Bank,
there was a conversation about design and the arts. Sarah Lewis,
Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture and
African and African American Studies at Harvard University; Dr.
Louise Bernard, director of the Obama Presidential Library Museum;
and Kimberly Drew, Associate Director at Pace Gallery,
joined Gates for the conversation.

Gates talked about the Design Lab is a way to acknowledge
designers, not just in the fashion space or art space, but to expand
the definition of designer.

“For me, I know there are moments when my friends are
solving life problems and they’re doing it in beautiful ways. And,
they may not call themselves designers, but there’s this world that
has a platform, that has resources, it has a way of moving things
that if they were connected, and their ideas and very intentions
were connected to that world, they would find themselves, not
just making like ‘ I carve knives on the side as a hobby,’ they
might find themselves carving knives all the time or they might
have a subsequent new revenue stream,” Gates said.

It led him to think about how to intentionally create a broad
bandwith for understanding the word, designer, and then ask how
someone like a choreographer can be considered a designer and
offer the world something that can help solve its problems.

Bernard said the idea of interdisciplinarity was natural to the
idea of experimental and that led to a range of designers in the cohort.
Gates believes that design is a byproduct of creative people
being together and experimenting.

“We’re sometimes just solving life problems. And, I think
because Black people and this work … because we can’t always
buy the thing we want so it’s like, ‘let’s just build this addition
onto the house,” Gates said. “In a way I think, sometimes, poor
people and people of color are more directly connected to their
bodies through the world of design than others who have been
trained to think about design

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