DESIGNWIRE

edited by Annie Block

To honor Black History Month, we’ve devoted this section to exhibitions and projects by Black artists and designers

crowning glory

“For me,the pandemic was initially a time for introspection and rest, and then quickly picked up when the 2020 uprisings began,” Ethiopian-American artist Helina Metaferia recalls. Picked up indeed. She and her work, a hybrid of mediums that centers women of color as protagonists and explores how generational traumas inform present-day experiences, have taken major cities by storm. Last summer, two of her large-scale murals emblazoned buildings in Brooklyn and the Bronx. “Generations,” her solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opened in November. This spring, “All Put Together” bows at Praise Shadows Art Gallery nearby; it’s a continuation of

Metaferia’s By Way of Revolution series, focusing on the overlooked yet vital role of Black female activism. The exhibit consists of text-based installation, video, live performance, and collage, the latter featuring such portraits as Black Lives Matter’s Megan

Castillo and Resistance

Revival Chorus’s Zakiyah Ansari with “crowns” made from Black Panther newspaper archives, the women essentially wearing their histories on their heads. “I’m hoping,” adds Metaferia, who’s also an assistant professor in Brown University’s visual art department, “this work can document more than a moment.”

From left: Helina Metaferia’s Headdress 32, a 6 ¼-foot-tall mixed media collage, is one of six in “All Put Together,” her exhibition at Praise Shadows Art Gallery in Brookline, Massachusetts, March 18 to April 17. The interdisciplinary artist in her New York studio at Silver Art Projects, where she’s in residency.

From top: Wallcovering patterns informed by Nigerian parables, Yoruba culture, and West African fabrics surround Blue Rider, the café designed by Yinka Ilori at Superblue in Miami. The eatery and gallery names are derived from Der Blaue Reiter, or the Blue Rider, the early 20th–century art movement. Ilori sits among his stackable plywood Square Stools, which are available at yinkailori.com.

joy to the world

Yinka Ilori splashedonto the design scene about a decade ago with found chairs he transformed into vivid objects that fused his Nigerian roots and London upbringing. Cut to today and one of those chairs, Iya Ati Omo, which means mother and child, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection and on display in its Afrofuturist period room. Also, Ilori’s cannon has expanded beyond furniture design. “What I want to do now is create memorable moments in public spaces that are inclusive,” he says, “and that tell traditional Nigerian folklore stories, ones that celebrate happiness and joy, positivity and hope.” His permanent installation at Blue Rider, the café at immersive art gallery Superblue that debuted during Design Miami in December, does that in spades. Walls boast a kaleidoscope pattern inspired by the West African fabrics that surrounded Ilori as a child. Stools in a tropical palette are lightweight so guests can rearrange them to sit together. And a banner proclaims: “As long we have each other we’ll be ok.” He’s currently working on a community project aimed at the younger set: activating a stretch of land in Becontree, U.K., once inhabited by flamingos into a playground for local school children.

Clockwise from left: Shantell Martin wears the Search and Rescue Oversize Sherpa, part of The North Face x Shantell Martin collection, as she creates an original work on wood for the campaign’s photo shoot in Upstate New York. The Search and Rescue Wind jacket and Ripstop Wind pant. The Base Camp duffel. Martin’s canvas backdrop for Kites, the ballet she’s designing, choreographing, and being performed at the Boston Opera House March 3-13.

design wire

next steps

Last we wrote about Shantell Martin, she had covered the interior and exterior of an abandoned Governors Island chapel in her signature black-and-white graffitilike drawings, a commissioned public-art installation in New York. In the two years since, Martin’s work has been prolific. Among highlights is The

North Face x Shantell Martin collection, in which select pieces from the brand’s archival Search and Rescue line are patterned in a print made specifically for the collaboration. “It’s about climbing— challenging and expressing yourself in life,” Martin says. Expression is central to an upcoming project, too: her firstever ballet. ForKites, performed by the

Boston Ballet this March, the artist has conceived not just the set design but also the choreography and costumes. “I’ve spent the last couple of years,” Martin adds, “learning how to apply mylines to movement.” Brava!