'Design has been so narrow for so long.' Artist Theaster Gates speaks about his unique partnership with Prada to support emerging designers of color:
As disparate as their practices may seem, the 14 EDL awardees—and Gates—all share a dedication to serving communities of color. Gates made time to speak with Artnet News about teaming up with Prada, what diversity in design actually means, and the creative hub that he is cultivating on Chicago’s South Side.
I think the design field is a much more generous and generative field, where the activity that creatives are involved in could have a different kind of everyday impact on the world, you know? And I’ve found that the only real difference between artists and designers is how, or into which markets, we choose to apply our skill sets.
You’ve been doing this work with Prada since at least 2019, when you became the co-chair of its Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council. How did your partnership firstSo, it’s really grown out of a personal relationship with a very special lady. When I first met Miuccia [Prada], which was at Ronnie Scott’s [Jazz Club in London]—she came to hear the Black Monks in, like, 2012—I didn’t know who she was.
I hope that the Experimental Design Lab becomes both a platform and a pipeline for exceptional designers of color to be acknowledged for their brilliance and considered for opportunities at the top levels of creative collaboration. I hope it opens doors for an entire generation of designers and encourages leading corporations to invest generously in their ideas, their work, and their practices.
You know, Yemi [Amu] is pursuing histories of agriculture within her family, and thinking about the ways in which Black people have been connected to the soil for forever, but also training up young farmers from all backgrounds with her aquaponic farm in Brooklyn. So something that’s very personal becomes a way of engaging others. Then that thing turns into a market, and there’s free food given to community members. It has its own immediate me-we built into it.
I’m eager to see how their approach to their own work is enriched by the encounters they have with their fellow cohort members, design leaders across the artistic industries, and corporations—like Prada—who are committed to investing in the next generation of diverse talent. I’m eager to see what these connections give birth to.
I think that as I was honing my vision and practice, the design world began to take note of the innovative ways that Black artists were challenging what it meant to be a creative person. Our work—informed by underappreciated histories, cultures, and modes of reasoning—interrogated existing systems of representation and unapologetically demanded awareness.
There were people at their homes and, in some cases, in their poverty, or even people like George Washington Carver, in their intelligence and genius, who were attempting to solve life’s everyday problems without the title of “design” adjacent to their names.
The idea that the future needs people who are solving more and more complicated problems is exciting. What I’m hoping for is a mix of people who understand deeply the kind of academic rigors of design and people who also understood at an intuitive level that design is simply the effort of solving problems beautifully.
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