About this Event
Join Charlene Prempeh, founder of A Vibe Called Tech, to celebrate her debut, which documents a century of Black design history. In conversation with artist Tavares Strachan, followed by a signing.
Now You See Me! celebrates dozens of innovative yet little-known Black graphic artists, architects, and fashion designers. Strachan’s artistic practice has long elevated overlooked Black figures who have shaped our culture. Together, Prempeh and Strachan will examine how Black pioneers can be given their due in real time.
PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
Can't attend? (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).
Previously marginalized, overlooked, or even erased from history, Black designers are finally given their due in this first book to celebrate a century of ground-breaking work by Black graphic artists, architects and fashion designers whose work has helped define key cultural moments and movements.
You've seen their work--but have you seen them? Black designers have been working in every major industry but, for the past decades, have not been given the spotlight anywhere near to the extent of their white counterparts. This vibrant and wide-ranging book, full of photographs and illustrations, aims to correct that oversight, bringing a century of Black designers and their work into focus.
Organized into three sections focusing on Fashion, Architecture and Graphic Design, Prempeh uses the pioneering work of key figures from the 20th and 21st century to explore important aspects of how Black design has been perceived within culture and society.
From the necessity of the side-hustle, to interrogating the value placed on Black design, from reclaiming traditions, to exploring how design can be a form of protest, this book brings to the fore the stories of figures such as Ann Lowe, Dapper Dan, Norma Sklarek, Francis Kéré, Emory Douglas and Liz Montague to unpick the complexities of being a Black designer.
Charlene Prempeh is the founder of A Vibe Called Tech, a Black-owned creative agency that is dedicated to approaching creativity through an intersectional lens. Charlene is also a Financial Times HTSI columnist and contributing editor who writes about design, travel, and culture.
After studying PPE at Oxford University, she began a career in marketing and worked at some of the UK’s most prominent media platforms and art institutions including the BBC, The Guardian, and Frieze. More recently, she launched A Vibe Called Tech to encourage a culturally diverse lens in design, technology, arts, and culture by spearheading partnerships, events, research, and workshops across London and through her journalism and consultancy work.
Since its establishment in 2018, A Vibe Called Tech has worked with brands including Gucci, Stine Goya, Faber, Frieze and institutions like Whitechapel Gallery, White Cube, RA and V&A East to deliver ambitious creative output that nourishes communities. In 2022, the agency launched Turned A, a cultural merchandising project which seeks to amplify key messages of the creative agency’s projects and its Art Consultancy arm, established to help clients connect seamlessly with artists.
Charlene currently consults for the Royal Academy of Arts on partnerships and development, is on the editorial board of the Tate Magazine, a Dezeen Awards 2022 judge and is Chair of the Frieze 91 committee.
Charlene’s debut book, Now You See Me: 100 Years of Black Design, was published in October 2023.
Photo by Brooke DiDonato
Tavares Strachan’s artistic practice activates the intersections of art, science, and politics, offering uniquely synthesized points of view on the cultural dynamics of scientific knowledge. Aeronautics, astronomy, deep-sea exploration, and extreme climatology are but some of the thematic arenas out of which Strachan creates monumental allegories that tell of cultural displacement, human aspiration, and mortal limitation. His text-based neon sculptures are an anthem for our political and cultural moment, and his lexicon an effort to mobilize community and societal change. Strachan’s ambitious, open-ended practice has included collaborations with numerous organizations and institutions across the disciplines.
Strachan was born in 1979 in Nassau, Bahamas, and currently lives and works between New York City and Nassau. He received a BFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003 and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2006.
Strachan’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions including You Belong Here, Prospect 3. Biennial, New Orleans; The Immeasurable Daydream, Biennale de Lyon, Lyon; Polar Eclipse, The Bahamas National Pavilion 55th Venice Biennale, Venice; Seen/Unseen, Undisclosed Exhibition, New York; Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home Again, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; among others. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2022), Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute (2019-2020), Frontier Art Prize (2018), and the Allen Institute’s inaugural artist-in-residence (2018), LACMA Art + Technology Lab Artist Grant (2014), Tiffany Foundation Grant (2008), Grand Arts Residency Fellowship (2007), and the Alice B. Kimball Fellowship (2006).
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 0.00
