Learning event In conversation
Nue Forms: Reimagining Material Culture
Join a conversation with The New Black Aesthetic exhibition guest curator Charlene Prempeh and designers Mac Collins and Giles Tettey Nartey to explore how memory, material culture, ritual, and diaspora shape contemporary design, chaired by co-curator Tiya Dahyabhai.
Priority booking for members.
General sales open on Monday 24 August 2026.
What happens when memory, ritual and cultural knowledge become material?
Join this conversation to discover how inherited forms become new cultural languages, discuss who gets to shape design history, challenge conventions, and imagine Black futures. We will explore how objects, spaces and acts of making carry histories, and how those histories can be transformed.
Moving beyond the idea of a singular 'Black design' aesthetic, the discussion considers the nuance of diasporic experience and the many ways identity becomes material. From domestic objects and inherited forms to craft, ritual and contemporary spatial practice, designers Mac Collins and Giles Tettey Nartey join the exhibition's guest curator Charlene Prempeh to reflect on how familiar references can be distorted, reimagined and reactivated.
Chaired by co-curator Tiya Dahyabhai, this panel will explore making memory material and designing Black futures, asking who gets to shape design history, how inherited forms become contemporary, and what new visual languages, institutions and archives might emerge from this moment.
This is an unmissable event for designers, architects, makers, creatives, students, educators, curators and anyone engaging with themes of design, decolonisation, race and diaspora.
This conversation is part of the programme of The Nue Black Aesthetic exhibition.
This event is wheelchair accessible, with step-free access throughout the museum.
Speakers
Charlene is the founder of A Vibe Called Tech, a creative agency and art consultancy applying an intersectional lens to design, technology, and culture. A Financial Times HTSI columnist and contributing editor, she previously worked with the BBC, The Guardian, and Frieze. She advises major arts institutions as a trustee, board member, and consultant, and currently curates her first institutional exhibition at the Design Museum, London, in 2026.
Tiya is a curator and maker specialising in contemporary craft. She is the Project Curator of The Nue Black Aesthetic and has contributed to numerous exhibitions at the Design Museum, including the blockbuster Barbie: The Exhibition (2024) and the internationally touring exhibition The Offbeat Sari (2023). A committed advocate for equity in the museum sector, Tiya currently serves on the Crafts Council's Collections Advisory Committee and as Museums Advisor for South Asian Heritage Month.
Giles is a British-Ghanaian artist whose practice spans filmmaking, direction, installation, performance, and object-design, exploring Afro-Atlantic material cultures, craft and ritual. His studio converges architecture, art, and design through making, filming, and curating. Nartey is Associate Professor at UCL’s Bartlett, PhD candidate; he co-leads a Diploma Unit at the Architectural Association and co-directs UCL’s Africa Research Centre. He has exhibited at Frieze Seoul, Triennale Milano, the V&A, Design Museum, and RIBA.
Mac is a British artist working across sculpture and installation, using wood, welded steel, cast aluminium, and glass. His practice moves between domestic objects and ambiguous artefacts, exploring memory, contemporary mythology, and the shifting nature of narratives and recollection. Situated within British-Jamaican social and cultural contexts, his work considers social bridges, fractures, and ritual. Symmetry, ratio, rhythm, and repetition underpin his practice. He also writes, lectures, and gives public talks. Mac is Assistant Professor at Northumbria University and a trustee of Primary, Nottingham.
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Adult: £17
Concession: £14
Members*: £13
Carer: Free
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Related display
Background image: Open Code, 2023, by Mac Collins. Photo: Megan Jepson
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