‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’ maps the diasporic voices shaping design today

There is no single way to be a Black designer, and that thought sits at the heart of ‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’, a major exhibition opening at London’s Design Museum in November 2026. Guest-curated by author and journalist Charlene Prempeh and project curator Tiya Dahyabhai, the exhibition brings together more than 100 objects by 16 contemporary designers, spanning furniture, architecture, tailoring, product design and sculpture.

At its core is the idea that ‘Black design is not a monolith’. The exhibition opens with the question: ‘What does it mean to be a Black designer working today?’ For Prempeh, founder of creative studio and art consultancy A Vibe Called Tech and author of Now You See Me: An Introduction to 100 Years of Black Design, the answer has become more complicated over the years she has spent developing the exhibition.

The designers and their intentions may not have significantly changed, she tells Wallpaper*, though the world in which they are working has. ‘There’s been an erosion of diversity programmes. There’s been a kind of acceptance of, if not racism, then there’s been an acceptance of division. And the practice takes place within that context. And so that’s quite different.’

The exhibition’s title reaches back into history through its references to the Black Aesthetic of the 1960s and the New Black Aesthetic of the 1980s. Prempeh’s ‘Nue’ introduces nuance into the conversation around this particular generation, drawing attention to the individual histories, geographies and ideas behind the work. For Prempeh, the diaspora is central to that thinking.

‘I think the diasporic voice has become stronger and stronger and stronger as part of the Black community over the past ten, 20 years,’ she says. ‘That is an important focus and an important detail because the different countries across Africa, and across the Caribbean have very, very different stories to tell. That’s what’s different about the show. It’s not that these Black designers are different to that generation. It’s that I’m looking at a different type of Black designer.’

The exhibition unfolds across six sections, beginning with the history of Black design before moving through individual practice, community and the wider systems around design. Towards a Nue Black Aesthetic begins with seven decades of Black design and the practitioners and scholarship that have shaped the present, before Identity as Inspiration considers how personal histories and cultural references enter a designer’s work. Among the objects on display is Bianca Saunders’ suit for Usher at the 2023 Met Gala.

Community Building considers design as a means of creating belonging, with Labrum’s Arsenal 2024/25 away kit among the works featured, while Rethinking the System looks at designers challenging established ideas of value, hierarchy and the canon. The final two sections become more personal and contemplative. Black by Design, a new film directed by Samona Olanipekun, follows the featured designers through interviews and studio visits, before Finale, a site-specific commission by Ini Archibong, which brings the exhibition to a close.

Within that wider journey, individual practices reveal the different ways these questions are being approached. Among them is Simone Brewster, whose first museum show, ‘Platform: Simone Brewster’, is also at the Design Museum. For ‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’, she will present new work, placing her practice in conversation with the other designers in the exhibition.

Architect and artist Giles Tettey Nartey will show ‘Strange Notes’, his contemporary take on the balafon, a gourd-resonated xylophone originating in West Africa. The work addresses something Nartey has long been interested in: the way the Western design canon has often treated traditional West African design as though it belongs to the past. ‘Strange Notes’ appears in Rethinking the System, where questions around how design is valued, understood and carried forward come into focus.

The wider group includes Tejumola Adenuga, Taiba Akhuetie, Ini Archibong, Mac Collins, Phoebe Collings-James, Foday Dumbuya, Feben, Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Andu Masebo, Saul Nash, Tosin Oshinowo, Rachel Scott and Samuel Ross. Work by more than 20 additional designers, including Althea McNish and Yinka Ilori, expands the exhibition’s history across the 20th and 21st centuries.

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Deciding who belonged within that conversation was not straightforward. The exhibition focuses primarily on UK designers, or those with a significant connection to the UK, with shared themes helping Prempeh determine its final shape.

‘At its core, I suppose curation is an act of selecting and organising,’ she says. ‘There are tens and tens of other Black designers whose work I both respect and enjoy who aren’t in this exhibition and that’s because I was looking for shared themes.

‘Making those decisions was difficult, but it came down to asking: what are the key themes that these designers can fall under, themes that make sense to visitors and that can help tell a compelling story about Black design today.’

One assumption Prempeh particularly wanted to address was the idea of Black design as ‘crafty’. ‘I’ve always found that quite difficult to swallow,’ she says. ‘So I wanted to show, I suppose, the level of intellectual rigour and complexity in the making that takes place in Black design. I hope this exhibition achieves that.’

It brings the exhibition to a more difficult question around how Black designers are understood once their work is visible. The designers may be brought together through a shared racial identity, but Prempeh is wary of Blackness becoming the endpoint for how their work is read.

‘It’s possible and useful to recognise shared themes within a community, because I think it allows a framework for deeper analysis,’ she says. ‘And the important part is the deeper analysis.

‘What we’re trying to do with the show is understand the details, systems and thinking that have informed individual designers. In the past, it’s been fairly typical to stop at the Black, and that’s very much not what we’re doing here.’

That analysis inevitably raises another question: who has historically been afforded the authority to decide what enters the design canon?

‘When we’re talking about the canon, we’re really discussing museum collections and established literature,’ Prempeh says. ‘It’s obvious who decides what enters those canons, it’s the directors of the museums and it’s the publishing houses. And so as much as I would like to say that all of the work that is done independently on the fringes is enough, I think it’s equally important to make sure that those often marginalised stories become part of these institutions.’

For Prempeh, challenging those structures can happen from inside established institutions or beyond them.

‘They’re gaining entry into these existing spaces and once they’re there, they’re shaping or they’re reshaping what those spaces are or what they can be,’ she says. ‘They’re also moving out of them completely and forming their own structures. I think both are equally important.’

That freedom also applies to the stories Black designers choose to tell about themselves.

‘Black designers now, I hope and feel, can decide when they want to tell stories about their Blackness and they can decide what part of their Blackness they want to talk about and when. And that’s the kind of freedom I think not just Black designers, but all designers deserve.’

She also questions why the responsibility for understanding those practices should continually fall on the designers themselves. When I ask what happens when Black designers no longer have to make themselves legible to predominantly white institutions, Prempeh turns the question around. ‘I think very much the onus is on the institutions to meet Black designers where they are and to make an effort to research and understand the integrity and intention of the Black designers. Because the only people missing out when that doesn’t happen are the institutions and their audiences.

‘Black design and the Black designers, not just in the show but globally, deserve to be seen and presented and understood fully.’

The exhibition closes with a new site-specific commission by Nigerian American designer and Wallpaper* US400 honoree Ini Archibong. ‘Mfon’, meaning ‘grace’ in Nigeria’s Ibibio language, is a vast chandelier made from hand-blown Murano glass and experienced alongside an ambient soundtrack. Its scale gives the different experiences, identities and localities carried through the exhibition room to coexist.

‘I think in terms of my own writing and curatorial practice, it’s always been about a series of questions being proposed as opposed to resolved,’ Prempeh says. ‘I think I want this moment at the end of the exhibition to do that for the visitors, for them to stop and start thinking about what the questions are.

‘I want the visitors to leave with curiosity,’ she says. ‘If they leave with a curiosity about Black design then I’ve more than achieved my goal and I’d be very happy.’

‘The Nue Black Aesthetic’ is at the Design Museum, London, from 6 November 2026 to 8 August 2027