As designers, artists, and educators, who do we learn from? How do we pass on our knowledge? Who influences us and in what lineages do we sit, live, and operate within and beyond? This panel features Saki Mafundikwa, Jackson Polys, Ramon Tejada, and Kelly Walters, and is moderated by Reverberations co-curators Brian Johnson and Silas Munro.
Saki Mafundikwa is the founder and director of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA), a design and new media training college in Harare, Zimbabwe. He was educated in the US with a BA in Telecommunications and Fine Arts from Indiana University and an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University. He returned home in 1998 to found ZIVA after working in New York City as a graphic designer, art director, and design instructor. Mafundikwa’s book, Afrikan Alphabets: The story of writing in Afrika, was published in 2004. Besides being of historical importance, it is also the first book on Afrikan typography.
Jackson Polys is a multi-disciplinary artist belonging to Tlingit territory, living and working between what are currently called Alaska and New York, who examines negotiations toward the limits and viability of desires for Indigenous growth. He holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2015) and was the recipient of a 2017 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Mentor Artist Fellowship. He was advisor and co-organizer for Indigenous New York, the collaborative program initiative co-founded by Mohawk artist Alan Michelson and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. He is a principal contributor to the New Red Order (NRO). His individual and collaborative works have appeared at the Alaska State Museum, Anchorage Museum, Artists Space, Burke Museum, Images Festival, Park Avenue Armory, Sundance Film Festival, Union Docs, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Ramon Tejada is a DominicanYork (of Dominican-American, Afro-Caribbean, and LATINX descent) designer and educator based in Providence, RI. He works in a hybrid design/teaching practice focusing on collaboration, inclusion, unearthing, and the responsible expansion of design, a practice he has named “puncturing.” Ramon is an Associate Professor in the Graphic Design Department at RISD and is a 2024 recipient of the Vilcek Prize in Design.
Kelly Walters is an artist, designer and founder of the multidisciplinary design studio Bright Polka Dot. Her ongoing design research interrogates identity formation and systems of value embedded in Black visual and material culture. Kelly has curated a number of exhibitions, including Kindred, Open Dialogue: Artists + Designers of Afro-Caribbean Descent and Remix: Activating the Archive. She received a Graham Foundation award for her exhibition With a Cast of Colored Stars in 2021. Kelly has written about Black American design histories and the impact of colonization on the construction of the Black image. Her publications include Black, Brown + Latinx Design Educators: Conversations on Design and Race and the co-edited anthology The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression & Reflection. Kelly Walters is currently an Associate Professor of Communication Design and Director of the BFA Communication Design program in Parsons School of Design at The New School.
Brian Johnson, a member of the Monacan Indian Nation, is an award-winning designer and curator. He is a partner of Polymode, where he focuses on amplifying marginalized and forgotten voices through poetic research, learning experiences, and impactful design. He has guest lectured and hosted workshops at the School of Visual Arts; the Walker Art Center; AIGA’s National Design Conference; his alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design; and is one of the founders of the online learning platform BIPOC Design History. As a curator, he is the author of Posters That Sing: Indigenous / Native American Printed and Designed Works, an exhibition scheduled to open September of 2026, at Poster House museum in New York. Johnson is the recipient of the 2023-24 Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators for which he is focusing on Indigenous-made works to combat erasure and decolonize design. The three-part article series, “Designing a History of Indigenous Graphic Artists,” “How Can a Poster Sing?” and “Can We Find Our Way to Indigenous Joy?” appear on Hyperallergic. He is a contributor to the upcoming publication, Gatherings: New Directions in Indigenous Book History published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Silas Munro is a designer, artist, writer, researcher, curator, surfer and descendant of the Banyole people of Eastern Uganda. He is the founder of the design studio Polymode based in Los Angeles and Raleigh that works with clients across cultural spheres. Munro is the curator and author of Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest at Letterform Archive in 2022-2023. He was a contributor to W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America and co-authored the first BIPOC-centered design history course, Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design 19th-21st Century. His work was recently exhibited at the Raizes Gallery at Lesley University, the LA Design Festival, and the Scottsdale Museum of Art, and is included in the collections of Tufts University, Lesley University, and the Montalvo Arts Center. A solo exhibition, How Can the Grid Deal with a Messy World?, is currently on view at The University of Hartford’s Joseloff Gallery. Munro is Founding Faculty, Chair Emeritus for the MFA Program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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