Deem Symposium | Designing for Dignity 02: A Convening of Possibilities

Cheryl Durst. Photo credit: Jason Wambsgans.

 
Cheryl S. Durst, an exceptional communicator, innovator, and leader, has spurred progress, driven change, and encouraged the expansion of the interior design industry. As the Executive Vice President and CEO of the International Interior Design Association (IIDA), Durst is committed to achieving broad recognition for the value of design and its significant role in society. With 15,000 members across 58 countries, Cheryl oversees the strategic direction of IIDA, setting an agenda that leads the industry in creating community, advancing advocacy, and continuing decades of work toward equity. In 2016 she was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame as the recipient of its first Leadership Award, and is also the first African American woman to ever be inducted. She hosts the monthly podcast The Skill Set, which focuses on the intangible skills that make us good at what we do.

Tricia Hersey. Photo credit: Charlie Watts.

 
Tricia Hersey
 
is a multidisciplinary artist, theologian, and the New York Times bestselling author of Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022). She is a Chicago-native and founder of The Nap Ministry, the originator of the ‘rest as resistance’ and ‘rest as reparations’ frameworks, and creates sacred spaces where the liberatory, restorative, and disruptive power of rest can take hold. Hersey’s work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, Afrofuturism, womanism, and Black liberation theology.

Andrea Yarbrough. Photo by: Marcus Yarbrough.
 

Andrea Yarbrough is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and educator born and raised on the south side of Chicago. She leads the collaborative placekeeping initiative, in c/o: Black women, pushing forward a Black womanist praxis of erecting sites of care by elevating the importance of witnessing and cooperative building as forms of care work. Her practice transforms everyday materials into art objects, exhuming the invisibility of understudied histories. She is a worker-owner with Cooperation Racine, where she provides creative consultancy services and supports the development of a cooperatively owned and operated art center in West Englewood, Chicago.

Jezz Chung headshot 2024. Photo credit: Mary Kang.

 
Jezz Chung is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores personal and collective change. Their debut book, This Way to Change (2024) is a guide to changing yourself to change the world. Their neurodivergent, queer, and Korean American experiences shape their work and their commitment to building safer, freer futures. They’ve been recognized internationally for their work and named a Logo TV Pride honoree and a Made of Millions mental health advocate. Chung is a writer, director, and performer with the experimental theater company The New York Neo-Futurists and host of the podcast Dreaming Different for Deem Audio. They currently reside in Brooklyn.

Marguerite Wynter. Photo credit: Steven Karl Metzer.
 

Marguerite Wynter is a curator and arts administrator whose work focuses on the intersection of community and public engagement. She currently serves as Director of Partnerships & Engagement at Now + There, directing collaborative and community-based programs with local and international organizations. She previously served as the Manager of Public Programs and Partnerships at the Chicago Architecture Biennial and has held curatorial roles in performance and public practice at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and 80WSE Gallery.

Ami Mehta. Photo credit: Kylie Currie.

 
Ami Mehta is a creative technologist, artist, and educator whose work spans game design, virtual reality, installation, and performance. As an Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications and Interactive Media Arts Programs, Ami teaches virtual production techniques while facilitating learning about critical-making and ethics. Her practice explores questions related to privacy, self-identity, and representation in online social spaces and virtual worlds. She is passionate about developing culturally-rooted speculative designs and immersive experiences, and has received support from Epic Games, The British Council, and NEW INC for her projects with Antariksha Studio, a transmedia collective based out of Goa, India. She has collaborated on exhibitions and public programs for MoMA, the Venice Biennale, ONX Studio, BFI London Film Festival, and The New Museum, among others.

Ciera McKissick. Photo credit: Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas ONeal.

 
Ciera Alyse McKissick is an independent, curator, event producer, writer, and the founder of AMFM—Art Museum Fashion Life—an organization whose mission is to provide a platform for emerging artists. McKissick created AMFM, originally a web magazine, as an independent study project in 2009 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied Journalism and Mass Communications. Her work since then has involved supporting and uplifting the work and practice of Black and brown artists through writing, exhibitions, partnerships, and activations in collaboration with local arts organizations and institutions. Ultimately, she seeks to stimulate community engagement that’s driven by inclusivity, accessibility, intention, and care. She recently completed a Curatorial Fellowship with The Luminary (2023) and was a participant in the Independent Curators International’s Chicago Curatorial Seminar in 2022. Currently, she is also the Public Programs Manager at the Hyde Park Art Center.

Frederick Dunson. Photo credit: Ernest Collins.

 
Frederick Dunson was born on Chicago’s West Side and worked for the Office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County for nearly 34 years before he became the Founder, President, and Executive Director of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation, which honors his late best friend and business partner, the Grammy Award-winning DJ, producer, and remixer Frankie Knuckles. Founded in December 2014, the Frankie Knuckles Foundation is a nonprofit educational and cultural organization dedicated to the advancement of Frankie Knuckles’ mission as the global ambassador of House music through media, conservation, and public events continuing and supporting the causes he advocated. Dunson also serves on the Board of the Empowerment Center for Better Living and is a member of the West Central Association of the West Loop.

Darlene Jackson aka DJ Lady D. Photo credit: Lori Sapio.

 
Darlene Jackson, aka DJ Lady D, is hailed as “Chicago’s House Music Queen” by Chicago Magazine. She has toured the world as an international DJ, producer, and remixer and, in 2004, she became a music publisher when she launched her independent record label and brand, D’lectable. She is well-known for her charismatic sets of house, techno, and disco; her appearances at ARC, SXSW, Lollapalooza, Burning Man, and Chosen Few; and for fan-filled, influencer, charity, and celebrity events. Her music career has been a featured subject in print, television, audio, and film media, including in several music documentaries, and she has also collaborated and worked with numerous media outlets. You can hear DJ Lady D on the radio on the fourth Friday of every month on Vocalo.org 91.1 FM-Chicago.

Joseph Henry. Photo credit: Taran Wilkhu.

 
Joseph Henry is a designer and curator whose practice creates new public infrastructures through culture-at-large to unlock public imagination and is currently the 2024 ArtLab Loeb Fellow at Harvard University. Henry co-curated the British Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale alongside Jayden Ali, Meneesha Kellay, and Sumitra Upham. Their pavilion, “Dancing Before the Moon,” explored the need for architecture to look beyond buildings and economic structures and towards everyday social practices, customs, and traditions to meaningfully reflect how people use and occupy space. He is a trustee of UD Music, a charity that empowers and harnesses opportunities for young people through Black music culture. Previously, Henry worked for the Mayor of London in the Culture & Creative Industries Unit as the Making Space for Culture Manager. In 2019, he co-founded the social enterprise platform Sound Advice, alongside Pooja Agrawal, to explore new forms of spatial practice through music and in 2020 they published the book NOW YOU KNOW.

Dr. Elizabeth Dori Tunstall. Photo credit: Samuel Engelking.

 
Dr. Elizabeth “Dori” Tunstall is a distinguished and celebrated design anthropologist, author, organizational design leader, consultant, and coach. As the author of Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook (2023), she is a path-breaker of progressive approaches challenging conventional design paradigms that exclude and harm Indigenous cultures in order to actively decolonize while championing diversity, equity, and inclusivity practices in communities and organizations. Tunstall made history as the first Black and Black female Dean of a Design Faculty anywhere at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada and her accomplishments have been recognized with numerous awards—most recently the 2023 SEGD Excellence in Design Education Award. Dori’s profound commitment to making an expansive impact beyond academia has recently led her to establish Dori Tunstall, Inc., a firm dedicated to decolonizing and diversifying institutional processes for companies and organizations through corporate education, executive coaching, and strategic consulting.