→ Dear Mazie,
(2024)
A joyous collaboration between curator Amber Esseiva, architects AD–WO, and Practise Studio for “Dear Mazie,” at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. The group exhibition is inspired by the life and work of Amaza Lee Meredith (1895–1984), the first known Black queer woman to practice as an architect in the United States, as well as a passionate artist and educator. Dear Mazie, features works from AD–WO, The Black School, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Kapwani Kiwanga, Abigail Lucien, Practise (James Goggin and Shan James), Tschabalala Self, and Cauleen Smith.
I worked on the vinyl design, editorial design, and photo editing of a timeline archive wall as part of AD-WO’s lively and poetic exhibition design. The photos here show details of the archive wall alongside scenes from the exhibition.
Typeset in Cyan by Aurele Sack for Lineto Type Foundry, combined with numerous beautiful hand-lettered words digitized from Mazie’s many scrap- and notebooks.
Archive Wall
Pulling from a trove of documents and written letters in Meredith’s 30-box archive at Virginia State University, “Dear Mazie,” dives into the life of Amaza, and invites 11 contemporary artists, architects and designers to create responses to her multifaceted legacy.
I photo-edited more than 200 archive materials and vectorized the handwriting as an asset for the exhibition. The curatorial intent was to embrace the aged quality of the archive materials through their cut-out shapes and the faded quality of the handwriting. I also set up the files for the digital fabrication, where the shapes were cut and printed using CNC and UV printing.
Archive Wall Guide
Exhibition Vinyl
The exhibition entrance was designed to reference Meredith’s house. The frame shape references the archive materials and the design motif of the archive wall.
(left) Installed view of the exhibition vinyl. (right) Digital mock-up of the vinyl design. It plays with a white gradient that the viewers can peak through.