Canon, Process & Perspective

Jomo Tariku
Interviewed by My African Aesthetic editor Eunice Nanzala Schumacher

My African Aesthetic: Jomo, your much-admired design practice draws on your extensive knowledge of African and African-diasporic artworks, designed objects, stories, customs and traditions, and it mediates that knowledge to a global audience. Can you begin by sketching your research process for us? Is it exclusively focused on traditional African domestic design, or wider than that?

Jomo Tariku: Wider, definitely. Over the last thirty years I’ve built a personal library to support the evolution of my design language. It helps me extract design cues from many designed artefacts that predate my own practice, some centuries old, and my research extends far beyond a study of household objects. I seek inspiration from the natural and man-made palettes of the African continent and use their colours, patterns and other attributes as a launch pad for my concepts. On my desk, you will always find a sharpened pencil and Post-it notes next to a selection of books. Some deal with household objects, but others will be on African art, cultural histories and other subjects. When I’m not busy finishing specific projects, I browse them and bookmark things I want to return to, to sketch and consider in more depth. I generally avoid looking solely at furniture and I’m fortunate to live not far from the amazing and diverse resources in the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC: the National Museum of African Art and National Museum of African American History and Culture. Those collections richly inform my research and knowledge.

A selection of Jomo Tariku’s research material

MAA: As you evolve your designs, what are you looking for?

JT: At the start of the design process I tend to look at the profiles, the silhouettes, of things that inspire me, rather than surface detailing such as intricate pattern or carving. This helps me test ideas rapidly and explore them iteratively. I resist getting engrossed in intricate details, and you can see the end result of this approach in most of my final works. I’m seeking designs that feature clean lines with few carvings or intricate details.

Boraatii Stool and Headrest – Image courtesy of the artist and Wexler Gallery

My design approach has always involved making critical judgements about the minimum number of hints and clues you need to suggest an object’s source idea or design context. These days, it’s very hard to create something absolutely original. Creative practice involves amalgamating personal experience and vision with the study of specific topics and precedents, and you can see this when you look at my work. My designs filter African traditions through the modern. They lean towards industrial design and employ modern materials and techniques that were not accessible to traditional makers.

In 2024 I explored this approach in an innovative way via the exhibition Juxtaposed: A Portal to African Design at the Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia. This offered visitors a unique design experience: it elevated and celebrated designs that have inspired my work by exhibiting them alongside, or rather above, my own works. For example, my newest chair was inspired by traditional Jimma chairs, which originate from the region around the town of Jimma in western Ethiopia, and in the exhibition an example of this form of traditional chair was installed behind and above my design.

Jimma Chair – Image courtesy of the artist and Wexler Gallery

MAA: These two chairs show a complicated interplay of similarities and differences. Their resemblances are clear, but their character—we might almost say their personality—feels very different.

JT: Well, I designed the Jimma chair by studying the silhouette of the traditional chair and analysing its legs, seat and backrest separately, and then I reassembled its components in a translated form as a single coherent design. The approach of the traditional chair maker is evidently very different from this. They consistently iterate the conventional design throughout the build process and develop a final work with a very organic look, adorned with uneven patterns and shapes; the maker is not bound by precision, perfect symmetry or the need for exact reproduction. I instinctively create clean lines and simplify patterns with a focus on material efficiency and consistency in assembly and reproduction. My designs need to be predictable, unlike a traditional maker's work, which has the beauty of fractals. The traditional chair remains a utilitarian object, but it is also a work of art and that’s one of many reasons why I (literally) elevate the traditional artisanal object over my piece.

Juxtaposed, 2024 – Image courtesy of the artist and Wexler Gallery

MAA: You talk about finding the minimum number of hints and clues needed to suggest your designs’ original source ideas and contexts. Does this process of translating from the traditional to a modern, industrially reproducible form invite questions about authenticity?

JT: I tend to leave that question to the critics, clients, enthusiasts, design historians and others who view, use or own my work. However, as a creative worker, I shoulder the task of sharing the story behind each object’s evolution; I seek to elevate the achievement of past makers and promote their legacy. I and many others are the torch bearers for them. As I develop and document my work I hope to inspire the next generation and in turn I also acknowledge my sources. From the inception of my design career I’ve always named my works after the things that inspired them, in celebration of my sources and in the hope that people who interact with, or own, my pieces will become curious and do a deep dive into their origins. Some enthusiasts for my work derive a great deal of pride from the awareness of its historical references.

Alongside this, over the last five years, I’ve sought to promote the works of other Black diaspora designers. The perspectives of some overlap with mine but others are completely different. I’ve also co-curated shows, most recently Making Home: Belonging, Memory and Utopia in the Twenty-First Century this year at the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum and, as previously mentioned, Juxtaposed, my solo show in Philadelphia.

Making Home: Belonging, Memory and Utopia in the Twenty-First Century Photo by Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution

My goal with regard to authenticity is never to make a simple replica of a pre-existing work or reproduce something in a modern fashion, for example by keeping the form but changing the material or the making process. My intent is always to see how far I can push an independent concept of my own that’s been inspired by a preexisting design, without letting the anchoring inspiration completely disappear. Some of my designs, such as the Jimma chair, relate to a singular initial starting point, while others amalgamate more than one point of origin. My Kundung Pembe chair is an example of this, blending references to bronzes from various parts of Africa, items made from cattle horn and Kundung xylophones from Nigeria. Whether the point of inspiration is singular or plural, it’s important to me that my designs retain and express that relationship.

MAA: What are the most exciting aspects of translating African aesthetics through design? What do you identify as the strongest point of dynamic tension in your work?

JT: The process of investigation and designing is the true joy; finding inspiration and design cues from the African continent is endlessly exciting. Even though I have been doing this for a while now I’m continuously surprised by the amazing works, crafted through the centuries, that keep turning up in my research—the resource seems never-ending. In terms of the tension in my work, I guess this most obviously arises from its collision of modernity and tradition in both its design and manufacture, but I would also point to the games my works play with expectations of scale. Some of the artefacts that I draw ideas from are quite small: an afro hair pick, a head rest, an animal horn, but in my work they are transformed by being oversized, and this gives the designs an unexpected dynamic.

MAA: What do you wish was different about your area of operation?  

JT: I wish we, the experts on and custodians of African visual culture, were collectively able to do a better job of documenting, archiving and sharing resources on and within the continent of Africa. Time and again during my research I’ve struggled to find the proper name of some object or information about its provenance. Sometimes the documentation exists but isn’t readily available online. At other times the information is in a local dialect, or has been passed on through a rich oral tradition, but has not been transcribed. For example, my Quanta Totem Chair was given the wrong name because we were unable to track down its proper name in time for Design Miami, and before it was acquired by the Carnegie Mellon Museum of Art. The reason it was mislabeled is that an old book I consulted used a derogatory term, while other sources online referred to it by the associated ethnic group rather than its actual name. Two contacts of mine believed it was called “Quanta”, only for us to later discover that its correct name is Saurer.

There’s still a wealth of cultural history waiting to be rediscovered, preserved and shared, but the infrastructure around that has a long way to go.