The New Guard: Stories from the New World

“When we reject the single story, when we realize there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, novelist

“Stories bring us together; untold stories keep us apart.” —Elif Shafak, political scientist and women’s rights activist

“Being American is more than the pride we inherit, it’s a past we step into and how we repair it.” —Amanda Gorman, poet

Ways of Seeing

Curatorial Essay by Anna Carnick & Wava Carpenter

When Carpenters Workshop Gallery asked us to curate an exhibition of emerging designers in America, we were honored, recognizing that the project would be seen as a departure from the gallery’s esteemed, historically European-based program. We also understood that this show offered a rare, exciting opportunity for unique design voices on this side of the pond to tell American design stories not often heard in broader, Euro-centric international conversations.

Despite the long legacy of open transatlantic exchange, the design cultures of Europe and the US remain distinct, impacted by discrepancies in educational systems, institutional support structures, media environments, and business models. In Europe, the landscape that designers traverse is more abundant, cooperative, and cohesive. In America, designers typically must forge their own singular paths through a rocky terrain, one that favors the commercial over the cultural and weeds out many would-be creatives in the few crucial years after school. This is not to say that design in one place or the other is innately better— incredible design can be found in every corner of the world. The point is that design in the American context is most fully understood in light of its intrepid, entrepreneurial, autonomous spirit.

As an ensemble, the independent talents invited to participate in Stories for the New World offer an illuminating snapshot of the rising generation of designers in and around the United States in 2021. Though geographically scattered and influenced by a range of personal experiences, they each approach their preferred materials with a fresh perspective to create hand-wrought, highly sculptural, narratively driven forms, embracing an idiosyncrasy that stands in defiance of the prevailing commercialism of design culture in America. The resulting exhibition speaks to the now beyond borders, emphasizing design as autobiography, designers as raconteurs, and objects as poetic artifacts of the human experience.

At this moment, when people across the globe are hungry for a feeling of connection—in a time marred by inequity, division, and disruptions—the young designers presented here, each in their own way, answer our collective call by relating something of themselves through the objects they create. In communicating stories of identity, heritage, and place, the exceptional objects commissioned for this exhibition resonate with our world in flux, with the near universal hope that communing with something greater than ourselves can bridge the cleavages. Every object has its story, but no single story defines design in this region. It is that complexity that provides the source of “the New World’s” power and magic.

—Curatorial Essay by Anna Carnick & Wava Carpenter for The New Guard: Stories from the New World, at Carpenters Workshop Gallery in New York, Fall / Winter 2021

The New Guard was co-curated by Anna Carnick, Wava Carpenter, & Ashlee Harrison.