Tamika Smith
Rebecca Cooper
Local residents have been heading to theaters in droves to see Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — but they may not realize that the film’s set includes artwork from one of our own: local artist and designer Jomo Tariku.
Tariku, an Ethiopian American furniture designer who is based in Springfield, Virginia has several of his pieces featured in the film, including a black wood chair with a starkly curved back that manages to reflect Tariku’s African roots and look futuristic at the same time. The pieces are part of the film’s fictional world of Wakanda, the creation of which is a labor of love and creative vision from award-winning set designers, graphic artists and wardrobe specialists.
Tariku’s modern African-themed furniture has also been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — specifically a chair inspired by an Afro pick — and featured in Architectural Digest and The New York Times, among others.
Tariku has been designing and making furniture for nearly 25 years — all the while hoping to have his work recognized by a wider audience. He’s a co-founder of the Black Artists and Designers Guild, a Brooklyn-based organization that works to get Black creatives recognized similarly to their white counterparts.
We sat down with Tariku to talk about furniture, Black Panther, and what it means to have his work featured in the film.
What role has the Black Artists and Designers Guild played in your career for the past few years? We started a collective of black artists and designers around 2018 because we saw an industry that was not changing. Black designers’ work was not being equally featured or promoted in major shelter magazines, at major events, we were not being invited to be part of panel discussions. Ever since I got involved, [in terms of] being invited to or being part of anything related to design, the frequency increased. Finally, things were clicking.
Did you ever imagine your work would be highlighted in a major feature film? If you ask any artist or designer who believes that they’re doing high caliber work, ‘what’s your dream? Where do you want to be?’ For example, I want to be in magazines. I want my work to be recognized. But if you ask me in my wildest dream, would being part of a movie be part of that plan? The answer is a big no. It was not even on my radar.
You often talk about your father being a source of inspiration for you. How did he affect your path? [My father] was in the military, he ended up being the first Ethiopian military attache in Kenya. It always made me wonder, his affinity for liking well-designed things. He is not a designer. He didn’t come from a design background or art background, for that matter. But our house felt like a place [full] of these intriguing objects — and not everything from Africa. He had things from Indonesia, from Norway, rugs from Persia. It was just an eclectic collection.
What message do you try to send with your work? Going back to everything I do, if there is one thing that encapsulates my work, I really want to shake the design canon as we know it to its core and say ‘we’re here.’ Black people have contributed to design previously and we’re contributing now. Yes, it’s great to be in magazines, but if your intellectual discussions about design and styles and movements does not include what we have contributed there is an issue.
We don’t practice branding like the Western world. My work is based on the traditional craftsperson that has contributed for me and others to build on … you know, passing the torch to others. Everything for me revolves around this. I’ve made a career out of it, and I use it as a baton to change our industry. It’s who I am. I can’t separate these two.
