The hottest black designers you need to know in London

“Often when you look at black design presented in white spaces, it’s just things like a colourful wax print,” says Charlene Prempeh, curator of the Design Museum’s latest show, the Nue Black Aesthetic, which opens this month. “My experience with black design is actually very specific to individual designers’ culture and those cultures are layered and sophisticated.” Taking that thought as its departure point, the exhibition aims to showcase the breadth and diversity of black design while celebrating common themes and community. Prempeh has gathered together pieces by 16 contemporary black designers working across furniture, architecture, product design, sculpture and fashion. The designers are based all over the world, but all have some connection to the UK. Here is Prempeh’s selection of the black designers working in the capital to know right now.The Nue Black Aesthetic at the Design MuseumChristian CassielAndu Masebo is a London furniture and product designer who has won several top awards, featured in multiple exhibitions and has collaborated with Ikea. “His piece of work is incredible. There’s a table in the show and he filmed a group of musicians playing on the table at Alvaro Barrington’s studio in Whitechapel,” says Prempeh. “Andu’s work has always been really focused on community and how objects can become a magnet for activity and gathering. I’m excited about where his practice goes because furniture as a central form for community is going to be an interesting subject for us all as we get more isolated.”Taiba Akhuetie worked as a hairstylist before pivoting to art. She makes artworks featuring braids made into all sorts of everyday objects, including, for the Design Museum, a chair. “Taiba’s work is so visually arresting,” says Prempeh. “A lot of black women can identify with how hair is so politicised, the idea that braids are unprofessional, for example. There’s something very powerful about seeing braids in a public institution like this, making these large imposing works.”British-Ghanaian artist and architect Giles Tettey Nartey’s work explores culture, craft and ritual through objects, installations and film. Strange Notes is his contemporary interpretation of the West African balafon. “Giles talks a lot about design as language, and I just love that abstract invitation for thought around black design,” says Prempeh. “There’s also this idea of bringing domestic African culture into the global design conversation, again saying it deserves institutional representation.”Phoebe Collings-James was part of the Turner-nominated collective Black Obsidian Sound System. “Mudbelly is a programme she set up for black ceramicists to be taught by black teachers, to give a safe space for the black community to create,” says Prempeh. “I also really love the academic work being done around it, the idea of porcelain being white, pure and refined and clay being somehow impure. That balance of community and intellectualism is a really nice thing about Phoebe’s work.”Giles Tettey Nartey“I’ve been obsessed with menswear designer Bianca Saunders since her graduate collection, Personal Politics,” says Prempeh. “The level of research she put into it interviewing black men from her family and wider south London community to understand the contradictions they felt about being vulnerable as black men I find really satisfying.” Saunders re-made two of the pieces from that, mostly lost, collection for the exhibition. With an impressive collection of prizes under her belt, Saunders now runs her own eponymous label and has dressed Stormzy, Naomi Campbell and Harry Styles, among many others.“We have Saul Nash’s film in the show which went viral, I think over Covid, where you have these two men who look like they’re about to get into a fight but then they end up kissing. Movement is such a key part of his practice but it’s also such a key part of blackness. I love that that is represented here through Saul’s lens.” The fashion designer/choreographer has previously collaborated with Saunders, as well as Neneh Cherry.“When you think about ancestral African culture, people often think of it as being very crafty. Tejumola Butler Adenuga draws on his Yoruba craft heritage but turns it on its head to understand what the contemporary version could be. “What you’ll see in the show is that aluminium is the main material he works with,” says Prempeh. The designer has worked with Tinie Tempah and created drawings for brands including Adidas, Soho House and the New York Times.Simone Brewster’s work encompasses sculpture, furniture, jewellery, painting and architecture with pieces in the collections of the V&A, London Museum and Design Museum. “She brings the black female form into the design space in a way we haven’t really seen before,” says Prempeh. For the Nue Black Aesthetic she has created a bench that draws on classical architecture but through the lens of black femininity. “She does that throughout her work,” says Prempeh.