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Nestled in the red clay of central Virginia, the town of Farmville sits at the intersection of Revolutionary War, Civil War, and Civil Rights Movement histories. For transdisciplinary designer, artist, and educator Curry J. Hackett, who operates a practice called Wayside Studio, that history is personal. Hackett attended county schools where his mother, artist Penny Stiff Hackett, taught art and whose practices were part of the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. It was important for Curry to understand the land that his great-grandfather purchased many, many, many, many, many years ago, she told AN. Whenever we visited my grandmother, I would take Curry outside and I would walk through the woods, and I would talk to him about the significance of this and what it means for a Black person or Black people to own land. And once you get it, you just dont sell it. Because its hard for us to come by. Hacketts Black Virginian worldview is on full display in Waysides offerings. His father even played a role in the studios moniker: The name comes from his time as a civil engineer for Norfolk Southern Railroad and signifies equipment located at a grade crossing. Whether at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (from which he graduated with a masters, cheekily referring to the school afterward as the White Howard) or through public art projects like the Howard Theatre Walk of Fame, Hackett credits his mothers kin-keeping for helping him formulate his vision of Black futurity grounded not in ancient Egyptian iconography or Wakanda-like escapism but instead in the practices that sustained his ancestors.Diasflora (2020) in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy Lab)When I think about my future, I tend to think, How do I get back to the kind of agency that the last eight generations had? Hackett said.Up the road in Washington, D.C., Hacketts experience in the undergraduate program at Howard University helped solidify this worldview. At Howard, Hackett played trombone in the marching band, even marching in President Obamas first inaugural parade. He credits former dean of the architecture school Harry Robinson, who also served as his academic adviser, with fostering his interest in urban design and the relationship of people, culture, and life to the street and streetscape.Bradford Grant, Howards interim chair of the Department of Architecture, taught Hackett and served alongside him as an instructor when Hackett joined the faculty as an adjunct professor and critic. Hackett had this really rich kind of [mix] of creative impulses that he took advantage of at Howard, Grant said. And I think that really shaped some of his directions now that hes doing more professional and artistic work.Sticking around in D.C. after college led to a position working with DC Waters Clean Rivers Project, which fostered his interest in the intersections of infrastructure and public art. Two years into that venture he shifted from a staff position to working as a graphic design contractor for the projects public engagement team. He describes that shift, which provided him with the ability to pursue commissions like the Howard Walk of Fame project, as the first day of the rest of his life.Ugly Beauties (2024) by Curry J. Hackett of Wayside Studio with lighting design by Jelisa Blumburg, commissioned by Van Alen Institute (Cameron Blaylock)The diversity of Black experiences Hackett encountered at Howard helped him realize the uniqueness of his familys generational relationship with their land. This in part inspired AI Black History, the informal Instagram series that Hackett is perhaps best known for in the digital realm. Using Midjourney, Hackett portrays scenes of speculative Black realities like a Black family gathered for a portrait beneath a giant collard green plant and bathtubs-turned-planters on Harlem sidewalks. For Hackett, the interface offers an opportunity to share provocations, alternative visions of Black life that could exist with present-day technology and grounded in works by Black feminist artists and scholars like Stephanie Dinkins, Badia Ahad-Legardy, and Katherine McKittrick.Ive just been having fun folding Afro-descendant culture from various regions in the States in on themselves or cross-pollinating so-called Northern narratives with so-called South and Southern narratives, Hackett said. The artistic use of Midjourney has its critics, who point either to Midjourneys unsanctioned use of artists copyrighted material to train its modelwhich, a recent lawsuit alleges, is not without meritor the energy-intensive nature of generative AI. Hackett put it this way: I think people are uncomfortable with a tool that they are already uncomfortable with that [is] being used to render Black bodies and faces.Visitors to Hacketts So That You All Wont Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia at Making HomeSmithsonian Design Triennial can see one of his AI pieces on CRT television that displays a mixture of AI-generated material and archival video. His family roots anchor the exhibition: A commissioned painting by his mother serves as the emotional and philosophical centerpiece of the installation.Installation of So That You All Wont Forget: Speculations on a Black Home in Rural Virginia by Curry J. Hackett, Wayside Studio in Making HomeSmithsonian Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. (Elliot Goldstein Smithsonian Institution)Hacketts speculative visions keep him busy. He spent the first two weeks of the year in Veracruz, Mexico, as part of ongoing research into how Black populations in the Americas make and remake cities on their own terms. The trip was the longest stretch hes been abroad. Upon his return, he began a second semester of teaching at the City College of New York as part of the Mellon Foundations Place, Memory, Culture incubator.Work will also bring him closer to home in Washington, D.C., as a public art strategist on the team behind the New Pennsylvania Avenue Plan, led by David Rubin Land Collective in collaboration with HR&A Advisors, where hell once again unite infrastructure and the arts. The plans commission was announced last fall, and it is expected to be completed in 2027. For David Rubin Land Collective, the fact that I lived in D.C. for 12 years was a kind of boon, Hackett said. The project is also one of the first examples where Im able to bring all of my experience to bear on a single project.Irene Vzquez is a queer Black Mexican American poet, translator, and journalist.
