For Stephen Burks and Malika Leiper, design begins not with objects, but with people. It moves fluidly across imagined borders and shaped by conversations. This philosophy is deeply rooted in their studio, Stephen Burks Man Made, where design is understood as a collaborative process rather than an individual expression. Their approach challenges the idea of the designer as a singular voice, but offers instead a more open and inclusive model where ideas circulate between people, and evolves through both tradition and innovation. In this way, tradition is not static, but continually reinterpreted and carried forward through the perspectives, emotions, and influences of each new generation.
This way of working has taken them to more than twenty countries, where they have collaborated with artisans and makers on projects ranging from furniture and textiles to large-scale installations and exhibitions, such as the Designing Dynamism: Kuba Textiles from the Democratic Republic of Congo, The Wesley Mancini Collection exhibition at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. These experiences reflect a deep commitment to building relationships, remaining curious, and learning directly from those who hold generational knowledge of materials, techniques, and cultural meaning.
Leiper’s role as cultural director adds another dimension to this vision. Shaped by growing up in Cambodia during a period of reconstruction and change, Leiper approaches design as a tool for both cultural preservation and economic transformation. Within the studio, Leiper expands the conversation beyond form and function, asking how design can engage with history, identity, and the realities of an ever-shifting global landscape.
Together, Burks and Leiper approach their work with a clear sense of purpose where design should not serve a narrow, privileged audience, but instead reflect a broad spectrum of voices and experiences. Their philosophy calls for a shift away from systems that define taste through Eurocentric frameworks, but toward a more inclusive model grounded in the belief that everyone is capable of design, and should have access to its potential for social and economic impact.
The Taborian is honored to interview Burks and Leiper, which offers an opportunity to explore their backgrounds, reflect more deeply on their design philosophy, and share their insights with a wider audience.
Vision Behind Designing Dynamism
Designing Dynamism shows the intricate and bold designs of Kuba prestige textiles. What overarching curatorial vision guided your selection of works and the way they are presented in the exhibition?
Designing Dynamism is organized into three galleries: Past, Present and Future. In telling a story of the Kuba peoples, it was important for us to situate their art form on a continuum. The Past deals with the pre-colonial period of the 16th and 17th centuries when the Kingdom was thriving and the art form was being mastered by skilled artisans within the royal court. The Present moves us into the moment of encounter with the outside world, when European missionaries and traders first made contact with Kuba people, thus beginning their global dissemination into the world of art and culture. And last, but perhaps most important, is the Future where we actually traveled to Kinshasa to film a documentary documenting the current state of the art form. According to some scholarly opinions, the Kuba arts are a lost or dying art form. The Future gallery argues just the opposite, because in order for an art to have a future, it must have a present.
The exhibition brings together a wide range of Kuba objects including raffia prestige squares, overskirts, beaded belts, and other forms of regalia. What do these diverse pieces reveal about Kuba societal structures, gendered la-bor roles, and ceremonial traditions?
The Kuba arts are an art form that evolved around a royal ideology first and foremost. Each distinct motif in the mnemonic library of patterns not only carry symbolic meaning, but were at one point authorized by the King. Skilled artisans would present their work to the King to be authorized before entering a vast library of mnemonic motifs. For example the interlinking diamond shape or “mbalax” which represents the Kuba belief in the interconnectedness of all things in the universe.
The exhibition also features In Search of Kuba, your documentary filmed in Kinshasa. How does the film help illuminate the fact that Kuba textile traditions are not “lost,” but thriving and continually evolving?
Our practice Stephen Burks Man Made is founded upon the belief that everyone is capable of design. Our focus on craft is fueled by a desire to collaborate with artisans in other parts of the globe whose voices are not necessarily represented in contemporary discussions around design. We were fortunate to partner with the Kilubukila Atelier and Cultural Project, which employs Kuba artisans in creating contemporary textiles inspired by Kuba design. In Search of Kuba was a vehicle for identifying and foregrounding these perspectives in the exhibition. It’s a matter of access and representation.
Many of the textiles on view were created in the 1980s, yet they draw from artistic practices that span centuries. In your view, how are contemporary Kuba artists sustaining, reinterpreting, or innovating within these longstanding traditions?
We’ve seen contemporary artists introduce color, as well as create pictorial images using the lambath method (the cut-pile technique). In terms of our own practice, we’ve translated Kuba design into marquetry at the furniture scale in The Lost Cloth Object – a ceremonial site we made in collaboration with Italian recomposed wood veneer specialists Alpi. Hybridization is another fruitful way of inviting innovation. When seemingly unrelated materials or cultural references collide, we often see exciting results, as was the case for Kuba Sug – an exhibition in Tokyo that combined Kuba design with Japanese cedar at the figurative and sculptural scale. In general, we’re trying to push back against categorizations like “traditional” or “primitive”, which limit the imagination. Ultimately, what makes ancient craft techniques like Kuba so valuable is their timelessness and we try to honor these ancient forms of wisdom by investigating their potential in novel and contemporary ways.
What emotional or intellectual experience do you hope visitors take away from encountering Designing Dynamism?
We want visitors to feel a sense of wonder and discovery. This was the feeling we had when we first saw the prestige squares with our own eyes. It’s also important that visitors leave the exhibition with a richer and nuanced understanding of the Kuba arts, their history and meaning, and the people that create them.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is often framed by Western media through narratives of conflict and exploitation. Yet your work, in both this exhibition and your film, reveals a different reality: Congolese people who are creative, entrepreneurial, and deeply proud of their heritage. Can you share a moment or encounter that, for you, best captures the beauty and spirit of the Congolese people?
Our first meeting with the artisans from the Kilubukila atelier will always stand out in our memory. The moment we stepped foot inside the workshop they broke out into song and dance. We felt immediately welcomed.
Focus: Stephen Burks
You grew up on the South Side of Chicago, a place shaped by deep cultural and architectural history. How did that environment influence your early understanding of design, creativity, and your sense of identity as an African American?
Growing up in Chicago, I was surrounded by the legacy of modernism. The Chicago skyline seen at a distance from the South Side was a reminder that I lived in a designed city with certain privileges and limitations. It was clear to me how disinvested our Black communities were by comparison to those on the North Side. In my youth, crossing the racial dividing line between the South and North sides of the city, I understood the privilege of having access to the world class institutions downtown like the Art Institute that welcomed all Chicagoans.
In 2015, you became the first African American to receive the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Product Design. How did that milestone shape your professional journey, and what has it meant to hold such visibility in a field where Black designers have long been underrepresented?
Prior to winning the National Design Award in 2015, I judged the awards in 2007 where I was part of the jury that awarded Charles Harrison the lifetime achievement award. In our youth, we often think that we are alone in our journey towards excellence, but even though no African-Americans had ever worked in the world of contemporary design I was working in, I was reminded of quietly successful pioneers like Chuck Harrison who was involved in the design of over 750 everyday all-American consumer products including the Mattel View-Master F from 1958. I was proud to realize he was also an Institute of Design alumni.
Your practice champions collaboration, cultural pluralism, and expanding who gets to participate in contemporary design. How has your personal background fueled your commitment to making the design world more equitable, more global, and more reflective of communities like the one you came from?
Having been the only African-American to work for all of my clients throughout my career, the need for more diversity in design has been obvious. The studio’s mission is to not only open doors for future generations by leading by example, but to also consider the broader implications of such a Eurocentric minority-world culture dictating taste throughout the majority-world. It’s less about trying to reflect the community that I came from in design and more about creating space for all of the diverse voices of the places I’ve traveled to and worked in, which includes people of color from all over the world.
You’ve collaborated with artisans across more than twenty countries on six continents, often working through nonprofit and community based partnerships. How has this global, workshop centered approach expanded or reshaped your understanding of what design is and what it isn’t?
In 2005, I was invited to work as a product development consultant in South Africa with Aid to Artisans. It was there that I collaborated with craftspeople for the very first time. Their immediacy of making and the use of hand techniques as a primary mean so personal expression resonated with me. Witnessing the direct translation of raw material into useful objects as, for me, evidence that everyone is capable of design. Regardless of your level of education or skill, everyone has an imagination, everyone dreams, and everyone has a right to change those dreams into reality by design.
For young designers of color who hope to work at the intersection of craft, culture, and social practice, what mindset, skills, or training do you believe are most essential for navigating and contributing meaningfully to this space?
Design is more than giving form to something. It has to do with being part of society and witnessing its interactions. The designers of the future have to be collaborators that have learned to see problems and imagine solutions with great empathy. They will also have to be entrepreneurial enough to find ways to not only develop product and systems-based solutions, but do so in ways that create new economic opportunities for the communities they’re seeking to serve.
Focus: Malika Leiper
You were born and raised in Phnom Penh, Cambodia during a period of postconflict reconstruction and rapid urbanization. How did growing up in that environment shape your early understanding of culture, place, and the role design can play in rebuilding and strengthening communities?
There is no word for design in my mother tongue. I didn’t understand it was a profession, nor had I ever met a designer before. Nevertheless, I remember the feeling of harmony when I entered a designed environment. This was most palpable in sacred sites, the temples of Angkor being the most powerful of them all. What I carry with me from my childhood, and what I often seek to express in design, is the spiritual basis of societies and our connection to the natural world.
You later moved to the United States and pursued a BA in PostColonial Studies at Columbia University and a Master of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. How has this academic foundation rooted in questions of power, place, and representation helped you navigate art and design institutions where Asian American, and especially Southeast Asian, voices have often been marginalized or overlooked?
My education at Columbia, in proximity to brilliant post-colonial thinkers like Edward Said or Mahmood Mamdani, gave me the words explain the visible inequalities of the world around me. My studies at Harvard introduced me to design, which I understand as a synthesis of moral, utopian, and technical approaches to problem solving.
What motivated your decision to leave Cambodia and pursue your education in the United States? Was there a particular moment, influence, or personal conviction that made you feel this path could expand your opportunities or your understanding of the world?
My father was an American who grew up between New Jersey and California. After becoming a refugee at age 18, my mother moved to San Francisco where she learned English and received her master’s in social work from UC Berkeley. America is a place that I grew up visiting my entire childhood. It was always a part of my consciousness and a place I knew I would end up living in at some point in my life.
A Shared Perspective
Both of you forged your partnership within Stephen Burks Man Made, a studio known for synthesizing craft, community, and industry. Can you describe the moment you realized your practices were aligned enough to fully partner?
Living together during the pandemic lockdown brought our practices into natural alignment. We were in Brooklyn at the time and turned to design as a way of addressing the problems we suddenly faced; such as the inundation of media in our everyday lives, the search for personal spaces of reflection, the need to mourn when public gathering wasn’t possible. These issues eventually became the focal point for our solo exhibition “Shelter in Place”, which opened at the High Museum in 2022 and then traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2023. Since then, we’ve been honing our shared vision for design as a tool for social, political, and economic transformation.
You’ve both lived and worked across continents. How do your personal histories shape the design worlds you imagine together?
Being the small studio that we are, everything we do is inevitably personal. We don’t believe in leaving our histories behind, we carry it with us. We reflect on the people that came before us, our ancestors and immediate family, but also people in our lives who’ve had an influence on our practice creatively – Isamu Noguchi, for example. Although he worked across many disciplines from set design, sculpture and product design, he believed that all of it was art. We try to do the same.♦
You must be logged in to post a comment.