Design Changemakers 2021: TRNK’s Tariq Dixon Explores the Form and Material of Art and Design — as Well as Its Cultural Context
The Apartment Therapy Design Changemakers Class of 2021 is made up of 24 of the most talented and dynamic people in the design world. We asked an assortment of last year’s Design Changemakers and Apartment Therapy staffers (and you!) to tell us who we needed to spotlight—see the rest of the list here.
Why Dixon is part of the Class of 2021: “Tariq Dixon, owner of TRNK NYC, is a real design changemaker in my eyes. Not only is TRNK a different kind of design brand and business — equal parts design studio, online retailer, and curatorial platform for emerging artists — Tariq didn’t miss a beat during the pandemic, launching a full collection of architectural furniture, including sculptural travertine tables, for fall. His silhouettes, materials, and attention to sourcing and sustainability have pushed the collective design conversation forward in terms of both aesthetics and the made-to-order model of manufacturing. I always look forward to seeing what he’s doing — and who he is spotlighting — in his own collections, store, and art exhibitions.” —Danielle Blundell, Apartment Therapy’s home director
Tariq Dixon designs TRNK, his line of unique home furnishings, with the goal of making a space feel “collected, not decorated.” This is reflected in his overall approach to design, which emphasizes the editing process: removing the unnecessary elements until the remaining pieces are truly essential to the space. “There can still be room for rich textural qualities or even pattern and bold color,” he says, “but it’s really about the vetting process of deciding what’s necessary and what’s extraneous and understanding the role and purpose that each one of those decisions plays.”
Growing up in the Washington, D.C.–Baltimore area, Dixon was not yet a designer — at least not consciously — but was artistically inclined, and always influenced by nature. Today that still rings true, as evidenced by his use of natural light in his pieces. “I end up studying light in the space, and how it interacts with the products, and that determines where a lot of them go,” he says. He also uses light to create rituals in his own home: Throughout the day, he moves and works in different areas of his Brooklyn brownstone as the sun shifts. “For me, natural light is very important, so that’s a big factor in deciding where to live,” he explains. “The front [of my home] is north-facing, and I’ll spend a lot of the morning in the front of the apartment and then move to the other little workstation that I set up in the back of the apartment.”
Beyond spending more time at home, in 2020 Dixon worked on projects exploring art and design through a social lens. Mien, released in honor of Pride in June, was a collection of self-portraits by queer artists of color, all sold to support the Ali Forney Center for homeless LGBTQ youth. His other major exhibition this year, Provenanced, which debuted in October, celebrated African and Indigenous contributions to Western art and design, revealing the value of these works beyond the Western gaze. He hopes to carry on this work in a second iteration of the project, continuing to address the design industry’s responsibility to go beyond just representation. “Representation is great, it’s essential, it’s long overdue,” Dixon says. “But at the same time, people [in the design industry] really need to understand why diversity of experience matters and how those experiences are able to lend a different perspective and a different understanding of how our end products are used, consumed, and appreciated by different audiences. It’s not enough to have the faces represented but you really need to listen, too.”
Apartment Therapy: What’s your favorite project you worked on in 2020, and why?
Tariq Dixon: That’s a bit of a toss-up, because 2020 was the year that I just checked a lot of boxes off of the ever-growing to-do list of ideas that have compiled over the years. I think it’s between Provenanced and Mien, which we did for Pride.
Both gave me an opportunity to work with artists and designers that we previously had never worked with, creatives globally as well. Both were an investigation of socially-oriented themes. Outside of just the study of design is materiality and form, but really the cultural implications of these works that we produced. If I had to pick one, I would say Provenanced, but both of those exhibitions were really special to me.
AT: To ask you one of the questions from Provenanced, how do you aim to establish a canon of African- and Indigenous-inspired design that exists outside a colonial legacy of extraction and appropriation?
TD: I think the first step is definitely recognizing those sources of inspiration and influence. Going back and doing the work of retracing the history and recentering those artists and designers in the conversations. I do think in some cases I would love to even recontextualize some of those works, because I think a lot of the context is entirely race, so we appreciate the visual languages that were developed and the forms that were created, but we don’t understand the original purpose and intention of why decisions were made.
Apartment Therapy: What were your design inspirations growing up? What is your inspiration now?
Tariq Dixon: Outside of design, I artistically and creatively found a love and inspiration in nature and architecture. I would spend a lot of time outside studying small details, and I think that still fascinates me; just looking at the small, true organic quality of trees, of the colors and how they change throughout the seasons.
I grew up in the D.C.-Baltimore area, so I just loved going to the National Mall and seeing the neoclassical architecture.
My inspiration now? Those still ring true, but also 20th-century modern art and design. I’m definitely drawn toward more minimalist forms, more geometric and restrained, reductive shapes.
AT: What three words would you use to describe your work or style?
TD: Restrained, approachable, and current.
AT: Is there a specific piece or design of yours that you think is particularly indicative of who you are or what you’re trying to do?
TD: The recent Segment Table Series that we launched. It’s very emblematic of my personal design process.
Because I don’t have a technical design background, I work very closely with our fabricators to better understand a lot of the structural considerations, and it becomes very much like a collaboration and a dialogue. The feedback from the factory was that we needed to reinforce it structurally somehow. I was like, “Can we use these thin metal rods to connect the plains that don’t intersect?” It ended up completely changing the visual language in a lot of ways.
Another thing that I love about the collection is the permanence of the piece. The materials that we chose should weather and age well. They’ll eventually show their signs of age but without diminishing its function at all. That’s what I love about design: products that can last across multiple generations.
AT: What makes you feel at home in your own space?
TD: I only really discovered the personal importance of home, not long before starting the business. That really was another one of the impetuses for starting TRNK: being able to develop rituals within the space.
Personal space is also thinking about how it will be used for company as well. It’s definitely been a lot more difficult in the pandemic, so that consideration is a little bit different these days. I typically think quite a bit about how the space will be used for entertaining, just having friends over, just a couple at a time for dinner or drinks or something. In terms of designing the furniture, I think about accommodating those different situations quite a bit, so I like to have items that can serve dual purposes, like stools that can double as seating or as a side table depending on the situation.
AT: How do you think the past year will impact the design world moving forward?
TD: It seems like everyone across the industry is more mindful and trying to figure out what their role and contribution will be. But I think only time will tell whether or not it’s sustainable, because ultimately one of the main problems is the pipeline of talent, and that just has to start so much sooner. Then it harkens to broader structural issues that explain a lot of the lack of diversity within the industry.
At the end of the day, art and design school is expensive, and it’s very much a privilege, and you’re not guaranteed a high-paying salary immediately after college. I think those are structural challenges that the industry is just going to have to question more broadly, and that’s both within the art and design worlds. It’s hard to say whether any of the changes will be lasting, because I think that’s such a fundamental aspect of it. But I do hope that everyone is committed to seeing these conversations through to actual fruition. I’m optimistic, but we’ve been down this path before, I’m sure, at different points throughout American history.
AT: How has 2020 changed your perspective on or approach to your work?
TD: We embraced digital in a very different way. [The pandemic] forced us into that since we couldn’t do anything in an offline environment. Our first digital exhibition launched in May, and that was motivated by the fact that we knew design would be canceled. We had this whole offsite thing planned, and it just wasn’t possible. I just used it as an opportunity to embrace something new, so we pivoted immediately to a CGI format, but that’s really opened up a lot of doors for us. It broadened how we think about presenting and showcasing work.
AT: Any big plans for 2021 or beyond you can share with us?
TD: Right now there is no human life in a lot of [our imagery] — it’s all just still lifes — but I want to change that. I want to engage with our community more, but then also representing them more within the brand. That’s definitely a priority, and then in terms of how we even source design, that community aspect is also going to be a part of it.
I’ve been designing with an internal team up until this point, but next year we’re going to start working with other emerging designers. That really expands the breadth of voices within the product as well, so there’s going to be a much broader range of design processes and philosophies represented in the collection.
Interview has been edited and condensed.