Designer, filmmaker, and writer Walé Oyéjidé, Esq., discusses his ongoing project, After Migration: In Defense of Using Beauty to Illustrate the Journeys of Those Who Have Suffered, with professor Teju Cole.
Walé Oyéjidé, Esq. is a fashion designer whose work featured prominently in the Marvel Studios’ blockbuster Black Panther. He is a writer, speaker, filmmaker, musician, and lawyer who combats bias with creative storytelling. As the founder of the brand Ikiré Jones, he employs fashion design as a vehicle to celebrate the perspectives of marginalized populations.
In conversation with Teju Cole, Harvard University’s Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing, Oyéjidé will argue that migrants are owed more artful depictions of their cross-border experiences. And that our creative pursuits should always be founded in fostering a more equitable society.
Analyzing Oyéjidé’s ongoing After Migration project, which beautifully celebrates the lives of refugees with fashion design, filmmaking and photography, the two will discuss the impacts that transcendent story-telling can have on the lives of those who are commonly shown as victims. They will further address the impacts that artists can have on society at large when they focus on making works which are honest, rather than prioritizing the desire to make a profit.
Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts, the ArtLab, and the Harvard Art Museums. The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m.
Before the lecture, guests are invited to visit the exhibition Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art on Level 3 from 5:30-6:30 pm.
Complimentary parking is available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.
Photo: Marko Metzinger. Courtesy of Ikiré Jones.