The designer Grace Wales Bonner was still a student at Central Saint Martins, when she first came across Kerry James Marshall’s work in an art magazine while working in the library. “I found it so striking and I was intrigued. It was very seductive,” she recalls via email. When she began “seeing his work everywhere” she took it as a sign that it was something she needed to delve into deeper. Wales Bonner eventually traveled to Antwerp to see a retrospective of his work that was being shown at the M HKA, the city’s museum of contemporary art. Marshall’s work centralizes and refocuses Black figures within the Western art canon. “His whole approach really influenced my own ideas about fashion,” she said.
Now, almost a decade later, the designer and the fine artist have joined forces on a capsule offering of two T-shirts, with all proceeds being donated to Study and Struggle, a mutual aid organization based in Mississippi that fights anti-Black racism and mass incarceration through political education and community-building.
“I have always loved the idea of working together [with Kerry James Marshall], but I never thought it would be possible,” Wales Bonner said. “I think my work has always been about broadening a spectrum of representation and freeing people mentally—opening up people’s perceptions. I see beauty as a seductive device to awaken people to new possibilities this way.” Fittingly, the collection was photographed by Tyler Mitchell, whose own work has also been inspired by Marshall’s vision and ethos.
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