'OUTSIDE/IN' at the NYCxDESIGN Festival 2025 asks what it means to belong in design

The term 'outsider', in the context of the design industry, might typically be associated with not having formal training, access to established networks or systems like those from a privileged background. Examining its meaning—not as a label or a marker of exclusion, but as a personal identity that values diversity, creativity, innovation and self-expression—is a group exhibition, OUTSIDE/IN, at the NYCxDESIGN 2025, presented by US-based global communications company Hello Human, in collaboration with the Lyle Gallery in New York.

On view from May 13 – June 1, 2025, the design exhibition features a lineup of 12 independent practices, designers and artists—such as Aliyah Salmon, Inderjeet Sandhu, Jaye Kim, Monica Curiel, Clarissa Guzman, Salù Iwadi Studio, Studio Tenjung, soft-geometry, Vy Voi, Tanuvi Hegde and Swati Jain—challenging the conventions of the design landscape through bold, fresh perspectives. Exploring identity and materiality, the contemporary design showcase establishes a deeper connection with the exhibition space through Sweden-based Kasthall design studio's Checkerboard Icon Rug in Midnight Black 554, presenting design as a catalyst for emotional, cultural and socio-political transformation.

"So often, incredible work exists just outside the boundaries of what's been historically considered 'marketable' or 'collectible'. OUTSIDE/IN is our way of celebrating that space between visibility and erasure—showing that when outsiders come together, they become insiders in their own right," says Jenny Nguyen, founder of Hello Human, in the show's press release. STIR explores the array of designers and their product, furniture and lighting designs articulating the exhibition, highlighting the sociocultural inspirations rooted in their backgrounds and personal experiences.

Aliyah Salmon, a Brooklyn-based Afro-Caribbean American artist, investigates black femininity and identity, exploring themes of surveillance, subconsciousness and isolation through collage and textile designs. She brings a handwoven yarn painting, Wherever you go, there you are (2024) to the exhibition, discussing 'what fine art is allowed to be'. After several iterations of sketching and drawings of conceptual designs, the artist uses wool, mohair and glass beads and crafts the piece's composition using hand tufting with Oxford punch needles. Utilising unconventional materials and techniques to create the painting, Salmon plays within and outside the confines of traditional distinctions among art, design and craft.

Hailing from a Dutch-Indian family, designer Inderjeet Sandhu now lives and works in Amsterdam, exploring the ideas of domesticity and belonging and translating socio-political and personal themes of resistance with his work. Through his handblown glass vases, That's Bananas, underlines the acceptance of the exotic fruit into homes, feigning ignorance towards its origins that are laden with exploitation. The exhibit integrates the fruit as decorations in the vases, shedding light upon the selective exoticism embraced in everyday life and challenging visitors to ponder "what is celebrated, what is erased, and who gets to be part of the story," as the press release mentions.

South Korean ceramic artist Jaye Kim translates the symbolism and quiet rituals of motherhood into creating large-scale pieces of clay that reflect upon domestic life. Her ceramic art piece for OUTSIDE/IN embodies longing, displacement and feeling like an outsider despite living in New York for years. The sculptural design depicts a moment suspended in time, characterised by wilted flowers frozen in place, allowing the artist to honour and accept a troubled past.

Denver-based Mexican American multidisciplinary artist Monica Curiel uses construction materials to craft pieces that define heritage and associated identity, exploring its cultural, personal and social influences. Through the La Mari (2025) art piece exhibited during the design week, Curiel extracts and honours the ancestral craftsmanship passed down through generations. Using spackling paste to create wrinkled, textured and folded forms, the artist attempts to capture the essence of Mexican culture and traditions.

A first-generation Mexican-American from Houston, Texas, self-taught artist Clarissa Guzman is a spatial designer based in New York City, and the founder of Platform Studio. The American artist draws on her heritage and personal journey to create product designs that incorporate aspects of brutalism, religious artefacts and childlike playfulness and imagination. For the showcase at the design festival, she presents the handmade Ceremonia candle in the memory of her youth spent around ornate, religious candelabras (two taper candleholders), featuring ceramic forms influenced by Mesoamerican symbolism.

Studio Tenjung, founded by Tibetan-American designer Tenzin Tsomo, specialises in textile design and creates hand-knotted rugs that blend heritage and innovation. The hung artwork, Portrait of a Mischievous Matriarch, is an 'anthropomorphic presence' at the exhibition, radiating the 'quiet confidence' of the women who raised her. Drawing inspiration from their black chubas and oiled hair parted into two taut braids, the designer weaves dense black wool into an abstract form.

Along with the artworks and everyday objects, OUTSIDE/IN showcases lighting designs that embody the cultural and personal histories of its designers. Run by LA-based Indian designers Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary, soft-geometry crafts objects and furniture designs that fuse Indian craftsmanship with contemporary forms to bring 'softness' into everyday life. Its Long Haired Sconces bring visual respite in the exhibition space through soft, organic forms, representing braided hair—associated with the memory of mothers doing haircare for their children—as a symbol of domestic rituals in an Indian home.

Based in New York and Vietnam, the Vy Voi design studio by industrial designer and ceramic artist Steffany Trần brings forth overlooked cultural history with its lighting design Kite in-Flight at the design event. Inspired by the concept and materiality of Diều Sáo, a traditional Vietnamese whistling kite, the floor lamp is made from a giấy Dó (Dó paper) frame and a slender brass stem on an American cherry base, echoing the sounds of a spirited kite flying in the sky.

Asian American designers Irisa and Aaron Kawabi, founders of Brooklyn-based Kawabi studio, channel their spiritual interests and examine diaspora to utilise materiality, form and space as 'tools for inner attunement' at the design fair. The Souvenir floor lamp design is a culmination of lighting, sculpture and totem, representing a spiritual gateway by placing a kozo paper lamp over a wooden post that resembles a tall gate. The components collectively create a 'visual beacon of energy', connecting nature, time, matter and memory.

Founded by Lagos and Dakar-based architect and designer Toluwalase Rufai and curator Sandia Nassila in 2023, the Salù Iwadi Studio celebrates rich African heritage through furniture designs that tell a story. The Zangbeto side table reinterprets the forms of Zangbeto (a sacred tradition of the Ogu people) costumes to create a layered wooden furniture piece with fins, translating the dynamic Zangbeto dance and rhythm into a static, functional piece of sculptural art.

Indian architect and furniture designer Tanuvi Hegde from New York offers a moment of reflection with her tactile designs, exploring the convergence of function, emotion and sensory engagement. Hegde presents the Reflect armchair—from the furniture collection Exhibit (A): Furniture for the Anxious Being, which is designed in an attempt to support mental well-being, featuring steel ball bearings on the armrests for the users to fidget with at the exhibition.

Swati Jain, a transdisciplinary architectural designer and artist born in India and based in New York City, brings Table On A Walk, which translates the act of thinking and working by dispersing its components that embody elements of nature and mindfulness. Just as the bee orchid flower camouflages to attract male bees to promote pollination, the table design spotlights the camouflaging tactics employed in workplaces to attenuate the impact on the environment.

Attempting to generate discourse on the tension between inclusion and gatekeeping, the exhibition poses a question: What does it mean to belong in design, and who decides who is in or out? OUTSIDE/IN foregrounds artists and designers who tear down the barriers that limit them, forging their own path without forgetting their origins, allowing their learnings to shape their creative disciplines. The showcase presents inclusion as a process rooted in collaboration and connection, inviting visitors to reconsider their perceptions of a sense of belonging, disassociating it from the place and connecting it with a personal and creative identity.

"This exhibition also acknowledges its own position within the larger design framework. As a gallery show, OUTSIDE/IN recognises the tension between inclusion and gatekeeping. It doesn't claim to resolve these complexities but instead invites reflection on who defines the boundaries of 'inside' and 'outside' in design—and how those definitions can be expand," shares Lyle Gallery.

'OUTSIDE/IN' is on view from May 13 - June 1, 2025, at the Lyle Gallery in New York City.