This time last year, Nicole checked in 18 boxes of luggage from Pretoria to Miami – all filled with larger-than-human-sized jewellery beaded by over 100 Ndebele women. The earrings would later hang from trees, luring people to look up and long to touch them. The artwork, just like Nicole, is well acquainted with migration. Having lived in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Canada, and now, the United States, Nicole produces African design that is authentic to her cultural evolution. ‘When I bring things across borders, they transform in the process,’ Nicole says, describing the journey of Pearl Jam, her public art installation inspired by Ndebele jewellery, currently on display in Miami.
As much as her design revives African authenticity, it is an intentional form of cultural exchange: an invitation to share in familiarity and foreignness.
It’s African – and it’s not
Although Nicole dreams of having an African design district, she won a commission with the renowned Miami Design District where she now presents her work. Here, she introduces the story of Ndebele beading with her exhibition affectionately called ‘A Love Letter to Ndebele Women’ featuring a hands-on beading workshop. Both Ndebele beading and jewellery are connected to womanhood, with its patterns marking key transitions in a woman’s life. In preserving its significance in a new setting, Nicole partakes in what she calls ‘cultural sustainability’: a reimagining of old traditions that conserves knowledge and suggests new possibilities.
When asked about placing something so connected to Africa in Miami, Nicole contends that the work’s cross-continental character demonstrates the unboundedness of African design – not limited to a geography, but rather a dialogue that deserves global engagement. She says, ‘It’s a way of expanding the conversation, asking: what does it mean for African cultural expression to exist new geographies? How do we honour tradition while allowing it to evolve and engage with the world?’
The bench – mimicking a deconstructed Ndebele necklace – is placed below the trees. It is intentionally designed as a place for people to sit, pause, and admire the earrings in the tree. When people want to touch the earrings, far out of their reach, she reprimands them: ‘No one touches the earrings on your ears. They’re precious.’ Nicole’s design brings a constant reflection of self, through the other – be it a tree or the colours of a new culture. As much as her design revives African authenticity, it is an intentional form of cultural exchange: children and adults are drawn to the bright colours; an invitation to share in familiarity and foreignness. ‘Sometimes, we’re just so attached to our designs. But I’m more interested in how other people are attached to the design,’ Nicole reflects. The Ndebele-inspired installation prompts the discovery of familiarity amongst the unknown.
Thinking in scales
Nicole rejects disciplinary limitations as an architect, urban designer, and artist – or, as she describes herself, a rule breaker. Her process reflects the belief that architecture is a multidisciplinary art: like a filmmaker, Nicole approaches the design project as a sequence of moments, curating the user’s experience. It begins with storyboarding: blank squares are used to sketch and plot the building’s transformation.
To understand form and scale, one must inherently borrow from alternative knowledge systems. Take light, neurology, and sculpting, by way of example – each is networked to architecture in uncanny ways. For Nicole, a small detail in a piece of jewellery can relate to broader patterns of urban design. Her own practice, G.U.D (Good Urban Design), is founded on the limitless potential of cross-disciplinary practice and her signature talent – storytelling. Narrative proliferates the research phase, an interrogation of history and lived experiences. Model-making, digital iterations, and prototyping follow, scene after scene, in a spontaneous process. ‘What does the design want to be?’ she asks. This is the question she returns to – allowing the design to lead, to tell its story.
