Institutions ranging from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum exhibit his Africana collection of chairs, for example—stout, hand-carved pieces that feel rooted or vernacular yet refreshingly modern next to contemporary works mining different, more prevalent modes.

Visibility serves as a guide to Teague’s career. His eponymous design studio, founded in 2020, builds diamond-sharp custom furnishings and refracts their African-inflected vision outward, into publicly accessible areas. As an artist, his work is featured in the permanent collections of LACMA, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

This demand to be seen widely also informs Teague’s work as an educator. Prior to opening his own shop, Teague co-founded the Design Apprenticeship Program at the University of Chicago’s Arts Incubator, which mentors youth on the principles of design, as well as co-founder of blkHaUS studios, which seeks to leverage design principles for social impact, uplifting marginalized communities along with the buildings on their blocks. Now an assistant professor in the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, his research focuses on design as a cultural exchange.

“I think a part of me is—I'll just use the word salty—that, you know, a lot of the time I have yet to find people of color in particular areas,” Teague said. Yet to Teague, pushing back against a dearth of Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color faces not only motivates his work as an African American man, it is also integral to it.

Growing up, Teague lived in several neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side—Bronzeville, Englewood, Roseland, West Lawn, and South Shore—and his life in these communities was nurturing. Still, something as simple as traveling freely, in a city that is notoriously segregated, opened up new visions of what was possible. Segregation in Chicago has unfortunately allowed a strict division of where the city will and will not invest city funds. 

“As a teen, I moved around on public transportation but instead of using coins, there used to be a transfer you could get [to use public transit]. You could ride the bus all day long on this ‘super transfer,’” Teague shared. “And I think seeing downtown, seeing the North Side, and this sort of free spirit and lifestyle. Those were early moments of seeing more of the world.”

Seeing how other people lived made Teague wonder if the community he hailed from could encompass more. “That was a moment of really envisioning my own neighborhoods,” he said,  “And I didn't know I was reimagining, but I think I was just like, ‘There are things that can be done.’ And I didn’t think that these people in these well-to-do neighborhoods were going to come to my neighborhood and do something. So it would have to be something that comes from within, somebody who understands the need for transformation. And so that's when architecture became a valuable direction.”

Teague’s desire to shift consciousness in communities through art and design is notable for its ambition and his way toward it. His path went from Harold Washington College to Columbia College Chicago to SAIC, where he graduated from the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, & Designed Objects with his Masters in Designed Objects. At SAIC, his mentors were Charles Harrison (BFA 1954)—the late designer and executive at Sears Roebuck best known for creating the View-Finder—and the visual artist and sculptor Martin Puryear. He also cited the architect Frank Gehry and the industrial designers Konstantin Grcic and Marc Newson as influences.

“I had a lot of inspiration growing up,” Teague said. “And they kind of gave me the license to be different, you know, be the industrial designer who's doing art and social projects. I mean, a chair must do a few things if you expect people to sit on it. But sometimes a chair doesn't offer you that. Sometimes a chair offers you curiosity instead of comfort.”

“A chair must do a few things if you expect people to sit on it. But sometimes a chair doesn't offer you that. Sometimes a chair offers you curiosity instead of comfort.”

Teague is coming off Designer’s Choice, a MoMA exhibition that considered iconic MoMa pieces next to posters and full-scale prototypes, establishing a quarrelsome dialogue between designers of color and an exclusionary, predominantly white past. Other than functioning as a showcase for his unique interplay of color, line, and curvature, Choice is notable for the use of generative artificial intelligence to create the companion pieces. Lifesaver or a crutch: it’s irrelevant. Teague merely used the technology to scale up and branch out—conceptualizing a counter-narrative from scratch because the MoMA’s permanent collection is severely lacking in Black designers.

“I had to do the radical thing of reimagining a particular time period, when a canon was created, that Black folks were there,” Teague said. “Black folks like George Clinton where, instead of making music, he was making furniture, too. How else do I remix situations that might seem somewhat sour?”

Sometimes the answer takes the form of an intervention. His Sinmi stool, named for the Yoruba word meaning “relax,” features a triangular, bent-wood sitting space braced by rockers on the bottom, forcing the sitter to be hyper-aware of their body in order to maintain their balance. The design is featured in the collections of several notable museums.

Other times, the answer is a call-and-response—Black and Brown people mingling in dramatic, meticulously designed spaces. Teague’s elongated and elegant gazelle chairs form the basis of the design of Bronzeville Winery, a dining establishment that opened in 2022 and quickly became an essential South Side restaurant. Elsewhere, a 2012 work for Theaster Gates (HON 2014) at Documenta 2012 resulted in the Dorchester Community Garden; Teague paired with Folayemi Wilson designed squat concrete stools with hexagonal wooden tables resembling honeycombs to provide increased functionality to an existing neighborhood community garden.

“These are places that I frequent myself,” Teague said. “The way in which I engage with these spaces is that I'm personally a member. If these chairs, tables, and beautiful settings are there without people, then they don't say much. I'm really feeling as though the things that I am designing and making are in collaboration with the audience that will use it.” A good example is the Africana dining table at R and Company that was carved by visitors in the effort to complete it.

Building on the legacies of his forbearers, so that those who come behind him can do the same, provides Teague a sense of purpose in unsure times. Some forthcoming projects include a campaign with Dorian Sylvain and Site Design Group, LLC to fund, design, and build a pavilion in the newly named Anna & Frederick Douglass Park to honor Anna and Frederick Douglass for a 2027 unveiling. Teague is also sketching out plans with Chicago Public Schools' Hyde Park Academy students to feature small pop-up shops inside of local high schools to empower young people.

“I knew [my vision] wouldn't look the same as what I had been reading about in design history and art history classes,” Teague said. “However, I knew that there were people who were starting a spark, and I just wanted to be a part of that team. I think there is a real return on investment that comes from building a thing in your neighborhood, a quiet thing or a thing that stands out and becomes a gathering space, a safe space or just a place for fun and reflection for others.” ■