“It’s been really, really busy,” Ilana Harris-Babou says of her season. The interdisciplinary artist has spent some of each fall week at Wesleyan University, teaching classes in time-based media, and the rest in her native Brooklyn, caring for her mother and preparing a pair of provocative shows in Manhattan. The first—“Under My Feet,” a layered installation that recontextualizes the street-level environments of the neighborhoods she grew up in—takes over the Storefront for Art and Architecture, while “Needy Machines,” powers up Candice Madey with sly observations about wellness marketing.

In an edited and condensed conversation, Harris-Babou spoke with Surface about persistence, playfulness, and the messy importance of being in your body.

How did you begin thinking through what would become “Under My Feet?”

Storefront wanted to have artists doing work about the ground-level, or streetscape, business of New York City. I thought the streetscape of my childhood in central Brooklyn would be a great place to start. What became exciting to me, when thinking about memory and place, was about how when folks, especially in the art world, say: “Oh, you’re from Crown Heights, you must have seen how much it changed.” Of course I did, but I also see the amazing people who stayed. Most people there still are Black. I see intergenerational persistence, and the conversations that have continued, and the spaces of love and learning that persist.

You include educational spaces, including a video about Brooklyn’s Lefferts Gardens Montessori school—what was important about mixing those into retail vernaculars?

I went to the Maple Street School, which was in a storefront space on Nostrand Avenue. I went on an exploration of learning spaces from my childhood, and those have been in the neighborhood for 40-plus years. I had beautiful conversations, especially talking to Meryl Thompson, the daughter of the founder of Lefferts Gardens Montessori. I realized the story in her own words would be most interesting to share, so that’s why the interview is there directly.

Retail figures into it as well, not just in terms of bodegas, but also cultural institutions like the African Record Centre.

Their collection is so beautiful. I admire the work they’ve done in the space of analog collecting. The books and records they have kind of speak for themselves.

How did you negotiate making space for all this at Storefront?

I was thinking about the dark exterior and how the space within could be an assertion of color, variation, and sound. My memories are the bright colors of facades in the summer—and how a neighborhood becomes less colorful with gentrification. I also thought about play, like how a child moves through a city and how it differs from ideas one might have about a flaneur, or something like that.

There’s the play of engaging with surfaces and spaces outside of direct narratives we have around utility. But I wanted to create an environment that gives cues to a person that you can sit down and play around and go into that headspace. At the opening, it was nice to see how it spoke to my target audience: kids came up to the door and asked if they could come in, and sat on the carpet and started playing with the toys. It’s not sitting and passively absorbing a video. It’s something where you wriggle around and be in your body in a different way.

Then you have a very different show opening in a few weeks.

I make a lot of work about gentrification and how luxury design frames spaces. But [this show] uses the language of high-end design as a direct foil to the messiness of human experience. It’s about an interior sort of adult space, and the messiness of being in a body. I’ve made these videos that take place in smart mirrors. I’ve made these luxury exercise mirrors into medicine cabinets that play videos you can see your face in. I’ve ruptured trendy surfaces like penny tile with amorphous food waste and human traces and swipes. It’s been a gift to explore two different sides or trains of thoughts in my practice simultaneously.

“Ilana Harris-Babou: Under My Feet” will be open at Storefront for Art and Architecture until Dec. 16.

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Laila and Nadia Gohar founded Gohar World in 2020; the “tableware universe,” as the sisters call it, forms networks between their New York studio and far-flung ateliers that manufacture the creations in Austria, Egypt, Italy, and Vietnam. This fall, Gohar World opened its first brick-and-mortar location, a quaint Nolita storefront bursting with the epicurean aesthetic Laila first articulated in her beloved dining experiences over the past few years.

For the shop, the sisters turned to longtime friend, Savvy Studio founder Rafael Prieto, who crafted a space defined by the entrance’s custom layered wallpaper, a trompe l’oeil of stone archways crumbling into secret gardens. Prieto worked with Wallpaper Projects to make the paper from photos he made in the South of France, while campaign photos for Gohar World’s Table IV holiday collection are the work of provocateur photographer Roe Ethridge. It includes a new line of wearables, including hair accessories, and will be for sale at the store along with a selection from previous collections and one-of-a-kind vintage finds. A new partnership with Champagne Lallier is also on the bubble, featuring a Mother of Pearl spoon sized for a bite of caviar or uni, and a dish to rest it upon.

When material polymath Max Lamb was seeking inspiration for a new collection with longtime partner Gallery Fumi, he didn’t have to look further than his studio. From the everyday delivery boxes littering his studio to the unbleached cardboard tubes in which he ships his tufted rugs, cardboard was plentiful enough to form the basis of a full range of furniture. Lamb layers various shapes of brown paper and secures them with bolts, screws, and paper gum tape. The results comprise some 34 one-of-a-kind seating, furniture, and accessory pieces, from a gently faceted chair daubed with acrylic paint to chunky stools darkened with linseed paint, each showing off its material roots while envisioning a more sustainable future.

Our weekly scoop on industry players moving onwards and upwards.

Shaquille O’Neal signed his initial endorsement deal with Reebok in 1992, right before his rookie season. In the ensuing three decades, he emerged as a basketball powerhouse as Reebok weathered ups and downs, including a sale from Adidas to Authentic Brands Group. As the company reestablishes its foothold in the sports arena and shoots for $10 billion in sales by 2027, it appointed O’Neal to the new role of president of basketball. Allen Iverson, another player with ties to the brand, was named vice president of basketball. Both players will oversee the category, cultivate partnerships, and drive player recruitment. “There’s no one I’d rather work with to bring in a new generation of ballers to Reebok than him,” O’Neal told WWD about Iverson. “Shaq and Al back at it—feels good.”

In other news, a spate of institutions have announced curatorial appointments. The Corning Museum of Glass has named Amy HcHugh as curator of modern glass and Tami Landis as curator of postwar and contemporary glass. SculptureCenter named Jovanna Venegas as curator; she recently served as SFMOMA’s associate curator of contemporary art and will assume her role in January. The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, announced Theresa Bembnister will join as curator after a five-year stint at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Art.

Last week, Dorsia teamed up with megawatt gallery Serpentine to kick off Frieze London—and toast the restaurant-booking platform’s launch across the pond. To celebrate, Bettina Korek, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Marc Lotenberg hosted the Capital City’s biggest names in art, fashion, and hospitality at The Chiltern Firehouse, a five-star hotel in the posh Marylebone district. There, cocktails from luxury tequila purveyor Clase Azul carried the party, as guests mingled over their glasses and bumps of Roe caviar late into the evening.

When was it? Oct. 12

Where was it? The Chiltern Firehouse, London

Who was there? Adwoa Aboah, Archie Madekwe, André Balazs, Chet Lo, Ozwald Boateng, Cyrill Ibrahim, Julien MacDonald, Nicholas Kirkwood, Henri Bergmann, Georgiana Huddart.

New & Notable is a cultural catchall that highlights interesting new products and projects from our brilliantly creative members of The List. With new releases, events, and goings-on, the below moments indicate the power they have to move the needle in realms like architecture, design, fashion, and art.

Saint-Louis: With the newly updated Apollo collection, Saint-Louis seems to ask: Is there any better pairing than exceptional tea and fine crystal? The 436-year-old maison tapped tea sommelier Lydia Gautier for its “Great” and “Charming” tea service sets made from porcelain and crystal, as well as a crystal espresso tumbler for the unswayable coffee connoisseurs.

13&9 Design: The Austrian product design studio’s latest launch for BuzziSpace defies easy categorization. A new iteration of the air-suspended BuzziPleat acoustic panel was created in collaboration with fellow Austrian fashion designer Sabrina Stadlober. She makes use of 13&9’s BuzziFelt, made from upcycled plastic bottles, while integrating overhead lighting to gently illuminate the expertly pleated felt.

Marcela Cure is an interior designer and artist from Barranquilla, Colombia. As the daughter of an artist mother, her upbringing was one of creative incitement, further permeated by Barranquilla’s folklore and intensity. Her multidimensional studio includes interior design services as well as shoppable collectible design objects.

Surface Says: An innate fascination with the human form permeates Marcela Cure’s boundary-defying practice: from her sublime, livable interiors to her sculptural objects, vibrancy and life are at the heart of everything she creates.

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