Since the release of their EP Love Thyself in 2017, Dion “Tygapaw” McKenzie has become one of contemporary music’s most crucial DJs and producers, offering a perspective that advances futures of techno while foregrounding their roots in Black, queer, trans, and Jamaican cultures. At Art Omi, their first institutional show, titled “3WI” (short for “third-world immigrant”), stages a vibrant mix of performance, video, and visual artwork that traces techno as a crucial musical form connected to a rich lineage of Black music and critiques its commodity in nightlife today. The centerpiece is an audio recording of a solo modular synthesizer and a drum machine performance the artist staged in the fall that reverberates throughout the gallery.

Tygapaw uses electronic music to address questions of migration and erasure raised by the global prominence of techno. The genre’s migration from Detroit’s Black, queer, and trans communities in the ‘80s to European hubs like Berlin and London—and how it has been hybridized and recontextualized since—mirrors their journey as a Jamaican immigrant. It’s also reflected in their singular style, which references classic techno tropes while incorporating a range of influences to capture a style dubbed “sultry club,” described by Pioneer Works as a mélange of “sexy ‘90s R&B sounds with futuristic vibes and intricate melodies that are as much for the club as they are for a chill kiki at your homegirl’s crib.”

This past weekend, Tygapaw spoke in a conversation circling around the future of techno at Montez Press Radio with an all-star lineup: Juliana Huxtable, Russell E.L. Butler, and McKenzie Wark. In between this, and working on an album that pivots from the dancefloor to a more experimental sound, Tygapaw spoke with Surface about American citizenship, negative space, and Grace Jones.

What was your inspiration for the show?

I became a U.S. citizen in July and thought there was no better time to use art as a platform or medium for the challenging journey I’ve had. It’s a sound piece, but my background is also in visual arts; I studied at Parsons and interned at Surface! I’m presenting two videos of two separate performances. Much of my work is in building spaces and their impact on the audience—how one feels within a space, and how sound dictates how one moves within it. I wanted a focal piece. I’ve done sound pieces on the floor and I’m strongly against tables.

Why?

I want there to be more interaction in terms of the table’s interface as a part of the piece. So I designed this sculpture on tour. It incorporates an LED scrolling apparatus with my writing. I feel vulnerable revealing personal aspects of my journey, but it gives other layers than the hardness of techno, which is a response to environmental stressors. The shape signifies razors, but an abstraction of that form. I photographed barbed wires; I was obsessed with the negative shape. I grew up around this fencing, these ways of security. It’s like my nature: I’m tender on the inside but on the exterior there’s a toughness. I wanted to signal that in the piece.

What about the vinyl images of passports and documents on the walls?

It’s a crazy experience, the idea of having a barcode. Living under extreme surveillance is traumatizing. There’s no freedom in that. So it’s my commentary on the anxieties it brings up, having been seen in my entire journey within the U.S. and becoming a legitimate citizen.

But on your own terms.

I had limitations growing up in Jamaica, this predicament where I could conform or challenge the system. I chose the latter because it was ill-fitting; it was trying to dismantle everything within me. If I’m dismantled as a person, who am I at the end? I wasn’t interested in finding out.

I give Jamaica credit. In that culture, you heard something musical every day. Jamaican artists like Grace Jones were about fucking up the status quo. She signaled that one’s experience is valid. I’ve acknowledged my impact more. We can acknowledge that we can be empowered, even though there’s so much chaos. New York has been my home for 22 years. This city has made everything I’ve achieved possible. It’s for you to actualize. Now’s the time we hold space for each other to do the hard work.

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For a pair of new restaurants from Michelin-starred chef Raphael Rego, architect Arnaud Behzadi built connections between the chef’s Brazilian heritage and Parisian location literally into the walls, where the Haussmann building’s ground-floor stone meets a new façade of warm Jatoba wood. Inside, Behzadi offered each restaurant—Oka, named for the Tupi word for “house,” and Fogo, the word for “fire”—its own main room; there’s also an alcove with room for six, and a vaulted tasting room for its 5,000 wine and champagne offerings. At Oka, Rego’s tasting menu takes guests on journeys down Brazil’s two rivers. Fogo, meanwhile, offers plates inspired by Brazil’s gauchos, like Beef with cassava and chimichurri.

Behzadi fills both rooms with seating from Brazil’s own Sergio Rodrigues, which create the perfect vantage points for a pair of monumental frescoes by Florence Bamberger. For Oka, she pays tribute to the surrealist writer Borgés in a charming vista of jaguar, capivara, coati roux, toucan, and ara hyacinthe. A French touch appears in Fogo, for which Bamberger offers a take on Édouard Manet’s painting Déjeuner sur l’herbe.

One bright spot this spring arrives in the form of a new collaboration between lighting purveyor RBW and Little Wing Lee, founder of Studio & Projects and the crucial organization Black Folks in Design. First up is Cape, a fixture that floats a luminaire within a glistening wired cage. “It was born from an interest in industrial and nautical lighting,” Lee says. Whether installed as a sconce or flush-mounted to the ceiling, the cage casts soft shadows that lend depth.

Three other lights will join Cape in the coming months. “They take inspiration from sculpture, architecture, jewelry, and the celebration of materiality and light’s different modes of perception,” she says. “I’m excited both by how different each fixture is, in terms of form and materials, but also how they work as a collection and expression of ideas from our studio.”

Throughout her career, Hella Jongerius has challenged conventional design approaches, emphasizing hands-on exploration of materials and a critical reflection of design practices. Now she’s entrusting her extensive archive to the Vitra Design Museum and collaborating with its curators to create her first retrospective, slated to open in 2026. Besides offering a thorough overview of the Dutch industrial designer’s three-decade career, the exhibition will showcase material experiments, scale models, and prototypes, examine industrial production’s impact on traditional craftsmanship, and explore the archive as a metaphor for collective memory.

In other people news, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts elected Max Hollein, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s director and CEO, to its board of directors. Organizers of the SITE Santa Fe recently named Cecilia Alemani as curator of the biennial’s twelfth edition. MoMA recently named Tanja Hwang as a curator in the department of architecture and design. Stephen Brooks, who was selected to lead Phillips three years ago, has departed the auction house for personal reasons; executive chairman Ed Dolman will take over his role for now.

Spikelets of wheat may be a perennial muse for the Ukrainian designer Svitlana Bevza, but this season, she found inspiration in another emblem of her home country: the marigold. A symbol of optimism, renewal, and revival, the blooms were a favorite of the designer’s late grandfather. No longer able to plant Marigold seeds in Kyiv in his honor, as she has for the past 20 years, this collection sees her label’s supporters don them as gold vermeil earrings, necklaces, and pins from New York to Seoul, Paris, and in between. From $150

Audo Copenhagen is born of a collaborative spirit. Developed from uniting Menu, The Audo, and by Lassen, Audo Copenhagen reflects a century of Danish design tradition and a modern, global outlook that continually expands and evolves. The brand’s furniture, lighting, and accessories are shaped by purposeful details, high-quality materials, and human needs, going hand-in-hand with a pursuit to create strong, long-lasting connections.

Surface Says: Audo has cultivated a stable of covetable must-haves from a hand-picked range of celebrated designers, from the archival—Ib Kofod-Larsen, Mogens Lassen—to contemporary stars like Norm Architects and Colin King.

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