Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami
Curated by Risa Puleo
For Monarchs, I was invited to take a more playful and experimental approach—responding to the exhibition’s central metaphor: the migratory monarch butterfly. The show explored themes of inheritance, transformation, and movement across the Americas through the lens of 37 contemporary Brown and Native artists. In response, I designed a visual system that emphasized motion, metaphor, and warmth.
I created the Monarchs logotype by shaping each letter out of stylized monarch butterfly wings—imbuing the word itself with texture and symbolic weight. This whimsical yet structured approach extended to the layout of wall text and printed materials. On the title wall, I echoed the curvature of migration and wind currents with sweeping, nonlinear type—allowing the text to move like flight paths. The exhibition paragraphs curved and danced beneath the title, and the installation was brought to life by a sculptural “swarm” of copper butterflies integrated into the design, arranged by one of the featured artists.
For the invitation postcard, I continued this spirit of movement and invitation, pairing a rich yellow-to-orange gradient with flight path dotted lines and bright, friendly serif accents. The goal was to visually welcome audiences into a show that centered memory, migration, resilience, and ancestral legacies.
Working closely with curator Risa Puleo, I developed a tone that felt accessible, hopeful, and conceptually rich—anchoring the design in a sense of wonder and honoring the multiple, interwoven journeys held within the exhibition.