FEATURE
Give Them The Fantasy
Design Dysphoria
Location
Gotham Chelsea
146 10th Ave, NY
Type
Interview
Contact
Design Dysphoria returns for its second iteration, transforming Gotham Chelsea’s gallery into an immersive celebration of queer design and multimedia art. Co-curated by Liz Collins, Grace Whiteside of Sticky Glass, and Studio S II’s Erica Sellers and Jeremy Silberberg, “Give Them The Fantasy” represents a significant evolution from last year’s intimate Bushwick debut. What draws us to Design Dysphoria is their relentless commitment to expanding what queer design can be and where it belongs, pushing boundaries across partnerships, media, and cultural spaces.
This year’s exhibition features over 20 LGBTQIA+ artists working across disciplines, expanding beyond furniture and lighting into video works that reference queer cinema and club culture. The curators have created what they describe as cinematic vignettes throughout the space, with installations that transform the gallery into scenes reminiscent of influential queer films. This multimedia approach allows Design Dysphoria to incorporate the visual languages that have long shaped queer spaces, from nightclub aesthetics to cult cinema references.
Working with Gotham represents a bold expansion of where queer design can exist and thrive. The partnership between a cannabis dispensary and design collective speaks to the natural intersections between cannabis culture and queer nightlife, resistance, and community building. This collaboration extends beyond exhibition into retail, with Design Dysphoria creating a limited-edition product line that translates their aesthetic into accessible objects for Gotham’s customers.
The exhibition arrives during Pride Month at a moment when queer and trans voices need amplification more than ever. By intentionally centering women, nonbinary, and trans creators, Design Dysphoria proves that queer design isn’t just a category but a methodology that incorporates contradiction, softness, resistance, and invention. Their work redefines who gets to be a designer and what counts as design, creating spaces that feel both celebratory and defiant. In championing these voices, Design Dysphoria offers both celebration and resistance at a time when both are desperately needed.
Design Dysphoria debuted in your Bushwick studio last year and has now evolved into a major exhibition at Gotham Chelsea for Pride Month. How has your vision for the project expanded, and how has the response or landscape around queer design shifted since last year?
Grace Whiteside: Well unfortunately the rights and wellbeing of Queer and Trans folks is still under threat due to our current fascist government’s attempts at legislative erasure. So there is a sense of urgency to continue to establish queer and trans spaces and partner with reputable organizations to help highlight this important work. The theme of this year’s exhibition has expanded into a multimedia exhibition, allowing us to bring in more voices and projects that resonate with queer cinema and club culture. These scenes are two incredibly important spaces for LGBTQIA+ brilliance and camaraderie.
Erica Sellers & Jeremy Silberberg: The original exhibition in our Bushwick studio felt punk and gritty; it gave us space to celebrate queer aesthetics on our own terms. This year, working with Gotham, the vision naturally scaled up. We had the opportunity to reach more people, support more artists, and really sink into curatorial experimentation. The political urgency has only increased, and with that, so has our desire to carve out spaces that feel unapologetically queer AND accessible for all. We’re seeing more people embrace the importance of queer design as a political and cultural force.
What drew you to Gotham as a partner for this year’s exhibition, and how has working within this unique cannabis retail environment influenced your curatorial decisions or the way you’re presenting the work?
Erica & Jeremy: Cannabis culture has long intersected with queer nightlife, pleasure, resistance, and healing, so the pairing felt natural. Gotham gave us the space (literally and conceptually) to play with fantasy in ways we hadn’t before. We leaned into the duality making the entire exhibition a kind of cinematic experience, every vignette feels like a different scene. Velvet drapery, trippy wallpaper, mirrored surfaces, wall-to-wall carpet, none of it is accidental. We wanted people to walk in and feel transported and wanna hang out in the space for hours.
Gotham has pioneered the concept of cannabis retail as cultural space across your locations in East Village, Hudson, Williamsburg, and now Chelsea. What made Design Dysphoria feel like the right inaugural exhibition for your new art gallery-dispensary hybrid, and how do you see this model evolving?
Rachel Berks, VP of Merchandising and Creative at Gotham: We’re thrilled to host Design Dysphoria’s “Give Them the Fantasy,” our first group exhibition at Gotham Chelsea, that features the work of more than 20 LGBTQIA+ artists and designers. We were familiar with the work and success of Design Dysphoria’s first show, during last year’s NYCxDesign week, and resonated with their intersectional approach to design curation. What initially started as a product collaboration for Shelter Design Fair, expanded to include a multi-disciplinary show that celebrates queerness and design in various forms.
Part of our mission when opening Gotham Chelsea and the street level gallery attached was to provide a platform for emerging artists and new voices in the industry to showcase and sell their work in an accessible, beautifully designed environment. This group show in particular is an active example of our commitment to artists, creatives, and the cultural landscape of New York City.
This year’s theme “Give Them The Fantasy” draws inspiration from queer films and gender exploration in video games and media. Could you walk us through how these references translate into the physical exhibition experience you’re creating?
Liz Collins: We started ideating about the space and I proposed using this wallpaper I made with Flavor Paper in 2019 called Permanent Sunset that is based on the 1981 cult classic, high new wave, campy alien, club- kid, druggy, early gender fuck film Liquid Sky, which I like to cite as one of the films that formed my aesthetics as a teen- I saw it when it came out. The wallpaper and the description of that film to my collaborators and of a prior installation I did at the New Museum for the Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon show in 2017 that was inspired by that film, and seedy video lounges, led us to think about film in a bigger way and cement our theme. We wanted it to be a lounge and were looking at video game arcades and screening rooms as references…. the velvet curtains along lots of the walls gives the movie theater feeling as well as the darker vibe of the space, despite the many windows. Blue Velvet came up as a reference as well…..
You’ve been intentional about centering women, nonbinary, and trans voices in Design Dysphoria. What conversations or collaborations emerged during the curation process that pushed your own thinking about queer design forward?
Erica & Jeremy: One of the most moving parts of this process has been watching the artists speak to one another through their work. Design often gets siloed into “product” or “function”, but (ideally) queer design shatters that. It’s about affect, gesture, and survival. Some artists reimagined domesticity, others explored eroticism or ritual. We started to think of queer design not as a category, but as a methodology, one that incorporates contradiction, softness, resistance, and invention all at once.
This year you’re incorporating video works alongside the design objects. What prompted this expansion into multimedia, and how do you see these different art forms speaking to each other within the exhibition?
Grace: We had early discussions about our favorite queer cult classics that are intergenerational examples of meaningful representation within our communities. These narratives, sets and characters have become iconic in shaping queer, spaces and trends. From the pastel set of “But I’m a Cheerleader” to the campy interactive extravaganza of Rocky Horror Picture Show, influential queer excellence is present. Liz Collins’ Permanent Sunset, “Miami Nice” flavor Paper that sets the stage for this exhibition is directly inspired by “Liquid Sky.” and so on.
Looking ahead, how do you envision Design Dysphoria continuing to evolve as a platform? What role do you hope it plays in the broader conversation about LGBTQIA+ representation in design and art?
Grace: We would love to expand into other kinds of interactive group exhibitions. We were talking about an elaborate performative dinner party as a potential next venture… I would love to see performance art and object activation play a role in the next exhibition. There are so many brilliant minds within this collective, it is exciting to watch us evolve from the inside out.
Erica & Jeremy: We see Design Dysphoria as a platform for radical authorship. It’s about rewriting who gets to be a designer and what counts as design. What queer space-making looks like. We’re dreaming about future iterations: a dinner party, maybe a publication. What matters is that it stays rooted in collaboration and care. We want Design Dysphoria to be impossible for institutions to ignore. This is just the beginning.
Exhibition artists: Francheska Alcántara, Cat Ashley, Liz Collins, Deborah Czeresko, Brooke Didonato, Dean Erdmann, Liz Hopkins, Nima Jeizan, Savannah Knoop, Nadya Lev, Joseph Liatela, Jeremy Martin, Maxwell Runko, Cheryl Riley, Zander Schlacter, Rachel Stern, Sara Stern, Vincent Tiley, Sam Warkov, Grace Whiteside, Genderfail, HH, Studio S II.
Photography: Chris Coe