Design Miami/ 2023's curatorial theme, Where We Stand, was conceptualized as a celebration of design inspired by place, identity, and heritage. According to Design Miami/ Curatorial Director Anna Carnick, “The theme is an invitation to consider design objects as anthropological markers that reveal an array of stories about the time and place in which they were made. And, in embracing design as a tool for storytelling, to ask: How might the stories we share nurture our sense of connection to one another and our planet? How does our relationship to the very ground beneath our feet and the people with whom we share it inform our sense of belonging, the obligations we have to one another, and our paths forward?”

Scroll on to see five highlights from this year’s fair.

Beirut-based designer Nada Debs is known for championing craft traditions throughout her award-winning work. Now, she teams up with Studio Lél, a Peshawar, Pakistan-based art collective that fuses modern creativity with centuries-old craftsmanship, working hand in hand with local artisans and those displaced by conflict from neighboring Afghanistan. The result is a special iteration of Debs’ signature Carapace table, featuring her abstract, geometric design (“Geometry is a universal language,” she says). Done in a symphony of colors inspired by Peshawar’s vibrant hues, the table harnesses the region’s legacy of stone inlay crafts. The elegant piece bridges past and present while preserving heritage across borders.

Ukrainian designer Victoria Yakusha of FAINA studio debuts The Land of Light, a seating collection conceived as a celebration of the undimmable spirit of the Ukrainian people. The generously proportioned, handcrafted pieces are formally inspired by mythical animals and composed of the studio’s signature eco- friendly ztista material (a mix of cellulose, clay, flax fiber and wood chips)that is applied using a technique similar to the traditional Ukrainian building method of valkuvannya. Collectively, the pieces are intended as a symbol of encouragement for people everywhere to look within for strength, light and joy.

Rive Roshan’s The Space In-Between Curio installation was designed as a peaceful sanctuary in which to contemplate what is possible in the spaces between us—particularly in a moment far too often marked by division. Beautifully hued glassworks like the Polarity Panels and Space In-Between Tables highlight the potential for shifting perspectives through light, form and texture. Meanwhile, the moving Voices Vessels are the designers’ tribute to the brave voices of Iranian women and their allies calling for freedom. 3D printed in sand, they’re meant to evoke the power of the human spirit, calling to mind the energy and fluidity of spinning dancers, frozen in time, dressed in pleated fabric.

Designer Mac Collins crafts potent, narrative-driven artifacts that draw on his British Jamaican heritage, often offering up a corrective, postcolonial lens. His 2023 Uncoded games table, stools, and dominoes set are the follow-up to Open Code, a work designed for the 2022 Harewood Biennial exhibition Radical Acts: Why Craft Matters. Responding directly to that exhibition’s setting—the West Yorkshire, England, 18th-century family home of plantation and slave owner Edwin Lascelles—Collins’ design confronts the history of the house and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Dominoes (a game with deep Caribbean roots that is still widely played by the Jamaican community in Nottingham, England where Collins grew up) was staged as the protagonist of the home’s game room in what the designer has called a “corrective act of representation.”

South African ceramicist Zizipho Poswa’s latest collection, iiNtsika zeSizwe (Pillars of the Nation), is an intimate homage to specific women in the artist’s home village of Holela in rural Eastern Cape, South Africa. The large-scale bronze totems are meant to honor their individual and collective contributions as women and as custodians of Xhosa ritual and customs, responsible for passing traditions from one generation to the next. The unique works feature a range of abstracted forms, inspired in part by the physical loads the women carry on a daily basis, such as firewood, corn and oranges; the works also celebrate how the community benefits not only from the women’s daily physical offerings but also from the immeasurable impact of their generosity of spirit.