Bradley on Diasporic Design, Queer Interfaces, and Opacity
A conversation on culture, performance as publication, and the right to not be understood.
by Neha Hosangadi
In our conversation, Bradley talked about growing up online, grid systems, and how cruising, queerness, and Indo-Caribbean heritage show up in their work. They also reflected on their experiences teaching and how they navigate design as a diasporic person. We really connected on the challenges of talking about your own art as a person of color—how there’s an added pressure and sometimes you end up giving too much of yourself away to make others understand. We also talked about how experimental practices can serve as a way to explore power, control, and representation, something Bradley deeply delves into in their work.
Neha: Okay, so to start off, I’d love to hear more about you and your creative practice.
Bradley: Yeah, sure. So, I’m a graphic designer and artist. I always put “graphic designer” first because that’s my first training. I feel like I was trained to be an artist later. I was born and raised in South Florida and learned a lot about graphic design by making gifs on Tumblr as a teenager. I learned Photoshop there, and I bring that up a lot because there weren’t many precedents in my family for creative people. I had an older cousin who went to DASH—Design and Architecture Senior High in Miami—but beyond that, there weren’t many creatives in my family. So I found creativity in strange places, or like in the corners. I mean, Tumblr wasn’t exactly a
corner—everyone was on it—but it was definitely my intro.
Then in high school, I did a graphic design program in South Florida, and I’ve kind of just kept going since. I studied it in undergrad, worked in the field for three years before grad school, then came to VCU for my MFA, which I finished last year. Now I’m teaching.
As far as my creative practice, I look a lot to the Indo-Caribbean indentured labor system. It was a contract-based labor system, and there’s this whole history of deceit through paperwork—getting people to sign things under false pretenses. British colonialism really weaponized the law and documentation. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but the British colonial regime was very much a regime of knowledge—they kept extensive historical records of the people they were colonizing. That record-keeping was a way to legitimize their power. So yeah, “knowledge is power,” but in a very twisted way. I look at those materials in my work, but also at contemporary things too—I make a lot of work about queer cruising and queer online interfaces. Basically anywhere that graphic design and the gaze—being looked at—work together to shape identity or create a sense of otherness.
N: And did you have a particular moment when you knew that this was what you wanted to do?
B: Tumblr was definitely up there. But in high school, I really wanted to be an animator because I loved storytelling. Even now, I write a lot. Back then, I used to write short stories on the family computer and format them in Comic Sans—so even then, graphic design and writing were happening at the same time. Which is funny, because that’s still true now. But yeah, I had a moment in high school in an intro to digital media class—we had to make a logo or work with type, and I learned what kerning was. That unlocked something in my brain. I was like, “I’m obsessed with this.” I really loved it, and I felt like I had a knack for it.
I’m a Capricorn with a Virgo moon, so I’m very drawn to things I’m naturally good at. I’m not great at doing things I don’t succeed at early on—though I’m better at it now. But once my teacher was like, “Yeah, you should keep going with this, maybe study it in undergrad,” it really clicked. That was the moment—high school and, honestly, Tumblr.
N: What would you say your creative process is like—from start to finish? You talked about what inspires you, but more from a making perspective.
B: I’m a big reader and a big writer. I don’t think I’m great at writing, but I do it a lot. I read a lot of theory, and that’s always been a natural impulse. Back in undergrad, I was the only kid in my graphic design class going to the library. It was a really commercial program—basically: you’re going to work at a branding or advertising agency. There wasn’t much imagination beyond seeing us as potential employees. So I was in the library reading queer theory as a 19-year-old. Probably most of it went over my head, but the impulse was there.
But yeah, I usually start with reading theory, or stuff that’s relevant to what I’m thinking about. I’ll go on these research wormholes—watch video essays on YouTube, or I’ll read a text and then dig into whoever’s referenced in the footnotes. It’s like a full-on info binge. I joke that I become AI for a minute. It’s helpful though, and it’s just my natural way of working.
And actually, Gerardo Madera, who teaches here sometimes, told me—people think art school is about learning how to make things in a new way, but it’s really about figuring out how you’ve always made things, and getting better at that. That hit. I’ve always gravitated toward reading and writing first as my way of ideating. I’m not much of a sketcher.
From there, I think about what I’m trying to say or connect, and then figure out what medium will best support that. I do a lot of performance work—sometimes with book objects, sometimes videos, interactive media—it depends. I just ask myself, “What’s my opinion? What am I trying to critique?” And then, “What medium best questions or supports that idea?”
Then comes the actual making part, which is… the horrible part. The nightmare of making anything. It never really feels good. And honestly, it’s done when time’s up.
N: That’s so real.
B: Yeah, it’s usually like, “Well, time’s up—I guess it’s done.” Do you watch Saturday Night Live?
N: Occasionally, yeah.
B: Lorne Michaels says, “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.” That’s me. This isn’t done because it’s perfect—it’s done because the deadline hit.
I’ve had to come up with my own idea of what it means for something to be “finished.” I tell my students this all the time—they’ll ask, “How long does this have to be?” and I’m like, “However long it needs to be for you to say what you want to say.”
Like, PinkPantheress makes incredible songs and they’re, what, a minute and a half? And then you’ve got techno or prog rock tracks that go for 10 minutes. So time is relative. If you can say it fast and clearly, that’s fine. You don’t need to make a big book just because.
N: I was looking through your work and I noticed a lot of it ties into your culture. How do you balance that with designing in a Western context?
B: Yeah. It’s interesting, ‘cause being Indian-Caribbean is already this kind of balance of East and West. Like, inherently, in the culture itself, there’s already a lot of collision—Indian histories, African histories—all kind of woven together.
I think one way I handle that is, well, first off, I only really speak English. So there’s that. That’s one kind of limitation. But more importantly, when you’re working with diasporic material, or identity as material, I always try to ask: what larger questions emerge from this experience? So as an Indian-Caribbean person, there’s this history of indenture that has two layers—one is the oral history passed down by the diaspora, and then the other is the written history recorded by colonial powers. So that creates this relationship between the oral/spoken word and the written word.
And that led me to this question: What’s the relationship between oral history and performance, versus writing or documentation? From there, it kind of becomes this bigger question that guides the work. Like, for me, that’s the difference between writing about a perspective versus writing from a perspective. I’m not constantly explaining to people where I’m from or how I got here, but I am saying, “Here’s the lens or the frame I’m coming from.”
And that question—oral vs. written—can be applied to anything. It ends up opening up a lot of different kinds of inquiries. That’s what I think has the most potential.
There’s a lot of precedence for that too. Like, I’m obsessed with Raveena…
N: The singer?
B: Yes!
N: Oh yes, I love her.
B: Yeah! And I think she does a lot of this too. Like, especially in Asha’s Awakening—not her most recent album, but the one before that—it was literally my most-played album that year. You can tell she did a lot of research around the East-West dynamic, and it really comes through sonically. It’s not just a simple stacking of East onto West or vice versa—it’s like the two are learning from each other in this fluid way. And I think that’s really beautiful.
N: That makes sense. Do you have specific cultural symbols or motifs that come up often in your work?
B: Yeah, it’s funny—when I started, I was nervous about using cultural symbols too much. A lot of the material in my early work came from my family, and I started to wonder what it means to constantly draw from that. So now I’m really interested in making work that feels Caribbean without necessarily looking Caribbean. Like, I try not to put a bunch of palm trees in my work or anything like that.
But I do love the hibiscus flower, which has a lot of significance in Indo-Caribbean Hindu rituals—especially in pujas. That shows up quite a bit. In one of my pieces, Ritual of Self, I used a lot of Indian religious imagery. There’s a Ganesh sculpture in there that I scanned via photogrammetry from my house and incorporated.
Though if I had to pick one symbol that shows up most in my work, it’s the grid. The grid, to me, symbolizes order, control, and oppression. It ties into British colonialism, and its influence on places like India. Like, the grid of a data table that flattens people into rows of numbers—that metaphor shows up a lot for me.
And I like that it’s minimal. I usually make them in black and white. There’s something kind of powerful in refusing to make work that’s colorful or “vibrant” in the way people often expect from Caribbean or South Asian art.
I ask myself: how do you find Indo-Caribbean or South Asian lineage in a black and white grid on the floor?
N: Totally—I think there’s something special about when cultural references are subtle, like you only really notice them if you’ve lived it too.
B: Yeah, totally. Like, if I show someone a mandala or something, people are like, “Oh, that’s South Asian.” Anyone could clock that. But if I show you something rooted in a specific memory or a process or a smell—something you might only see or understand if you were in my house growing up—Then it becomes about being specific with your audience. Like, the people who get it, really get it—and they get it in a deeper way. And I think there’s power in that kind of specificity.
Otherwise, it starts to feel like I’m performing my identity for white people, which is not something I’m interested in at all.
N: Totally.
B: There’s this writer Édouard Glissant. He has this piece called On Opacity, and honestly, it’s kind of perfect for designers because, like, we literally work with opacity in all our software.
But basically, he talks about this idea that people—specifically Black Caribbean people in his case—don’t have to be fully transparent or completely knowable to others. He talks about the right to opacity, like the right to not be understood. And I think about that a lot. Like, we can reserve the right to not be understood by the West.
N: Yeah.
B: We can reserve the right to not be understood by every white person we encounter.
N: Mhm.
B: And that’s honestly a point of pride and power for me. Like, I don’t have to explain what just happened. I don’t owe anyone that clarity.Like, when people ask me where I’m from, I just say Miami. I never give a direct answer.
And that’s my opacity, right? That’s me claiming, “Actually, I don’t have to answer that question.” And maybe that sounds intense—it’s not like I’m trying to be militant or anything—but it feels important to me. Especially because, like, as graphic designers, we’re so obsessed with the audience. Right? Like, it’s all about who we’re designing for, how we’re communicating. But I think we can kind of have this overly fetishized relationship to our audience—like we’re supposed to serve them constantly. And I’m like, actually? No. Sometimes I don’t.
It depends on who the audience is and who you want to make work for, who you want to be in conversation with. So yeah—it’s totally fine if not everyone gets it.
N: On the other hand, I’ve noticed people sometimes get hesitant to engage with my work when it’s rooted in culture. Have you felt that too?
B: Yeah—like they’re afraid to say the wrong thing.
N: Exactly. I feel like there’s a balance to be found, but I’m not sure how to get there.
B: Yeah. Um... I mean, maybe one suggestion—do you offer questions?
N: I do, yeah. I feel like when I start giving specific questions, then I get a real conversation—but it usually has to be prompted.
B: Yeah, I think that’s how it has to happen in some critique settings now. People are just really worried about saying the wrong thing, especially when
it comes to culture. And that kind of tension seeps into the classroom, as well. People either won’t give critique at all or only focus on the most surface-level stuff.
It’s actually interesting that you’re experiencing this version of it—because a lot of artists of color have the opposite problem. They’ll make work that’s really conceptually intense, or emotionally charged, and the feedback they get is super formal, like: “Oh, the painting is too small,” or “I think the type is off,” or “I’m not sure it’s ready yet.” No one wants to touch the content.
N: Yeah, I feel like it still stems from the same place—just being afraid to say the wrong thing. So either you comment only on formal elements, or you say nothing at all.
B: Yeah. That’s such an unfair extra pressure, right? When you’re a person of color and also the one responsible for setting up the conditions for a conversation. Like, if you don’t frame it right, people might either talk about things you didn’t intend—or just not say anything at all.
N: Exactly.
B: It’s just... yeah.
N: It’s just kind of a thing that comes with it, I guess.
B: Yeah, and it’s also just another example of audience, right? Another moment where, as designers, we’re trying to be thoughtful about who we’re communicating with—and how. But sometimes it feels like we have to manipulate the situation too much just to get a basic response.
N: Yeah, totally. To pivot a little bit, when I was looking through your Instagram, two of the projects that really stood out to me—one was this website you made with ghazals.
B: Yeah.
N: How did that idea come about?
B: Yeah, I was in Aidan’s Handmade Web class here at VCU, as a grad student. We were learning about Flexbox, a CSS property that lets you set up a grid on a screen or website. I got obsessed with the rigidity of it. I thought it was super interesting. I’m kind of fascinated by the grid as a symbol.
N: Yeah.
B: At the same time, I was reading a lot of poetry. I love poetry—I read it constantly. The ghazal kept coming up in my research, and I found this description by Agha Shahid Ali, who’s credited with bringing the ghazal to the West. He described the form as one where you set conditions in the beginning—like, you write the first line and then you have to follow the rules you’ve set. It’s very designerly in a way.
N: Mm-hmm.
B: That shift in power—where you go from having full control to being bound by your own choices—felt really similar to the dynamic between a coder and a user, or a writer and a reader. I was thinking about that a lot. So it all came together pretty naturally. I wrote a ghazal to process it and thought about all the ways I interact with grids—Grindr, the urban grid, computer grids, document layouts.
The ghazal also repeats, which I found interesting. And originally, ghazals were oral—there wasn’t much of a written precedent, so I was also thinking about that transition from oral to written.
N: Yeah.
B: It’s a monochromatic color scheme, and the site’s still live if you want to poke around.
N: I also wanted to ask about your thesis performance—Withholding. I’m curious about your process for that and how you interpret performance as a form of design.
B: Totally. I’m actually teaching a class right now called Performance as Publication. Earlier, I mentioned the overlap between oral/spoken histories and performance, and how they contrast with colonial forms of documentation—like how the British recorded certain histories.
A lot of the time, we think the only valid way of knowing the world is by writing it down. That applies to people, too—passports, immigration papers, tax forms—all these ways people get turned into documents to be seen as legitimate. Like when someone says they have “papers,” that’s the proof of their status.
That got me thinking about how performance can be a way of publishing that’s sensory, immediate, and doesn’t rely on literacy. Literacy isn’t something you can assume, especially in South Asia. One of my uncles is Indian Caribbean and can’t read—I go with him to the bank to help him navigate the system.
N: Yeah.
B: So I started thinking about accessibility, and also what it means to “read” a performance. To publish something is just to make it public—and in many ways, our bodies are the first published objects. My body’s constantly being mediated—through screens, Instagram, dating apps, all of it.
Over winter break before my thesis semester, my dad gave me this huge stack of papers—tax forms, medical records, bank stuff. He wanted me to shred them. But as I started doing it, I realized how much of their immigrant experience was in those documents. It felt like I was shredding the story of how they built a life here.
So I kept some of them—especially my dad’s W2s, because I was thinking about labor. He was a cargo handler when he first moved here. I scanned the shreds, printed them, made letters out of them. There’s a weird, unusable typeface on my computer from that. I was playing with this idea of legibility—what does it mean to ask someone to be “legible”? I took documents that were once legible, shredded them, then turned them back into letters—trying to make them readable on my own terms.
N: That is so interesting.
B: Then I started weaving it all into a performance. I used home video footage, too—thinking about how cameras capture us, like documents do. I ended up with a 45-minute piece that I stopped once I felt like I had said everything I needed to.
It was super intuitive. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that tuned in again—hopefully, but we’ll see.
N: Do you have any particular project that has really stuck with you?
B: That performance is definitely one of them. Another is a project called Forgetting Too. It might not be on my Instagram, but it’s on my website. It’s a Unity labyrinth I built, and I navigate it while interviewing my mom about her relationship to India—she’s Trinidadian, so it’s like two layers removed.
I designed the labyrinth but had to rely on memory to move through it. It turned into a performance about memory on a lot of levels. It looks like a video game walkthrough, which I love. And it ends on a song by Vashti Bunyan, a 70s folk singer. I’m proud of it—it has this cinematic feel.
As a kid I was obsessed with storytelling, and I’d love to make a movie or show someday. I actually did comedy in undergrad—improv and sketch. That was my first performance background.
N: I don’t think I saw that one—I’ll have to check your site.
B: Yeah, it’s up there.
N: You kind of touched on this already, but have you faced challenges navigating the creative industry as someone from a South Asian or Indo-Caribbean background? And do you have advice for young designers in a similar spot?
B: Yeah. It became obvious really fast that I was being placed in ad agencies for cultural capital. They were consuming my ideas and perspective, and I wish I’d been more careful about how much I gave.
N: Mm-hmm.
B: Kind of like what we said earlier—opacity. I was giving everything. I was sweet and eager, but it left me drained. I wasn’t saving anything for myself.
If I had advice, it would be that—even if you’re brought in for your “unique perspective,” you get to decide how much of that you share. You still have agency. You can always choose to pull back if it feels like you’re giving too much.
N: That’s really good advice.
B: Yeah.
N: Okay, just wrapping things up now. Do you have anything exciting coming up?
B: Yeah, I can plug something. I was actually working on this last night until like four in the morning. It’s a map-based website for clique books run by Mariah Jones, who teaches in the graphic design department.
I’m hand-coding this map website inspired by a cruising site that’s out right now. It’s this wild little place, and I’m not trying to recreate it exactly, but I’m borrowing its grammar to tell a nonlinear narrative about a fictional undergrad. This student starts learning about UI/UX design around the same time he gets really into this cruising site.
He starts making connections between the two—like, “Oh, a brand needs a consistent tone, and I need a consistent tone to get the kind of desire I want.” Or, “There’s pressure for bodies to be smooth online, just like there’s pressure for user interfaces to feel smooth.” It’s all these weird parallels.
I think it’s just that I love a pun—maybe that’s my comedic side. I love when a word can do double duty. So yeah, I’ve been writing and building that out. It should be released in April.
N: Okay, that sounds really fun. Looking forward to that! But for today’s interview, that is all I have—thank you so much!
B: Yeah, of course!
You can follow along with Bradley’s creative journey on Instagram, @barleyxcx.