Jonai Gibson-Selix

Jonai Gibson-Selix said, “I believe in the magic of design to elevate the ways we share stories.” She was UArts’ 2022 valedictory speaker at Commencement and also won the UArts President’s Award for Outstanding Service to the Community. The Armin Hofmann Award for the highest-scoring capstone project was given to her project Elusive: A Visual Meditation on Black Rest, an exhibition proposal with a virtual 3-D walkthrough and an accompanying print catalog. She and her classmate Andrea Hu self-published Rise, a softbound book documenting the public protests over the killing of George Floyd in Philadelphia during the summer of 2020. As an intern, she helped curate and design Making Her Mark, a Free Library of Philadelphia exhibition celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Jonai works as a graphic designer at Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art and history studio based in Philadelphia that cultivates and facilitates critical conversations around the past, present and future of monuments.