Posing as the CEO of an RH-style company, Ilana Harris-Babou scours the globe for the most original, authentic objets d’art in this satirical advertorial. “Design without the knowledge of its history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots,” she explains. “We connect you to the places in the world where your story started.” To find new sources of inspiration and new pieces for display in her furnishings gallery, or really to poke fun at the colonizing appropriation normalized by high-end showrooms that place “tribal objects” amid expansive beige sofas, Harris-Babou travels to Senegal to look at wood carvings, and to create some objects of her own. Operationalizing the peppy blandness of marketing language to discuss the origins of people and things and the power of artistry, she ends her journey meditating on the fundamentals of design at the Maison des Esclaves—now a memorial to the Atlantic slave trade. Human Design is an exploration of personal and collective histories and the ways design shapes—and is used to shape—our lives.