Cézanne Charles

Board Member

rootoftwo Website
A full-length portrait features designer Cézanne Charles seated with crossed legs on a wooden plinth inside a bright gallery space. She looks directly at the camera with a calm expression, framed by shoulder-length, curly hair that transitions from silver-white at the crown to dark charcoal at the ends. She is dressed in an oversized, black long-sleeved tunic over dark navy trousers, paired with black sneakers and a round wristwatch. The surrounding environment showcases high-contrast, black-and-white geometric artwork ‘Glitch Dazzle’, including diagonal optical stripes on the wall behind her and fragmented QR-code patterns printed on the cubic pedestals ‘Storycubes’. These are related to rootoftwo’s exhibition “Anyspace? Whatever.”

Cézanne Charles is a creative practitioner and researcher focusing on the intersection of design, technology, culture, and public policy. She is a founding Partner at rootoftwo, a Detroit-based creative and civic studio she runs with John Marshall. rootoftwo explores under-imagined futures and works to build civic imagination through exhibition-making, public art, innovative research, and strategic frameworks.

Notable works include Whithervanes, commissioned by Locust Projects, Miami (2018) and Creative Folkestone (2014). rootoftwo were 2025 Rhizome 7×7 participants and are 2024 recipients of a Knight New Works grant for 463NCY, a cooperative, digitally-augmented, tabletop game where players navigate the complexities of digital information in a world where privacy is a commodity. They are 2023 Creative Capital Awardees for their ‘Anyspace? Whatever.’ project, which was the focus of a 2026 solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

Charles has an MPA from the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, with an emphasis in science, technology, and society, and a BA in Theatre Studies from The Ohio State University. Charles actively participates on local and national boards including the National Artists Policy Alliance, the Processing Foundation, A Blade of Grass, Design Core Detroit, and MOCAD, and presents on creative industries, urbanism, and emerging technology.