ART DIRECTOR
HIP HOP TIL INFINITY
An Experiential Mixtape
For Hip Hop’s 50th anniversary, Mass Appeal created Hip Hop Til Infinity, transforming five decades of Hip Hop history into an immersive, multi-sensory exhibition. Rather than presenting the culture as a traditional retrospective, the experience was conceived as an “experiential mixtape,” blending archival footage, legendary photography, rare memorabilia, projection-mapped environments, and an original soundtrack to trace Hip Hop’s evolution from the streets of the Bronx to a global movement.
MY ROLE:
As AD I helped define the exhibition’s entrance space and how visitors would be introduced to Hip Hop’s five pillars. I curated archival footage, imagery, and cultural references for a vintage TV wall installation, establishing a foot–traffic–friendly hero moment that, alongside some artifacts and graphic walls, served as the foundation for the rest of the experience
POINT OF VIEW
Hip Hop has never been experienced through one medium, so its history shouldn’t be told through one either. The experience treated sound, image, movement, memory, and physical space as parts of the same story. The entrance grounded visitors in Hip Hop’s five pillars: MCing, DJing, Breaking, Graffiti, and Knowledge, before opening into a larger journey through the culture’s eras, icons, and influence. The goal was less about building a timeline and more about creating something that felt like stepping inside the archive itself.
EXECUTION
The rest of the exhibition unfolded through large-scale projection environments, archival installations, photography, memorabilia, and music-driven storytelling. DJ Clark Kent curated and mixed the soundtrack, Skillz created poetic interludes, and Kid Capri narrated the journey in the tradition of a classic mixtape. The experience moved from foundational cultural references into larger immersive environments, allowing visitors to encounter Hip Hop history through sound, image, and space rather than from a distance. The exhibition launched in New York before traveling to Los Angeles, with each city receiving subtle cultural adaptations that reflected the distinct histories and visual language of East Coast and West Coast Hip Hop.
