Derrick Adams

Last updated

Derrick Adams
Derrick Adams, multidisciplanary artist (33398613818) (cropped).jpg
Adams in 2019
Born1970 (age 52–53)
Baltimore, Maryland
NationalityAmerican
Education Columbia University
Alma mater Pratt Institute
AwardsLouis Comfort Tiffany Award, Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize,
Website http://www.derrickadams.com/

Derrick Adams (born 1970) is an American visual and performance artist and curator. Much of Adams' work is centered around his Black identity, frequently referencing patterns, images, and themes of Black culture in America. [1] [2] Adams has additionally worked as a fine art professor, serving as a faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Derrick Adams was born in 1970 in Baltimore, Maryland. After briefly teaching elementary school, Adams attended the Pratt Institute. Following his 1996 graduation, Adams earned his MFA from Columbia University, completing his degree in 2003. [4]

Career

In 2016, Adams created an installation (titled Derrick Adams: THE HOLDOUT — A Social Sculpture with Curated Music Program) for the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ, that featured a large pyramid enclosing a broadcasting radio station. According to Adams, the pyramids in his work reference the long presence of Black culture and the cultural capital built by black people over history. [5]

Adams's 2016 show at Pioneer Works explored Black characters in popular culture. Titled Derrick Adams: ON, the exhibition included collages, sculptures, and lampshades that evoked characters from popular movies and TV shows like In Living Color and The Matrix . [6]

The Studio Museum in Harlem mounted Adams's 2017 exhibition Derrick Adams: Patrick Kelley, The Journey, in which the artist created mood boards for a proposed autobiography of the fashion designer Patrick Kelley, whose techniques with formal composition resonated with Adams in terms of the construction of identity. [7]

In 2017, Adams used the archival collections of the Stony Island Arts Bank (along with material from other collections), to create a solo show there, Future People. An installation environment featured a looping video that projected images and quotes from Black authors and speakers. [8] A series of collages in the exhibition, Orbiting Us #1-#10, depicted items designed by Charles Harrison, the first Black executive at Sears, Roebuck and Company. Adams used the exhibition to highlight the productive power of Black people to imagine and innovate through difficult circumstances. [9]

At the Museum of Arts and Design in 2018, Adams showed work inspired by The Negro Motorist Green Book . Titled Sanctuary, Adams's show featured an installation environment structured by a miniaturized highway that ran through the galleries, passing collages that evoked locations listed in the guidebook. [10] Sanctuary celebrated the leisure time and success of African Americans even during the Jim Crow era, partly illuminated by small houses resembling milk cartons. [11]

In 2018, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver presented a survey of Adams's work spanning 2014-2017, including sculptures, installations, and works on paper. Titled, Derrick Adams: Transmission, the exhibition showcased three bodies of work: "Future People" (2017), "Fabrication Station" (2016), and a series of "Boxhead" sculptures (2014), [12] exploring "Derrick Adams's ongoing study of racial identity as it is both filtered through popular culture and also reimagined for the future." [13]

Derrick Adams was awarded a 2018 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship, and participated in a two-person exhibition, American Family: Derrick Adams and Deana Lawson , at the Foundation as part of the award. Adams says about the exhibition, "Parks' influence…goes beyond the visual, into the meaning and purpose of why I feel it's so important to show the many facets of black American life in ways that shed light onto the complexity and richness of our past, present and future." [14]

In 2019, Adams's work was featured in the Fox TV hit Empire . The art work in the series depicts the main characters, Cookie and Lucious Lyon (played by Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard), and is part of a real-life limited-edition collection of objects, "Empire x Derrick Adams collection", which supports Turnaround Arts, an arts-based school program at the Kennedy Center. [15] This wasn't the first time his work was showcased on a hit American TV show. In 2017, Issa Rae included his work in her HBO comedy Insecure . [16]

in 2019 Adams was commissioned by the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) to create laminated glass artwork for the Nostrand Avenue Station. The laminated glass artwork consists of 85-panels that span the length of the newly rehabilitated platforms and extend onto the four new pedestrian bridges that connect the station to the neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant that are represented within the artwork. Using areal photos, maps, and personal history. Adams employs his collage style to emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between neighborhood residents and their built environment. [17]

In 2020 Adams created a mural for Harlem Hospital. [18]

In 2023, Adams was one of six artists commissioned to create a temporary installation for the National Mall in conjunction with Beyond Granite: Pulling Together , the first curated art exhibition in the Mall's history. Commissioned by the Trust for the National Mall, National Capital Planning Commission, and National Park Service, Adams designed a fully functional, interactive playground that served as a memorial to the desegregation of public schools in Washington, D.C. The playground was divided in half using a large panel that featured pictures of kids playing on a playground in Washington, immediately after the court decision that desegregated schools; one half of the playground was painted in exclusively shades of gray, while the other half was rendered in bright hues, with an archway in the center connecting the two sides. [19]

Related Research Articles

Wangechi Mutu is a Kenyan-born American visual artist, known primarily for her painting, sculpture, film, and performance work. Born in Kenya, she has lived and established her career in New York City for more than twenty years. Mutu's work has directed the female body as subject through collage painting, immersive installation, and live and video performance while exploring questions of self-image, gender constructs, cultural trauma, and environmental destruction and notions of beauty and power.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Bradford</span> American visual artist

Mark Bradford is an American visual artist. Bradford was born, lives, and works in Los Angeles and studied at the California Institute of the Arts. Recognized for his collaged painting works, which have been shown internationally, his practice also encompasses video, print, and installation. Bradford was the U.S. representative for the 2017 Venice Biennale. He was included in Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sterling Ruby</span> American artist

Sterling Ruby is an American artist who works in a large variety of media including ceramics, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, video, and textiles. Often, his work is presented in large and densely packed installations. The artist has cited a diverse range of sources and influences including aberrant psychologies, urban gangs and graffiti, hip-hop culture, craft, punk, masculinity, violence, public art, prisons, globalization, American domination and decline, waste and consumption. In opposition to the minimalist artistic tradition and influenced by the ubiquity of urban graffiti, the artist's works often appear scratched, defaced, camouflaged, dirty, or splattered. Proclaimed as one of the most interesting artists to emerge this century by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith, Ruby's work examines the psychological space where individual expression confronts social constraint. Sterling Ruby currently lives and works in Los Angeles. His studio is located in Vernon, south of downtown Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rashid Johnson</span> American artist and film director (born 1977)

Rashid Johnson is an American artist who produces conceptual post-black art. Johnson first received critical attention in 2001 at the age of 24, when his work was included in Freestyle (2001) curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He studied at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his work has been exhibited around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick Cave (artist)</span> American visual artist, sculptor, dancer, and performance artist (born 1959)

Nick Cave is an American sculptor, dancer, performance artist, and professor. He is best known for his Soundsuit series: wearable assemblage fabric sculptures that are bright, whimsical, and other-worldly, often made with found objects. He also trained as a dancer with Alvin Ailey and often incorporates dance and performance into his works. His later sculptures have focused on color theory and included mixed media and large-scale installations. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, and directs the graduate fashion program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He continues to work on Soundsuits as well as works completed as a sculptor, dancer, and performance artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Curtis Kulig</span> American artist (born 1981)

Curtis Kulig is an American artist who lives and works New York City.

Rafael Esparza is an American performance artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. His work includes performances affecting his physical well-being and installations constructed from adobe bricks. Esparza often works with collaborators, including members of his family.

Deana Lawson (1979) is an American artist, educator, and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is primarily concerned with intimacy, family, spirituality, sexuality, and Black aesthetics.

Deborah Grant is a Canadian-born African-American artist noted for her work in painting and collage, particularly for her series "Random Select". She lives and works in Harlem, New York.

Nina Chanel Abney is an American artist, based in New York. She was born in Harvey, Illinois. She is an African American contemporary artist and painter who explores race, gender, pop culture, homophobia, and politics in her work.

vanessa german American artist

vanessa german is an American sculptor, painter, writer, activist, performer, and poet based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Lovie Olivia is an American multidisciplinary visual artist. She uses the media of printmaking, painting, and installations to explore themes of gender, sexuality, race, class and power.

Sienna Shields is an American abstract artist specializing in large-format collage pieces. She was also the chief organizer of the HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican? artist collective and the director of its digital work, Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera which was accepted for the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

April Bey is an Bahamian American contemporary visual artist and educator. She is known for her mixed media work which creates commentary on contemporary Black female rhetoric.

Shervone Neckles is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and community worker. Her work draws inspiration from the duality and transitional nature of her Afro-Grenadian-American identity. Neckles’ practice combines mixed media techniques of printmaking, textiles, book arts, sculpture, installation, and social investigations to further explore concepts of past and present-day colonialism, notions of provenance as it relates to origin, authorship and ownership.

Rico Gatson is a multidisciplinary artist working in Brooklyn, New York, whose work draws from his African-American background. Through his art, he provides social commentary on significant moments in African-American history. His work combines abstract patterns with vibrant colors, which creates confrontational work that references African American culture and history.

Eric-Paul Riege (Diné/Navajo) is a fiber artist who creates installations and performance art. Riege believes his work to be an homage to generations of weavers, and considers his work as an immersion in "ceremonies, and rituals, from his past, future, and present selves."

Folayemi "Fo" Debra Wilson is an American interdisciplinary artist, designer, and academic administrator. Her practice includes work as a furniture designer and maker, installation artist, muralist, and graphic designer. Wilson is the first associate dean for access and equity in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture.

Beyond Granite: Pulling Together is the title of a contemporary art exhibition held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from August to September 2023. Organized by the Trust for the National Mall, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the National Park Service, and curated by the nonprofit Monument Lab, Pulling Together was the first curated outdoor art exhibition in the Mall's history and the first in a planned series of outdoor exhibitions and installations under the Beyond Granite moniker.

References

  1. ↑ "Derrick Adams is Focusing on a Positive Vision for the Future". Whitewall. January 15, 2018. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  2. ↑ Drinkard, Jane (January 30, 2018). "An Artist Reimagines a Travel Guide for Black Americans". The Cut. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  3. ↑ Yerman, Marcia G. (October 10, 2014). "A Conversation With Derrick Adams". Huffington Post. Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  4. ↑ Mendelsohn, Meredith (January 19, 2018). "How an Artist Learned About Freedom From 'The Negro Motorist Green Book'". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved February 16, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Derrick Adams Brings A Practical Edge to Conceptual Art :: IRAAA". iraaa.museum.hamptonu.edu. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  6. ↑ Thackara, Tess (June 8, 2016). "Derrick Adams Is Reclaiming Black Identity from Hit TV Shows". Artsy. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  7. ↑ "Exhibition focuses on artist Derrick Adams's extensive research into the archive of fashion designer Patrick Kelly". artdaily.com. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  8. ↑ "Derrick Adams is Focusing on a Positive Vision for the Future". Whitewall. January 15, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  9. ↑ Scruggs, Danielle A. "For Derrick Adams, black imagination is the future". Chicago Reader. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  10. ↑ Mendelsohn, Meredith (January 19, 2018). "How an Artist Learned About Freedom From 'The Negro Motorist Green Book'". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  11. ↑ "Artist Derrick Adams reinterprets Jim Crow era travel guidebooks". Interview Magazine. January 20, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  12. ↑ "Derrick Adams's Transmissions on Art and Black Identity". Hyperallergic. August 24, 2018. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
  13. ↑ "Derrick Adams:". MCA Denver. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
  14. ↑ salesaperture. "The Gordon Parks Foundation Mounts "American Family: Derrick Adams and Deana Lawson"". Aperture Foundation NY. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
  15. ↑ "Artist Derrick Adams on How One of His Paintings Became a Central Plot Point in the TV Show 'Empire'". artnet News. April 30, 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
  16. ↑ "One more thing we love about Issa Rae: How "Insecure" showcases black artists". Salon. August 20, 2017. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
  17. ↑ “Derrick Adams.” Rhona Hoffman Gallery, www.rhoffmangallery.com/artists/derrick-adams.
  18. ↑ Kaufman, David C. "Artist Derrick Adams Transforms Hospital Rooms Into a Canvas of Color and Whimsy". Architectural Digest. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
  19. ↑ Gopnik, Blake (August 17, 2023). "On Our National Mall, New Monuments Tell New Stories" . The New York Times . Archived from the original on August 19, 2023. Retrieved August 20, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.