Derrick Adams

Derrick Adams (A ’02) is a Baltimore-born, New York-based artist who works across diverse mediums including collage, sculpture, performance, and video,. Adams explores how popular culture impacts our daily lives and on the formation of self-image and perception in relation to objects and texts. He is also engaged in the relationship between African American experiences and art history, American iconography, and consumerism. Adams received his MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Pratt Institute, and has been the subject of solo exhibitions, including Where I’m From—Derrick Adams (2019) at The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall and Derrick Adams: Sanctuary (2018) at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. (2019) at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati; PERFORMA (2015, 2013, and 2005); The Shadows Took Shape (2014) and Radical Presence (2013–14) at The Studio Museum in Harlem; and Greater New York (2005) at MoMA PS1. His work resides in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art. Adams was a participant at Skowhegan in 2002 and returned as a visiting faculty in 2013. For this work, he deconstructed and reconfigured black figures from 1980s and 90's American television shows, and then placed an outline of a vintage TV frame, which for him, is equivalent to a baroque frame.