MEET THE ARTIST: Derrick Adams
Meet the artist: derrick adams
Derrick Adams is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and sound. His oeuvre probes how identity and personal narrative intersect with American iconography, art history, urban culture, and the Black experience. Additionally, he explores how individuals are shaped by their physical, societal, and historical environs. Among many honors, he received a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency and Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship. His work has been featured in public exhibitions including MoMA PS1 (Queens, New York), Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, New York), Museum of Art and Design (New York, NY), and The Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH). Adams’ work resides in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, New York), The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York City, New York), and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, Virginia), among many others. Adams obtained his BFA from the Pratt Institute and MFA from Columbia University.
Derrick is one of six artists bringing their extraordinary talents to design an exhibit, performance, or installation as a part of the Trust for the National Mall's Beyond Granite, supported by the Mellon Foundation and presented in partnership with the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Park Service. This groundbreaking inaugural exhibition, curated by Monument Lab, will bring new works to and around the National Mall to broaden the voices and dialogue in commemoration and help expand the public's imagination.
Speaking to the New York Times about Beyond Granite, Derrick said…
Photo by AJ Mitchell
"It's an honor to be able to add to the conversation surrounding monuments and monumentality....we are going to create a space that is only going to amplify the purpose of the Mall in a way it never has before."
- Derrick Adams
Speaking to the New York Times in an article about Beyond Granite's inaugural exhibition, Derrick said…
“Normally for artists, you work in isolation, but this is about being vulnerable and acknowledging the audience,” said Derrick Adams, a sculptor and one of the six artists commissioned for the project.
Adams hopes to install his proposed work — a playground that explores histories of desegregation in and around the capital — near the National Museum of African American History and Culture. “Kids will see it as a beacon of education,” he said.
About Beyond Granite
Photo by Monument Lab
Beyond Granite, funded by the Mellon Foundation, invites visionary artists to create special commemorative exhibits, performances, and installations on the National Mall and throughout the District of Columbia that will expand the public's imagination and understanding and create a more a more inclusive, equitable, and representative process for commemoration on the National Mall – and beyond.
”Pulling Together,” the inaugural exhibition of Beyond Granite, will feature installations and exhibits or prototype monuments, on the National Mall and in Washington, DC from leading contemporary artists that respond to a central curatorial question: What stories remain untold on the National Mall?
The Trust for the National Mall is honored to be working with the Mellon Foundation and its partners The National Capitol Planning Commission and the National Park Service to bring this new series to life to tell the fuller American story in the commemorative landscape.