Derek Fordjour: SHELTER

For his first major solo museum exhibition, Derek Fordjour constructs an environment that places viewers in the heart of a storm. A New York-based artist of Ghanaian heritage, Fordjour works primarily in the realm of portrait painting to create vibrant, multi-textured images. Forming a procession across the museum’s Project Wall, Fordjour’s Player Portraits, from a series of 100, lead visitors toward the installation. Many of his paintings express the spectacle of sporting events—marching bands, cheerleaders, crowds, and athletes. By using sports as a metaphor, the artist subtly addresses themes relating to race, systemic inequality, and aspiration, particularly in the context of American identity.

SHELTER, a seemingly makeshift, ramshackle structure of corrugated metal walls and a dirt floor is populated by the artist’s signature paintings and sculptures. The work is constructed to heighten visitors’ awareness of their temporal nature, the tenuous circumstances in which art is sometimes made, and the vulnerability of millions caught up in human migrations across the earth, seeking shelter from a multiplicity of storms.

Image credits: Derek Fordjour: SHELTER, installation view, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, January 17–April 19, 2020. Photo: Dusty Kessler.