New Additions: Derek Fordjour

Habiba Hopson: I want to begin this conversation by going back in time. What were some of your earliest experiences with art?

Derek Fordjour: I remember drawing a fire truck at three years old. So, I’ve had this predisposition to visual creation from a very early age. Around high school, I was fortunate to encounter a man named Bill Hicks, who was an extraordinary art educator. I grew up in Memphis and, at that time, we didn’t have many models of successful contemporary artists. There were a few local artists around town but I was too young to engage with them deeply. Bill really set me on the course and got me to take up painting in a serious way. I wasn’t just making paintings; I was also studying the works of John Singer Sargent, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, and then modernism.

HH: It’s so unusual to encounter those names in high school. Did that experience influence your desire to pursue an arts education degree at Harvard?

DF: Since I want to keep this intimate, I want to share something I don’t typically share in interviews; the truth is, I think my resume looks quite tidy these days. You might assume that my academic and artistic journey was linear. In fact, it took me about nine years to graduate with an undergraduate degree. I began my educational journey with Derrick Adams and Kadir Nelson at Pratt Institute in the nineties. I was kind of burned out when I arrived at college. During those days, art history was taught as the history of white men, and Pratt was no exception. I fumbled around for a while. I took classes at the Art Students League. I spent countless days in the American Wing at The Met. I also often visited the Studio Museum. I spent months hanging around museums staring at paintings for hours. Eventually, I went home to attend community college in Memphis, which does not appear on the resume, but that was a foundational experience for me. In community college, I took an intro class on ethics that broadened my thinking. I found that many of the teachers there had chips on their shoulders because community college was viewed as a lesser experience or something transitional. But I found the teachers to be really motivating and inspirational. That’s where I became serious about learning.

I started a business teaching art to day care centers; the program was called Art Man. A local businesswoman named Vivian Braxton hired me to make a portrait of her family, and she paid me $5,000. Her wealth came from day care centers. As part of doing the portrait, she asked, “Can you teach my kids art?” I said yes and charged a couple of dollars per child. I had so much fun and eventually asked if she would recommend my classes. Fast forward, I built a program that serviced nineteen different centers and a total of eight hundred fifty kids using just six mobile art educators.

One day a friend of mine, whose mother was one of those day care owners, said, “You should go to Harvard with this program.” At the time, I was like, “I don't think you understand. I’m barely in school and not a great student!” She replied, “No, this idea is really compelling and there’s an arts and education program at Harvard that would be interested in what you are doing.” Fortunately, my friend, Michelle (Brantley) Armstrong, was right. She encouraged me at a very crucial moment. So, attending Morehouse was kind of strategic, because I knew ultimately I wanted to get into that program at Harvard, and I hoped that Morehouse would improve my odds of acceptance. I probably was interested in getting a degree from Harvard because I knew I would be broke for the rest of my life. I have African parents and I just wanted them to know that, “Hey, look, if I wanted to make money, I could have done that instead of becoming an artist. This degree should appease you all.”

HH: I so appreciate that level of transparency and honesty. We’re inundated with images and reels, quick pics of someone's life, and you don’t get the backstory. The resume or the Instagram post are showing success, something glamorous and attractive, but there are complexities embedded in all of these images.

DF: I think it’s egregious not to be candid with artists, because our path is often not straight. The journey often involves the messiness of going in the wrong direction for a while. I do consciously complicate the appearance of a tidy Ivy League education story. I don’t reject it entirely, but you’re right, I am invested in showing more of the scars and shortcomings as a way to encourage other artists out there.

HH: Along that note with your practice, I’m curious about your multidisciplinary approach to art making.

DF: I took painting probably too seriously early on, to the point that painting was a bit oppressive for a number of years because I wanted to make masterpieces that would stand the test of time. That weight can be too much to bear. One of my creative remedies for this thinking was to make sure I did things that brought me pure joy, things that I did not fully understand, but that tickled part of my creative brain.

So, I started to dream about sculpture. I would see these fully formed oddities in my mind, and I decided, as a treat to myself once, that I would just make it. I had this image of a figure with a balloon overhead on this camel stand. I wanted to make it and put it on my windowsill to live with it in the studio. So I did. I have an older brother, Ike, who is probably my harshest critic. I wasn't going to include these little sculptures. He was like, “Man, I think you should put those in the show.” When I brought them into the show, people loved them. That was really affirming for me. I had defined myself as a painter and I lived and died on whether I made a good painting. That invitation to bring more of what I do in my private space into a public realm, and then to receive affirmation was invigorating. This experience opened me up to engaging more of my curiosity. The truth is that I’m interested in lots of different things. I’m interested in film and theater and dance and how things are made. It really is me trying to answer questions, engaging with a discipline or a course of study that I don't fully grasp. I have the chance to become a student and to learn in the public space of a gallery or museum.

HH: I loved reading that interview in Interview with you and Trevor Noah. You shared that art is about the question; it’s not about the answer. It's about poking at a thing, which I thought was well articulated. On that note, what do you think performance can ask that painting can’t?


DF: I believe that different disciplines offer different points of engagement. Regarding the conversation I had with Trevor, a conversation between a painter and a comedian, I realized that we were both trying to achieve something from different vantage points, but many of the concerns were the same. Often creatives have something at stake when they’re making their work. If they’re fortunate, that query through creative means, or through humor or writing, can become an invitation for others to go along on that journey. I have these questions, my desire to bring people into my lived experience, reality, curiosity, fantasy, frustrations, disappointments– and then to engage with other people. I don’t believe that what I can do in painting engages all the possible conversations as when I work with a choreographer or a puppeteer or a writer or a comedian or a magician. Those become different and expanded conversations. I also bring along my audience to become interlopers. It’s the movement through and across and under all these different areas of focus that create a rich experience.

HH: So as much as it’s expanding you, it’s also expanding me or someone else who’s coming into the gallery, or a student who you’re talking with, to imagine their limitlessness and capaciousness. Your work often, but not exclusively, addresses complexities of achievement and visibility for Black athletes, performers, et cetera. How does this manifest within your psyche, if I may ask, as a Black artist who is achieving a certain level of support and success in the art world? Do you ever grapple with anxiety about not fulfilling what others have expected from you?

DF: I love answering this to a Studio Museum audience because, on one level, the Studio Museum in Harlem is a forerunner in what’s freshest and newest in the museum space and has remained invested in certain critical conversations. In the same way, it’s like speaking to my cousins. It’s people who have a certain cultural knowledge. I also advocate for a radically expansive Black creative field. That’s not something at the forefront of my mind as I work, but if there’s any agenda as to why I move between disciplines or engage different disciplines at the scale and the level that I do, it’s an attempt to expand the field of thought, the field of possibility, for Black creatives.

To answer your question about how I’m personally implicated in my concerns, I have tremendous anxiety about several things you mentioned. One, being an artist, there’s a lot of uncertainty. The art world is a strange, fickle, bizarre place. The art market is even more difficult to discern and, in some ways, illogical. We’re so affected by it, but we need to remain immune to it in some ways.

As a Black person in America, as a Black person in the world, I experience a tremendous amount of anxiety. I experience, on a daily basis, with no exaggeration, very real tremors of concern, doubt, as I navigate New York City, as I navigate other cities around the world in this body. For a Black talent that’s already on a stage, doing their thing in full view, very few of us inherit any kind of financial support. Now you're worth more money than your entire support group has ever seen or made. So, they can’t advise you. You’re exposed. The public now sees you as a target because of the numbers they read about you. In response to that, I perform. Part of that is what we all do when we dress ourselves in the morning and exit our private space.

HH: A hundred percent.

DF: Decorum, kindness, sanity. We’re all performing these things. So my obsession with performance is not about the performance itself. It’s not about sport. It’s about my obsession with the necessity for and the anxiety that comes with a need to perform in order to stay safe, stay sane.

HH: That clearly connects to the characters you create within your paintings, within your performances, and within your puppet show, Fly Away, which was originally performed at your 2020 show at Petzel called SELF MUST DIE. This joined our collection soon after. Fly Away chronicles a single character’s experience through mastering different physical activities. You watch him discover his athleticism and magical beingness. He goes through a cycle of wins and losses, some tragic encounters. It's both a testament to really flying high and also being down low and crashing. The show was inspired by a style of Japanese puppet theater and was cocreated with Nick Lehane. Why a puppet show? Who is this figure?

DF: There’s a puppeteer named Basil Twist. He did an underwater puppet show, La Symphonie; I go to see things to just stay fresh and curious. I wasn't thinking about doing anything. I just wanted to take it in. It was so beautifully done. It was about a chimpanzee who had found themself in a laboratory and was trying to break out. There were no words. There was a very minimal set. The style of construction for the puppet was papier-mâché. The elegance of the storytelling was so compelling. And again, it’s what a painting can’t do. I’m like, “Man, if I could work it out through this medium, I know something good will come out the other end.” That’s all I knew. So after the play, I had to meet the creator. When I met Nick, he was so open to getting together. I was like, “I know nothing, so show me things.” So, he sent me footage from festivals. He sent me articles about puppetry, understanding what the goals are, what are the rules, how is a puppet show assessed, what makes a good show. Selfishly becoming obsessed with this kind of world is cathartic for me because I’m just a novice.

One of the interesting moments, which I think adds a lot of content to the work, is that early on, Nick said he wanted to use Black puppeteers. It was something he presumed would be a good thing. He shared that at the time in puppetry there were a lot of inclusion conversations, that they needed to diversify the field. And so being cognizant of your casting choices was something he was interrogating for himself. I said, “No, Nick, I don’t want you to cast it with Black puppeteers. I want you to cast it as you would without thinking about any of that. What would those choices be?” I’m not quoting him, but essentially the conversation was something like, “Look, I have these friends and we’re like family, and I think I would get them to cast it, but they’re all white.” I was like, “That’s perfect.” What a wonderful way to reference context, a wonderful way to represent control, manipulation, direction, to question dependency, interdependency, whiteness, and how that is almost inextricably tied to Black performance.

Why puppetry? I had never seen an artist in a gallery stage a puppet show. I’m not saying it’s never happened before, but it’s not something I had seen done in a way that I wanted to do. When you factor in Black artists, it becomes even more unlikely.

HH: This character, you see him become a part of this world, discovering what it means to dribble a ball, to encounter this invisible horse. You empathize with the character, who goes through all of these stages of achievement and extreme loss.

DF: A lot of it is biographical. I’ve had lots of highs and lows. It’s also the spectacular fall of Black figures in public space. We’re doing this interview in 2024. Every year there’ll be another cast of characters. Twenty, thirty years from now, I’m sure those dynamics will happen. Not that Black folks shouldn’t fail. That’s not the expectation. It’s about the particular brand of entertainment that it affords an audience to see a spectacular fall from grace of a Black figure in America.

HH: I’m excited to see how this work in five, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line speaks to or challenges this truth. I want to ask: Who are some folks that you’re thinking of who are asking the same questions you are?

DF: In cinema, someone like Jordan Peele for how he brings questions of race and racial politics into the space of horror. Ava DuVernay for the way she’s questioning what a film could be, this hybridity she brings to her projects, and the innovative approaches to funding. Contemporary artists I’m moved by include Simone Leigh–I attended her “Loophole of Retreat” conference, a space for critical dialogue leveraging her experience as an artist to galvanize a conversation and bring together scholars, intellectuals, and researchers; Mike Kelley, who could create a world; Red Grooms, who is from Tennessee, where I’m from; and Nick Cave and Kerry James Marshall. Basil Twist. [Julie] Taymor as a puppeteer. Paul Tazewell, a costume designer. I could literally go on for an hour.

HH: What are you looking forward to this next year? What are some questions you’re exploring?

DF: I’m working on two shows. One is a show of prints and multiples. That’s in 2026, but I’m working on another gallery show that’ll be in 2025. I’m thinking a lot about voice. I’m thinking about the relationship between song, speech, moan, utterance, hum, scream, yell, whisper. I’m thinking about the voice as a technology. I’m thinking about the voice and its coding and what it carries. I am finding ways to grapple with that through objects and installation and experience.

HH: How do you start your day?

DF: I’ll give you an ideal morning rather than a sad, depressed morning, because those happen.

HH: Yo, I feel you.

DF: If all things are going well, I would’ve had some sleep, which is also rare. Let’s just say I’ve had lots of sleep. I wake up early, I take a run. I love to run through Harlem, run through my neighborhood. I run down to Central Park and back up. I love being outside. I spend most of my time in my studio. So when I can feel air, sunshine, the ground under my feet, warmth, that’s amazing. Perfect day, I would walk to the studio. It’s also fantastic because my thoughts unfurl at a different rate of speed, and I see different things that stimulate stuff. It’s not very complicated. I get in and I come right to making. My life is set up so that I can walk through the door, play music, and be making art in minutes. Look, I have administrative responsibilities. I have meetings. I have visits during the day. I wish it were more exciting, but it’s pretty much wake up and get in the studio and make it happen.

HH: If you had access to unrestricted funds and resources, what activity would you take on?

DF: Time is better than money. I would probably study something deeply.

HH: This is now maybe the second interview where I’m like, “Is that the right wording of the question?” I might ask it in terms of time. “If you suddenly had five extra years where you didn't owe anything to anybody, what would you do?”

DF: That's it.

HH: This last question comes from my previous interviewee, Nikita Gale. Nikita asks, “What is your first memory of encountering art?”

DF: Our family is Ghanaian and my dad would go home sometimes and come back with a bag of things. There were always masks and drums and spoons. Touching those objects, being able to handle them, examining the surface, the distinct visual language, the way they carried place, those were, as art objects, the most gripping and compelling and confounding and curious things I ever encountered as a young person.

HH: Lastly, please share one question you'd like me to ask the next artist.

DF: What is at stake for you in your work? What is the urgent concern, if any?