Derek Fordjour

Voices Honoree 

Derek Fordjour makes paintings, sculptures, and installations whose vivid materials give rise to portraits and other multilayered compositions. Born of both broad sociological vision and a keen awareness of the body’s vulnerability, his tableaux are filled with athletes, performers, and others who play key roles in cultural rituals and communal rites of passage. In his paintings, Fordjour methodically constructs the ground of each composition through collages involving cardboard, newspaper, and other materials and pigments. The textural surfaces that emerge are as complex—and physically engaging—as the dynamic subjects that Fordjour inscribes on top, within, and through them. His ability to grapple with artmaking on physical, conceptual, and human levels allows his work to express a wide range of emotions, from joy to grief. This, in turn, allows him to connect to audiences inside and outside of traditional art venues.

Derek Fordjour is the recipient of the 2025 Gordon Parks Foundation Artist Fellowship and the 2023 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Spirit of the Dream Award. He has received public commissions for the High Line, the NYC AIDS Memorial, MOCA Grand Avenue and the MTA’s Arts & Design program. Fordjour’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times. A monograph of his work will be published by Phaidon in 2027. His work is held in the private and public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Royal Collection in London among others. 

Derek Fordjour is a graduate of Morehouse College. He also earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and an MFA in painting from Hunter College. He served as the 2020 Alex Katz Chair of Painting at The Cooper Union, New York and served on the faculty at the Yale University School of Art  as a core critic. He is the founder of Contemporary Arts Memphis.