2023 New Editions: Derrick Adams, Style Variations
Derrick Adams, Style Variation 1 (Pixie), 2023. Click to view.
Derrick Adams, Style Variation 2 (Space Buns), 2023. Click to view.
Derrick Adams, Style Variation 3 (Loose Wave), 2023. Click to view.
Derrick Adams, Style Variation 4 (Side Part), 2023. Click to view.
Derrick Adams, Style Variation 5 (Fringe), 2023. Click to view.
Beauty World is a body of work Derrick Adams began in 2019 and has developed since. These images depict mannequin-like portraits of men and women with steely gazes and expressive hairstyles. Inspired by the display windows of beauty shops, wig stores, and braiding and nail salons he often passes in his Brooklyn neighborhood, Adams created this series to reflect on cultural and social rituals connected to beauty. The resulting portraits construct and deconstruct demonstrations of self-representation. They explore Black identity and empowerment achieved through acts of styling, camouflaging, costuming, and adornment.
In 2020, Tandem released four prints related to this body of work. Titled Style Variations, the prints depicted Black men with varying hairstyles and facial hair. Adams returned to the series in 2023 to create five new images of women featuring a pixie cut, space buns, loose waves, a side part, and fringe. The paintings and prints begin with a base image of a mannequin head. Adams then individualized the portraits by rendering the faces in geometric forms—an iconic visual element of his work—and applying varied skin tones, makeup, and hairstyles that range from classic to more contemporary and imaginative. The final portraits confidently look out at the viewer. Their attitudes are palpable and inarguable. The Style Variations are about being seen. They celebrate rituals of self-expression that do not need to be contextualized to have value, and they champion what Adams calls “one’s individual fantasticness.”
Derrick Adams (b. 1970, Baltimore, Maryland) received his BFA from Pratt Institute and his MFA from Columbia University. He also holds an Honorary Doctorate from Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2022, Adams established Charm City Cultural Cultivation, a non-profit organization that supports and encourages underserved communities in the city of Baltimore through events conducted by three entities: The Last Resort Artist Retreat, The Black Baltimore Digital Database, and Zora’s Den.
Adams’s critically acclaimed art practice has earned him multiple notable awards, including the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2019), a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2018), a Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2016), and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2009). Adams has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions such as The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (2022); The Momentary, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2021); Hudson River Museum, Yonkers (2020); and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2018). His work has been featured in notable group exhibitions at places such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Henry Art Gallery, and Kent State University Museum. His art is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art, among many others. Adams lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and he is currently a tenured assistant professor in the School of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts at CUNY Brooklyn College.
