DERRICK WOODS-MORROW
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Biography
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Excerpts from Acts of Divination (II) - Negation of Sight, 2019
Documentation of 2-hour durational performance photograph 54 x 36 in |
Derrick Woods-Morrow's (b.1990) work is a meditation on deviation and disruption, on language and representation - the laborious & the playful. Currently based in Chicago, where he works as a sexual health advocate and activist, and originally from Greensboro, North Carolina, his artistic practice explores black sexual freedoms, the complicated histories concerning access to land and the navigation of the American terrain by black & queer peoples. By deploying a wide variety of media– including photographic material, ceramic sculpture, film, and narrative performance, he attempts to reconcile the painful, personal and shared experiences of existing as black & queer in America. Through fluidly choreographed movement queer folx engage with Woods-Morrow’s personal narratives, imbuing the moments captured in his photographs with questions of shared existence, commonality, cultural vernaculars for identifying oneself as part of a community.
Woods-Morrow received his MFA in Photography from the School of Art Institute of Chicago in 2016, and was most recently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Photography and teaching artist at the University of Illinois Chicago. His work exhibited in collaboration with Paul Mpagi Sepuya in the 2019 Whitney Biennial; internationally in This is America | ART USA Today at Kunsthal KAdE (2020); Make America What America Must Become at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans (2020); in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; in YNCI V: Detroit Art Week Expo; in Photography Now: THE SEARCHERS, curated by Maurice Berger and Marvin Heiferman at The Center for Photography at Woodstock; and Down Time: On the Art of Retreat at the Smart Museum Chicago. In Winter of 2019, his second short film, 'much handled things are always soft' debuted in collaboration with the VISUAL AIDS 30th Annual Day With(out) ART programming at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art LA, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Brooklyn Museum, The New Museum & over a hundred institutions worldwide. He is the 2021 Edith and Philip Leonian fellow at the Center of Photography Woodstock, 2021 Bemis Residency Recipient, and an alum of the Fire Island Artist Residency, Chicago Artists Coalition’s Bolt Residency, and is a recipient of the 2018 Artadia Award – Chicago. Photo: Clifford Prince King |
