Baltimore-born, New York-based artist Derrick Adams has been celebrating the Black experience and interrogating portrayals of it throughout his 25-year-long artistic career. From his iconic, eye-catching cubist paintings to his playful interactive sculptures, Adams’ work has expanded the dialogue around contemporary Black life and culture, with a focus on showing Black joy, leisure, and play.

Last month, the High Line worked with Adams to install two of his works on a double-sided billboard next to the High Line – Moynihan Connector: Sing It Like You Mean It and Sitting Pretty. Both artworks draw inspiration from a pivotal moment between the 1970s and 1990s, as national television attempted to more realistically reflect the diversity of its audience. The result, however, was a representation of Black personalities as over the top, larger-than-life, and exaggerated.

In serendipitous timing with Black History Month, a dedicated time to center and celebrate Black culture and history, Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, sat down with Derrick Adams to dig deeper into his artistic practice—and his social practice work—that is grounded in giving voice to the contemporary Black experience and Black history in the making.

Cecilia Alemani: You have an extraordinary body of works that have been displayed in public spaces. What do you think is the role of public art today? How is it different from showing in a museum?

Derrick Adams: In my mind, public art’s primary audience is the people who inhabit the space surrounding the site where artworks are installed. It supports the concept that art is for everyone and is accessible to all who encounter it. Very different from a museum program structure, where there’s implied politics, like a “social etiquette,” present in the space.

How did you feel when you first saw your works, Sitting Pretty and Sing It Like You Mean It, reproduced on the billboard next to the High Line – Moynihan Connector?

Seeing the images larger than life certainly echoed the sentiment driving the concept of the piece—subject and narrative. Both works center the Black figure as the lead character in their story, and use the visual language of media to project outward the vivid colorfulness that comes with the confidence in knowing the power of your presence in the world.

The artworks presented for the High Line focus on a pivotal moment in television between the 1970s and 1990s. What inspired you to explore that particular moment in history? Why is it significant?

Media culture in the 70s through the 90s, especially in television, had such a lasting impact on the way I see the world, and the way I believe the world sees me. This fabricated construct is what fuels me to counter-produce works that speak more to the influence Black culture has on the mind and the fruits that bear as a result.

Were these artworks inspired by specific figures or moments, or specific experiences you had?

Almost all of the images created for this series are inspired by shows I’ve watched and characters I’ve studied. I began to revisit them again in 2015 as a critical thinker. Ideas associated with race and ethnicity in representation generated by many months of personal reflection and revisiting TV programs and movies I grew up watching as a child and young adult formed the work. Now, as a visual artist, I deconstruct them with blocks of color and many formal decisions, where the content and material application merge to completion.

Besides your work as a visual artist, you have been supporting and spearheading important projects devoted to community building through Charm City Cultural Cultivation. What are some things you’ve learned about cultivating spaces—especially public spaces—where people feel like they belong?

The socio-political interest driving my creative practice is also motivation for my community-related endeavors. As an artist I start off every body of work first developing things I want to see. Then other factors come to mind as the work evolves into a conversation. With community building I think of others first and then myself. This approach is about give and take, which is essential to being open and collaborative. My nonprofit Charm City Cultural Cultivation is my art as well. It is an umbrella organization of the three entities—the Black Baltimore Digital Database, Zora’s Den, and The Last Resort Artist Retreat. Each of them cultivates safe and enriching environments for Black people: whether through preserving the history of Black Baltimorians, forging sisterhood through the literary arts, or providing rest and rejuvenation for artists and cultural workers.

How has living in NYC shaped the subjects you choose to tackle in your artworks? And how has it shaped your approach to cultivating community—through your artworks or otherwise?

Being from Baltimore and living in NYC since 1993 has given me so much material to make work about. Having family in both cities has been grounding and stabilizing. Having family who support the creative community also gives me a great sense of being appreciated and understood. These things all are contributors to my success.

For Black History Month, could you recommend any favorite non-fiction or fiction books you’ve read on the Black experience or Black history that have had a personal impact on you?

The People Could Fly [by Virginia Hamilton]
Art on My Mind—anything by bell hooks really