Derek Fordjour was born in Memphis, Tennessee to Ghanaian parents. He was awarded the 2016 Sugarhill Museum Artist-in-Residence, the 2017 Sharpe Walentas Studio Program in New York City, and named the 2018 Deutsche Bank NYFA Fellowship Award. In 2018, he was awarded commissions for the Whitney Museum of American Art Billboard Project and the Metropolitan Transit Authority Arts & Design program. He was appointed The 2020 Alex Katz Chair at Cooper Union and served as a Core Critic at Yale University School of Art. Recently, he was the inaugural artist for the Building Art Series on the façade of MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He has also been featured in several publications such as Forbes, Juxtapoz, Vanity Fair and Interview Magazine. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta Georgia, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and an MFA in painting from Hunter College. His work is held in the private and public collections of Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, SFMOMA, Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Royal Collection Trust and LACMA. Fordjour is the founder of Contemporary Arts Memphis.
