Derek Fordjour  is a New York-based American interdisciplinary artist of Ghanaian heritage who works in video/film, sculpture, and painting. Born of both broad sociological vision and a keen awareness of the body’s vulnerability, Fordjour’s portraits and other multilayered compositions are filled with those such as athletes and performers who play key roles in cultural rituals and communal rites of passage. Fordjour has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Pond Society, Shanghai (2021) and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Missouri (2020) and group exhibitions, including The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2021) and Present Generations: Creating the Scantland Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio (2021). In 2018, commissions for the Whitney Museum of American Art Billboard Project and the Metropolitan Transit Authority Arts & Design program resulted in major public projects in New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; and Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. Fordjour served as the 2020 Alex Katz Chair of Painting at The Cooper Union, New York, and serves on the faculty at the Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut as a core critic.