Derrick Woods-Morrow

Originally from Brown Summit, North Carolina, Derrick Woods Morrow's work reflects on his experience growing up in the American South and centers on the exploration of Black sexuality and the complex journey in navigating this discovery. As an artist, his work locates and entangles the exchanges of sexuality, desire, and the casual consumption of these energies across the black diaspora. Through installation. Woods-Morrow traverses' sculpture, blown glass, performance, and new media (machine learning, 3-d architectures and film) to embody the ruptures, and unearth the complex relationships between private and public pleasure shared amongst his community. Intrigued by the various ways Black daily life meets and finds value in existing freely, he questions the very nature of desire, materializing his feelings into morally complex allegorical experiences for viewers to implicate themselves/ re-assign value to Black +Queer Lives.

His work has been exhibited largely in group exhibitions across the United States, with international showings at the Schwules Museum in Berlin and Kunsthal kAdE. His first major solo exhibition, Gravity Pleasure Switchback opened at Gallery 400 in Summer of 2023. He has completed residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2022), The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2021/2024), Chicago Artists Coalition (2018), and the Fire Island Artist Residency (2016). Most recently he was awarded the Creative Visionary Grant from the Black Artists & Designer Guild (2023) for his Project S.E.X Firm - Charging Port (now titled Maroon/z). Woods-Morrow holds a Schiller Family Assistant Professorship in Race in Art and Design and teaches sculpture, painting, and textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design.