Derek Fordjour
Appearances
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
How do you know when something's finished? I think there's a creeping feeling that you get where you're like, I'm not making this better. You know, it's kind of like when you're in a barber's chair, like the longer you're there, this guy can only remove hair. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. You shouldn't be there too long.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
No, but they were dating. And, you know, we found some lovely love letters that they wrote to each other. So my mom went to school in England for nursing. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Why Memphis? I always want to know why immigrants land where they do and why they call that home. Dude, I really want someone to research African immigration. Like we know the story of how the Irish came. We know how the Italians came. But I don't know that anyone has really studied the movement of Africans to America.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I would just love to hear the story because we have so many cousins, Ghanaian and Nigerian, in these far out places in Ohio or Texas, Texas, Nigeria. we call it, like all these places. And we're just now of age to like share experiences. But I think it happened like maybe the 60s is when it really picked up. But yeah, so my dad came here. My mother was in England for nursing school.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And there were all these strange things about growing up. Like we would eat beans with our eggs in the morning. And I just thought this is what people, it's normal. Until you like share with a friend, like, wait, you guys don't eat beans? And they're like, beans? Why are you eating beans for breakfast? Were you in a black neighborhood or a white neighborhood? Where were you? Bro, so black.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Generally speaking. That's just too, like they just. It's too what? It's a too a lot of things. It's too what? It's a lot of things. It could be a lot. I have a list. Like why they wouldn't say that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
First of all, there's too many syllables. It's too funny. It's too, you know what I mean? Okay. Okay. You mean on that side, you say it's too much swag. It's just a lot of swag. It's like an insult that will also make you laugh. It hurts and tickles you in equal parts. That's very black. It's very African. You know what I mean? I'm offending you, and you love it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So we grew up in a very black community. And we're talking about the 70s, 80s. Memphis, I mean, Dr. King died in 68.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, so my father, actually, we were just learning a lot about the rage he had about going to graduate school, to dental school. because he was, I think, the second black oral surgeon in the state. But he's very African, so he doesn't know about black... History. They don't know about like American history. Yeah, they don't know. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I also wish that there was like a place that if you come from an African country, you could go like learn black history before you engage with society.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Well, because what it means to be a black immigrant, as we're seeing at this time, I mean, this statement now has lots of weight. You also have the double burden of understanding racial politics, right? So you don't just enter. It's a bit like you enter a game in action when you are an African-American when you come to America. But you have on a jersey and you're on a side and you're losing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And the refs are really mean.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
But, like, don't get hit. Like, balls are flying. So... But nobody explains, you know, the history, the game. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Oh, this is great.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, I can see it already.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You know, when I hear that, I hear the tragedy in a few ways. One, that blackness is flattened to just black. because it's quite heterogeneous. There's a lot of mix inside of that. We know this. Even as a West African and a South African, there's worlds of difference. So it's kind of absurd to fit it all in the first place to black. So that's one tragic thing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
The other is the splintering that happens and then the potential tensions that arise. Yeah. which are not always the case. Everybody's kind of happy when they have their own place. But it never absolves you from the unfortunate necessity that you must advocate collectively. Yes, because you are oppressed collectively. That's right.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So the splintering is comfortable for entertainment, for culture, so long as you can reunite when it's time to advocate. But that doesn't always happen. Yeah, that doesn't. So that's the tragedy that I feel, right? One, that it's already flattened in the first place, but also it splinters a collective action.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
They're like Republican in their vibes. They're like mean white people. Yeah. Worse, actually.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Forever. I mean, I have also that point. I have an uncle, Uncle Manny, he's now passed. And it wasn't until his later years that he talked about He lived in Minnesota. Lisa, my cousin Lisa. He raised her. And he talked about being used because he realized that, oh, I wasn't angry. So he came in the 60s, had success as a corporate guy, but he was a token. And I don't want to reduce his life.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I mean, he was a hardworking man.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
But in his later years... looking back now with a black, an understanding of identity, he's like, oh man, I think they used me, you know? Like, I think I was part of this game. And it really is, if you're talking about those moments, sometimes it happens later. I hope, Trevor, that we're in a different world now where social media is cool. Like you see Nigerian weddings. You have these shows.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like kids, if you're 6, 7, 8 in today's world, you have Afrobeats. There's all this cultural export. It's just like a different time. And I mean maybe I'm – I don't want to be Pollyanna, but I just think it's different.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Bro, you blow me up immediately about the nose. No, because you know why. What are you self-conscious about?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It is cool. It's cool now. That's a very important distinction. Comfort happened some while back. Now, cool is definitely the thing. Yeah. Like, to be African and to live in America, I think it's cool. When I grew up, it was kind of like we would say to our black friends, like, you know, yeah, I'm Ghanaian. They're like... African where? Do a dance. Stand up.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You know, I was like, bro, I'm really African. Like, trust me. Say something. You know, it was like that kind of like shakedown. And now that we're older, we realize that they also just didn't That splintering, they didn't want to happen. And then there was also this envious thing. Because they're like, dude, we don't know where we came from. We don't know our origins.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
When we got old enough, they talked about that. I was like, oh, that was part envy. They admired it on some level. And they were also envious of it. And I also appreciated differently what it means to go back to the town of my mother's mother. That is like the, you know, we are matrilineal. But to know that is to like locate your lineage. That's part of the slow violence that happened in America.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So I remember Roots. I don't know if... The show? Yeah, the show.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Exactly. So they had a few iterations of it. But when we grew up, it was the first iteration from Alex Haley, the author who wrote Roots. And it was, I think, for a long time, like the most watched miniseries. Black, white, American households were obsessed with Roots. Yeah. And it created a narrative for African-Americans that...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
that explained their roots in this very detailed, multi-generational story. The old African, you see Kunta Kinte as a young man, and then you see him as an old African. And so Kunta Kinte was in the lexicon, in the whole thing. And then years later, we found out that some of the details in that story were fabricated. that Alex Haley wrote. And so it wasn't all true.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
When it came out, it was like, this is all true. This is factual. And that was part of the strength of it. And then years later, we found out that some of it wasn't true and it didn't matter because people needed a story. I think it also doesn't matter because all stories aren't true. Exactly. History is itself a fabrication. I love your bit about nations and anthems.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You know, it's like, it's all. And so, I mean, I love both sides of that. That I knew it when it was factual and it was, and then when it was something that was falsified and it didn't matter. The power did not, the power of the story didn't change.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Oh, Trevor, you say some of the wildest things. What are you talking about?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
What do you mean?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
No. That's true. But the art world... You're right. You're right.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
The entire time? No one. But wouldn't you say that's also like entertainment culture? Like nobody wants to like, first of all, you're the boss. To each other, do they admit it?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I love the question, and I think about you that way. The shock I just had about what you just said, you have the authority, the moral authority, to make certain comments.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
But I mean, even publicly, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
This is what's hard about talking to you.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You see what I'm saying? Yeah, so now you're forcing me to have a real conversation. I mean, that's why we're here. I guess that's why I'm here.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, this is what he does. Because I'm so well attuned to switching the conversation, given the context and how it's going to be received. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. And so there's a lot of posturing and withholding that's necessary. Because with art, you want the conversation... to be about the work and you don't want the traps to happen where it gets into places that you have no investment.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It is. I'll give you an example. Absolutely.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
No, you don't. Because you're such a man of the people.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
There's like a moment that if you're like, it's been a while. You want to look for a mirror. So it's diminishing returns in a way. Yeah, like there's a point where you're like, if I stay in this, it's not going to get better. I'm sure you like write a joke and you're like, that's too many words. I did too much to get there. You know, it's enough. Leave it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Oh, this is true.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Not the messy parts of it. Yeah, not the messy parts of it. Right, right. I was looking at this idea called stereotype threat, which I came across 20 years ago. There's a guy named Claude Steele who talks about not racism. the anticipation of racism happening has deleterious effects.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like, if I don't even encounter it, but I think on the other side of this door it might happen, it affects how I present myself. right? And Schrodinger's racism. I like that. Right. So, so stereotype threat is an additional anxiety.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
There's the thing, which is actually racism that you have to contend with, but your anticipation of it, how you steal yourself, how you, you know, that is also like very anxious. So that's a lot of what my work is about is the strategy of, the gamesmanship necessary to traverse a troubled space, right? And the art world, and you're right, has been troubled.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It's tough for us, but I have to acknowledge all of the artists that came before me and my peers to make this moment possible. I sound like I'm giving an award speech, but I think it's really just important to acknowledge because those are the artists that people just don't know at all.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I'm not saying they're the only ones. No, no, no, for sure. Just a few. It's a complicated question because... there's a moment that the art world starts to take notice of black artists. But then there have been artists working way before that that were just never acknowledged at all. So there's a lot of retrospective work that's happening to acknowledge art.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So it's kind of like saying, like if we were to use an NBA analogy, like, Like, we all know, like, Michael Jordan was the first guy that showed us you could have astronomical commercial success while you have success on the court, right? So there's no Kobe. There's no LeBron without Jordan. But there was also Dr. J, right? I'm with you. And there was also Wilt Chamberlain, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And so there's so many people behind him. I would say probably David Hammonds. David Hammonds. And actually on the pier here in New York, there's a wonderful monument that he has across from the Whitney Museum. I think it personifies perfectly why so many people might not know the name David Hammons. There's a full-blown... Monument that cost tens of millions of dollars to build.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I spoke to the director with Whitney about this. I mean, it's a big thing for them. But you could pass it a million times and never notice it. It has thin wire frame to outline what used to be the piers on the West Side Highway. So he just framed a building. So you can miss it. And he's okay with that. And this is part of the genius of David Hammons. His presence is as...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Fascinating as his absence. And he's done some of the most compelling conceptual projects, like he sold snowballs on the street, like for an exchange, like people bought snowballs. And that's an artwork.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Right. This is David Harris. I mean, that's one of his more popular artworks, but he can hide in plain sight. He played with the art world. Like these are snowballs that actually melt.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Okay. But you can buy one. Okay. It opens up this amazing commentary on commerce. What are you buying? What is exchange? Yeah. Where is value?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, it's true. I mean, even in Ghana, I mean, there's this wonderful thing you observe right away where the boss and his subordinate may hold hands, like same sex.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's right. Let me add to that. And then when we open this conversation even more broadly to African architecture and different modes of creation and architecture domicile and public space and the plaza, it's a big conversation, but it's invisible to most of us. What you're talking about relative to the suits and the respectability, you'll see a lot of suits in my paintings because of that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It's a signifier. It's a code about how to navigate How to anticipate a certain perception and then to use it for your benefit, which is why, back to Hammond's, his invisibility is as crucial as his visibility is.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And so when we talk about representation, over-representation, under-representation, I kind of jokingly say, like, if you ever went to see the doctor and all the doctors were six feet tall and they were black guys. We would all whisper a question to someone. And I joke, my little brother Rick is a dentist, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I talk about him all the time because I used to get on my brother's about wearing expensive shoes. And I'd be like, bro, I would never pay that much money for shoes. You guys are ridiculous. And I just thought like when you were saying earlier about the way Africans critique African-Americans. You're paying $400 for shoes, $300. And my brother is like, hey, man, they look at my shoes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Oh, damn. And I was like, oh, he's right. He's like the only black doctor in a practice of four doctors. The other three are white doctors. And they look at his shoes. And he feels that. And so there's this tax where he's going to spend more on shoes when his partners, arguably, I don't know what they're wearing in real life, but I mean, in theory.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
All of these conversations are embedded in the codes of my work because I feel like it's additional pressure. I mean, to take us full circle back to your question about what it means to be black and to enter this space. Yeah. One, it's impossible without our forebears.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And it's a way of like, let me have a chat with you. And that's totally normal to hold hands. In fact, by the time we leave, my brother and I hold hands while we're walking around. See, you're trying not to smile because you've been- I'm not trying not to smile. I'm smiling. Your smile is just growing. Yeah, right? The whole thing. The smile is growing. It's completely normal.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I've even had dealers at different times where we would talk about the absence of Black artists, you know, 80s, you know, 70s, from the commercial art space. And they said, hey, man, the Blacks weren't making the good work. The Blacks are making the good work now, man. They got better. You guys are making the good work. It's why it's working. It just wasn't that good then.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I thought, wow, there are a lot of people that believe this. That's why I cannot talk about entering this space without shedding light on all of the ones so much further behind me. Because they really made it possible. There's an artist named Norman Lewis who we're going back now to bring his legacy forward. There was an exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
The curators in the middle of the exhibition had a letter that Norman Lewis wrote to Leo Castelli. Leo Castelli is a legendary dealer in New York and all of the art world.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Norman Lewis's studio was right around the corner from Leo Castelli's gallery, like two blocks away. And Norman Lewis had been writing letters to Leo Castelli to ask him to visit the studio. And it never happened.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And so the inclusion of that letter gave what you're talking about, the kind of perspective of what it meant that Norman Lewis was able to make all of this work under those circumstances. I'm with you. Right? You're with me, right? And so... I don't know, I feel like I'm in this space where it's cool and we can make money and you know, it's like looking at the NBA.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I also have a friend whose dad played in the NBA and he worked and sold used cars in the off season. Like it was- He was pre-money. He was pre-money. Yeah. Same game, worked as hard, might have worked harder. Yeah. Right? But doing the same thing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You know this, yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Do they hold full hands?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Right. All right. Because of the story they've been told. Yes. Because they believe it. Yes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You know, that's a great question. And I think what you're asking about is not art. I think you're asking about value. The way the art world assigns value, right? That's exactly what I mean, yeah. And even more specific, we're talking about the art market, which is different than but related to art itself. It's an important distinction to make because I think out in the world –
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
outside of the art world, much like the purse, we conflate the value or the price. We relate the price to the value, right? Okay. So we see a Louis Vuitton and automatically we know it's expensive. Yes. Right? In the art world, very differently, you will witness the cost of the Louis Vuitton bag go from $3 to $20 to $3 million. Yeah. Nothing about the bag has changed.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
We don't tell a different story. We've added deluxe zippers. There's Wi-Fi in the bag. Nothing. When you bought it at three, it's the exact same bag. And so that's what's baffling to people that... We don't even hide the fact that it's the same bag at $3 that it was at $3 million. You have so many people here in New York City who will tell you, oh, I paid $200 for my Warhol. Or, you know.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Or Basquiat. Where were we? Oh, you think you would have been able to, you think they would have sold it to you? I mean, there's not the points. Dude, you just talked about the suit.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You talked about access. I'm saying, like, we cannot. I mean, because access and value, all this stuff is related. So the question then becomes, who gets to pay that $3? Yeah, you're right. Who gets to pay the $3? Who has that intel?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's what the Black artist represents and what's very complex about us entering the space because you can't have Black artists in the space without complicating the space for Black institutions, for Black collectors, for trustees. The entire ecosystem is affected when Black artists participate.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I'd like to also point to the entertainment industry when we had Black comedians, actors, but you didn't have... Black ownership. You didn't have agents. You didn't have... It took a while to get the infrastructure. So we are now advocating for us to participate more globally in the business, right? And I think that that's part of why they kept us out for so long.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You want to own the team. There you go. So it's like... The question is not me because we're kind of front men, you too. Nobody sees the entire operation behind you. We see you, right? But part of being successful is understanding the apparatus and getting good at that. And we've been in long enough where that's starting to happen.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And that's, to me, even more exciting than the mere presence of black artists.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I'm trying to remember that we're here because you know I want to ask you the same thing. I won't do that. You can. This is how we talk. So there was a time where you were probably paid $20 for getting on stage.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Bro, I literally come across emails sometimes where I was begging people to buy my work. Like... Hello, Trevor. Hope all is well with comedy in your world. I saw your special. It was great. Listen, hey, man, I got these new works. I was doing that, like begging people to buy the work. That was so long for me that I don't believe the $3 million number. Wow. Right? I know it's made up.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's not to say that there's no value connected to it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, you can't run. You know about this. I haven't talked about this in years. Talked about what? Being beaten. Like affectionately. Like affectionately. Well, we're speaking about it affectionately, like it's normal. We joke about the objects with which I was, I mean, I didn't want to talk. What was the craziest object you got hit with? The craziest object was probably skillets and pots.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
No, they can't. You get what I'm saying? They're invested in a big con.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
No, no, no. They can't say that. They can't. But they know when you go behind the scenes at all these big finance, inside, they'll tell you, it's a fiction, man. We need everybody to believe the same thing at the same time. Right? It's a house of cards. Yes. Inter-subjective realities, I believe it's called. Oh, this is good. I like that. I've never heard that term.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Whether you believe in it or not, it doesn't matter. The US dollar is a fiction that is real because we agree upon it. That's the only reason why. So now you've just explained contemporary art. You've just explained it. Well, you've explained the market. It's a fiction that we all agree will legitimize. Now, I say to artists all the time,
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Realize what's happening when you're able to sell your art because people can give you compliments and not give you money. I can like you. I can think you're great. But if I don't buy a ticket to your show, that's just a different level of investment. Yeah, I'm with you. And so I used to hear years ago, my dad would tell me, son, a professional is somebody who gets paid to do what they do.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You get paid. For artists... You can be a professional and have no money coming in for a long time. In fact, it could all come after you die. Oh, easily it could come. I mean, hopefully less so these days, but it's true. So the money cannot validate
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
the art because of what you just said because values all over the place the value shifting sometimes they can miss it all those black artists for you know 150 years that were overlooked weren't making better or worse art the country discounted them.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It's the train. So the train wasn't stopping there.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So for me and for other artists, you have to at once know that the art is authentic and true and real because it's what you have transferred into that material. In my case, I make objects. But that transfer has nothing to do with anything but me and that material at four o'clock in the morning. It's a spiritual experience.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Oh, okay. Because it's a kitchen. Thrown or hit? Both, man. Okay. I mean, it was me, though. I have two brothers. They were great. She never, I mean, they didn't require anything.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
When I'm done with it and it enters the public realm for critique, for connoisseurship, for commerce, that's a different thing. Hmm. Those two things are related and separate. And that firewall, at least in the mind of the artist, has to remain intact. I actually like this for all artists, to be honest. Right. It really applies to all of us.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Art is fine. Yeah, contemporary art, obviously. Contemporary art, okay. Yes. But in all of these spheres, I think it's the same thing. It is the same thing. It's true. I mean, what you said about the art world that people tend to pay attention to are the big numbers. Right. How much the paintings sell for. But people don't talk about your salary. Like you. Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You want people to talk about what you're interested in. And the conversation is, ironically, that's where value is, though.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Oh, this is good. Slow down. So you have a million relationships. I have a million relationships of one. Meaning one person.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Do you get what I'm saying? I 100% agree. The art world in many ways is not democratic. Because what you're explaining is democratic. Yes, it is. That's one woman, one dollar. One vote. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. One ticket, one vote. And this is also why you can be a superstar and why so many people know your name. Because you play to the widest possible demographic on some level.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, no, you're right. Okay. For us... We're known in very small rooms. Yes. With very few people with lots and lots of money.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Well, I truly believe that art is in our original coding because you'd be hard-pressed to find any society anywhere in the world through any period of time that did not create something. Outside of themselves.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I don't go to caves, but let's go to South America. Let's go to the rainforest. Let's go to the way they twisted leaves together to make beautiful, thatcheted homes. It's really impossible to find humans where they're not creating anything. And so, and I've thought a lot about this, about why people care.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
One of the things I used to love to do in New York City, and this is even before I was begging people to buy the paintings. You're just kind of in a room and you're making things and you're just fucking suffering. Maybe somebody bought a painting. I would take the painting to them uncovered so I could ride on the train with my art just to see whether anybody cared.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And you'd be surprised how many people of different kinds would say, you did that? And I say, yeah. That's good, man. All types of people.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
They should do that. Dude, I love that. There's a woman named Sandra Bloodworth who just retired from the MTA in New York City. Her job for over 30 years was to pick artists for the subway to do public works. And New York City probably has one of the best public works programs in all of the country. I did not know that. Yes. And so it's not always original work.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I have my work at the 145th Street two or three line. Yeah. And it's all my work. The ideas are in there. And I love it. What kind of work? You know, it's like... Like murals, like on the tiles and everything.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Let me tell you what, before you get to the point where you're, you know, looking at museums as a possibility, you know, you have the public. Like I took the train every day. So like to have my work in a train station in New York City was like awesome. What? My work? Dude, so it's great because... Let someone try to take a shit at that station. Yeah, that's what you think.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yo, D, you don't even understand. But what I say is, it is the Derek Forger Underground Museum of the People. That's the way I refer to it. Okay, I like this. But I was actually, after divorce, which happened years ago, I was struggling again, living out of my studio, sleeping on an air mattress. It was just tough times.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And it was a block away from where they called me to put my work at the station years later. And I just thought, this is not coincidence. That was my station during some of the darkest moments months of my life. And that's where my work is. So I think that, look, I think it's spiritual to answer your question. I think that there's no people without making something.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I think about the blacksmiths, the instrument makers, all the technologies that lived in the people that moved to different parts of the world, and how those things then expressed themselves. Right, right. The banjo, you know, which is, I just had a banjo on my last show, but I love the story of the banjo that starts in Africa with a gourd and ends up, you know, as folk music in America.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's actually a comedian who did a lot about that history. Steve Martin... in his later years, did a lot of research on the banjo. And it starts in Africa. There's no banjo in America without the American slave. That is wild because the banjo seems like the epitome of white America. Exactly. And so, I mean, look, Beyonce is dealing with that too.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I think she had the banjo in her work. There's a Black Banjo Project that has been researching this. But You asked about my work and like what stories. I love the opportunity to introduce those complexities and to magnify them and to have people make connections to things that they might not have made otherwise. I mean, it's what you do in your work too, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It's like, how can we think about this separate and apart from the stories we've been told about what they are, right? And art is a space where we can make a new story.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
How do you know that?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Damn, I hate that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
No, it doesn't matter.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Did you soft try something to see if she was ready? Because you have to...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It's like everything's shining on a billboard. Oh, absolutely. Shining on a billboard, shining on a billboard. You're in Times Square.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I like that. Okay. So I'm going to complicate that. I like it. I think it's a great opportunity to think about the difference between advertising and art. And it's really simple in that advertising, even design, they solve a problem. They answer a question, right? That they've sometimes created. Yeah, they've created the question, but they answer it. That's the goal.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Art is interested in the question.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I like this. So we'll say design... The goal is to solve a problem. Art is to create the question. So I think that that's the difference. And I think that's also why people are sometimes intimidated by it. But it's like listening to you tell jokes. Sometimes there's so many levels in the joke that it can be really funny if you understand all the resonance. That's true, yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Okay. See, that's still respect.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
But you don't have to get those deeper levels. It can also just be funny on level one. You taught me that about art. Really?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Well, I mean, look, that's, look, not to be flattering each other, but that's also what you did with humor. There was a point in life where I thought, oh, I could be a comedian. But I was like, it's not serious enough, though. Yeah. I wanted people to take me seriously. And I don't know, as a kid, I thought, well, as a comic, you're kind of a clown, you know?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I didn't really, but it's actually like, it has the space for social critique, for satire. You can get in places that other public figures can't, and you can push that as far as possible. And you're part of some kind of social change. A joke is so trivial on some level. It's not a serious thing. A painting on its own, I mean... It's just an object. It doesn't have any embedded powers, arguably.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
But then there is a part where that is true, though. There's something true. A joke can be more. It can be profound. An object can stay with you. And I think that's the stuff we traffic in. I mean, as you were talking about the kind of magic and art or value, I think about laughter. It's like laughter's democratic. You know, we're coded for laughter. Yeah, we are.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It doesn't matter where you are in the world. I think about like Mr. Bean or something like where there's no language, you know, but I think we human beings are encoded to appreciate art. I think we are actually. I believe. I mean, my whole existence is predicated on that belief.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Both of my parents are from Ghana. You're first generation, right? First generation, same tribe. So both of my parents are Asante. So, you know, we say Ashanti, but in Ghana we say Asante, but 100%. So I remember my dad telling me in the, oh, I don't know, I must have been in kindergarten. He goes, I'm going to tell you something. He sat me down and he goes...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yes. It's involuntary. Yeah. So I think that, you know, part of what I love about being an artist is the way I can reach people is at a very human level.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It's not about class, race. It's none of those things. In fact, I can be all about my cultural experience and bring people into it that live outside of it. And how marvelous is that?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yes. How long do you take between, how long does it take you? It takes me about a year to put a show together, a little more. Do you take a break? I don't know you take breaks. I try not to take too many breaks. I mean, this is my own, like, whatever, anxiety. What is that, like poverty trauma?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Okay, well, I have to say this about the train analogy, which I loved. When you were talking about that, I was thinking about performers that keep trying to stay relevant Yeah, chase the train. Chase the train. They're chasing the train. It's a fool's errand. It can work. At some point, you're going to fall out.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
This is the difference between, let's say, an illustrator and an artist. An illustrator is... In design, doing the work that they're told to do to tell the story for the deadline. I can take five years on a painting if I want to. I can take 20 years if I want to. I can take one minute if I want to. Because the train and the approval, that's not what I'm working for.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It's something very personal and very internal. And I set the time. In fact, there is no time in my studio. Here's where the magic happens with art. I had a relationship with everything that goes out of my studio. I had an affair with this thing, a love affair, hated it, loved it, brought it back. The whole thing, every time.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
The whole thing, there's not one thing that I make that I don't obsess over. And so my investment is what makes your investment possible. And I think there's a point in terms of finishing a work where you get a feeling that's just like, I think we've had our time. You can go in the world now. But art really concludes when it enters the public sphere.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like I started, I make it, I have an experience. When it goes out for me, that's when the cycle's sort of complete. It's like, you can write jokes on a pad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Until you say them to the audience. You have to say it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And it has to land. But philosophically, where does the joke live? Does it live on the page? Or does it live in the delivery?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
If the entire Ashanti kingdom perishes tomorrow, but you're alive, then the Ashanti kingdom lives. And that's the way he explained where we were from and what it meant to be part of a tribe. That the entire kingdom lives in you. And mind you, I've been like Tennessee having this conversation as like a kindergartner. But that was like the early framing of like what's in our blood, you know?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's when it exists. Oh, this is like a very... You know what I mean? Parallel political conversations. Yeah, but that's literally for me.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah. But you've just explained what artists do. It's the same thing that this thing is doing something for me at a personal level. And that experience is authentic and satisfying so much so that I'm going to invest all this time and energy. I love that. Okay. Right. But that's a one-on-one experience. And then at some point, it has to live in the public space.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You put the painting on the wall and someone goes, boo, it's done. Well, what's beautiful about us is we don't hear the boos. Museums are quite quiet. We're like, shush, everyone, quiet. Soft boos. Do not boo the artists.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So the conversation is a little more internal. Yeah, but I think I would be more terrified by that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, I'd be terrified to stand on stage in Turkey with 12,000 people.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
They keep calling you back for the Grammys. We had to cancel the Turkey show. The fifth call, I'd be terrified. We had to cancel the Turkey show.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring that up.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, that's true. We had to cancel shows. Yeah, we canceled shows too.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Dude, but let me ask you this. How do you know what's funny in other places?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
But why would you get on stage if you don't know that?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I would have had to come here to find that out.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's what I'll find out after this.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Because people know American culture.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, but what do you do? You absorb the culture?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Do you just hang around for a while? Yeah, yeah. Just listen and look at what people are laughing at?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I don't want to fly in and fly out. Yeah, you like to be there.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's right. Oh, that's a great analogy.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I used to not understand how serious you were about that. You used to say that. After you finished The Daily Show and you were like, I just love to travel. I was like, oh, he likes to go. Like, who loves to tour? But you don't just tour. You're like learning. You're like learning the culture and trying to understand and apply.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
A small little house in Memphis. It was a little apartment actually. A little apartment. Yeah, even better. Marvel loves apartments.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, they're fine. Because they're here. You know, as a kid, I would, my mother would sometimes close the door and be like, don't, I'm eating my food. And when she says my food, she means she's eating Ghanaian food. Yeah. She eats with her hands. And she would say, I mean, we all eat with our hands. We eat food and otherwise. And she would say, these people won't understand food.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It has to be an apartment. Apartments are better than houses for superheroes. But it has to start with the kid being bullied, being called African booty scratcher. Were you called that? Were you not? I was in Africa. Who's going to call me that? That's true. This is true. That would be awkward.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
that why I eat with my hands. They think I need a fork. And for her, she understood the fork as a colonial object. Oh, damn. That was unnecessary.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And she would say, food actually tastes better. I mean, your hands are tactile. You're experiencing the texture of the food better. and you're ingesting the food. Did she know that based on research? Because that is true. She lived it. I mean, she lived it. I mean, she grew up.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
She's doing that magic mom thing. Yes, exactly. She's doing that magic mom thing. You have one of these.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
But, you know, to go back to what you were saying about the cultures, man, you remind me of going to – a few years ago, I went to actually Israel. And from there, I went to South Africa. And I remember going to Hector Peterson Square. I mean, the story of them teaching Afrikaans and – And after that, I went to Australia. And when I came off the plane, they apprehended me for a while.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And here I am thinking like, oh, I'm taking a break. I've worked hard enough. Let me treat myself. And here this Australian guy is asking me what I'm going to be doing. How long am I here? And then I'm starting to imagine myself as like – you know, some, like, do I have a dubious motive for being? Like the questioning went on so long. I'm like, bro, this has been 20 minutes.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like I'm 24 hours away from home. And so that trip showed me, and it was actually a relief that injustices against mankind are as old as mankind itself. It blew my mind. some kind of way to realize that, oh no, this is like. This is it. This is the human experience. Right. Also, it's like tough to be black everywhere on some level. Like it's troubled.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Traveling taught me that making art about my lived experience can be resonant because everyone has some version of what those challenges are. When you think about the universality of a laugh or a painting from any far off part of the world, I want to see it. I want to experience it. I can engage it. I can look at paintings that were made a thousand years ago and haven't experienced it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I don't know that humor works that way. It doesn't always age well. Is there a timeless joke?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's still funny?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like a hundred years later?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I'm like, yeah, we're all African booty scratchers. What do you mean? No, it's true.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I mean, as Africans, we know this, right? Proverbs.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like they still tickle people. They've been around. Just saw Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal performing Shakespeare. Yeah. Word for word. And people laughed, you know, so things can be timeless. Art certainly is, but humor can be.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
This was the full sentence. My son was called the same thing. No, you're lying. I was shocked. I'm telling you. This is now. Now. I was like, what? I was like, I thought he was spoofing me. It's like, no, it's a thing. Well, it's a funny thing because- Okay, wait, wait.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
What a great joke. I saw recently these Africans that play, is it Kenyans or they play country music? Have you seen this? No. But they love it. They have these parties and there's like all these Africans wearing like top to bottom like cowboy gear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a marriage of the cultures. I love this stuff when culture can. Oh, no, that's my favorite thing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
This is what we live for, right? I mean, I think as artists, I mean, that's what we really are trying to mine is like the human experience. I mean, it could get dark because you got to go inside. When I first started painting, I would make paintings and people would say, and I would have like, you know, an athletic guy, a bright patterned background and people say, Kehinde Wiley.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. But I couldn't... He had already occupied that space. Oh, damn. And so I was like, optically, the things I'm putting together are adding up to what I don't want And so the only way forward for me was to get into, okay, well, what's the feeling about this image? And it's like, oh, vulnerability is what I'm interested in.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Because when I experienced racism... Like distilling it down to the core feeling as opposed to... What it looks like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not saying that's what he's doing either. No, no, no. But I'm just saying like, that was for me, my salvation is to get inside the experience. And... Because everyone knows what it feels like to be vulnerable.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Everyone doesn't know what it feels like to live in my body. And so to me, I don't know, in my practice, I try to do that inside-outside thing as much as possible.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah, that's dope. No, I do. I mean, I'm joking. It's absolutely true. I mean, beauty is definitely a strategy for me. Because back to your analogy about the train, we're trying to get your attention. I operate in the glance economy. Yes. Right? You don't need to stand in front of a painting for an hour to have an experience. In fact.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
They shouldn't do that with you.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So I'll give you even more drama for your movie idea. Let's do it. My dad- really just wanted to be a doctor. And the entire village helped conspire to get him to America to become a doctor. So he tells a story, I have no idea how true any of this is, of like leaving the village with a bag of money
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And I think it's important to be able to do that. Okay, that's very important and I'm going to absolve you of that pressure. You may never do that again. You may also say, I don't get it. I'm not into it. That's a good thing too. That's a reaction. And in art, that's totally possible. There's some art that just bothers me. But it bothers me. Okay. And that's a good thing.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So I think the complication with the word pretty is that it flattens for me. Beauty is to be more expansive than pretty. Oh, I'll take I. Right? So pretty is just purely aesthetics. It's just pretty.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Whereas it could be beautiful inside and out.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's what I'm saying. I'll take that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like, for real. I think... Yeah, man.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Rashida and I talk about this.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Well, but it's true. Like, think about that. And so I've been asked also, well, how do you feel about that if they're those people that don't have direct engagement with Black people in their lives but want to acquire images of Black people? And I say there's something beautiful that you find about the experience.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And as long as I put enough truth in the work, where the work is not merely to perform aesthetically, they're part of the conversation. And I think it's a good thing. Artists, amen.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Changed the world. Changed our world. Certainly changed the continent drastically.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Do you get what I'm saying?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's a big thing. Yeah, art is like a big one. But I'll also say to complicate that, there are pictures of black Jesus that have been created long, long, long time ago. That's that market conversation about that one guy that painted long hair Arkansas Jesus, like why that became as popular is because of a machine. It's not because of the painting.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
that everybody pitched in to give him on his journey away so he literally was like saving the entire he was going to be a doctor wow that was the deal and then my mother left at 16. so this is like a village village then yeah well my dad was from Kumasi which is like another it's like a second city yeah yeah after Accra have you been to Ghana I've never been to Ghana what you're gonna take me Trevor
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So when we go to, say, Ethiopia and we see Orthodox Christ, he looks very different than Arkansas Christ that we know in America or the Western Jesus. But that one didn't travel anywhere. because it didn't function as propaganda. So I don't want to say that that artist made this move. The machine moved that artist's work. Right? So that's why that firewall is so important.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I don't know it well. I've heard some things about them being involved in using it.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Artists of Europe, of the sophisticated. And America is a young baby.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I tell you why I think that's complete BS. It's a great fun chat. It's a fantastic story. I like it. I mean, for a dinner party, it's wonderful. I'd stand around and listen to it. Remember what we said before about the belief that human beings are encoded to create. Yeah. So creating art at all levels and all ways has been ubiquitous with human beings.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
The art market really didn't get created until the 70s, and there was a guy named Skull who owned taxi cabs. He was a wealthy guy who decided to go to Sotheby's, which at the time was only really selling – antiques and cars and other things. So he had bought art from all these artists in New York, probably many from Leo Castelli, and he decided, I'm just going to resell this stuff.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And he did it at these high prices. And Robert Rauschenberg was there at the sale and shoved them. And they had this match. And there's a photograph of the moment when Rauschenberg. And so Rauschenberg says, hey, man, you bought that for me from this. And you took advantage of me. And Skull says, I did you a favor.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And so inside our world of contemporary art, that's the origins that we know about. That's the moment. Yes, that's the moment when New York City started to become the center of the art world. So that's, I mean, in terms of art market.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So that's a bit more plausible than this, because America's, I mean, you know, the government is not, I mean, they don't even support artists well in this country at all. So that just gives them too much credit. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I want to believe that so much. Like, if you told me that happened in Canada... I might believe that more because Canada supports their artists.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
They understand culture. If you told me this happened in Korea, look at what they're doing with K-pop. The government is like helping underwrite that thing. That's cultural export. But America? That's a stretch. Great story, though.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Okay. That's the most important. Yes, yes. The Derek Forger Underground Museum of the People. Yeah. is at 145th Street on the 2 and or 3 stop. Okay, cool. So that's cool. So that's there. I have a show I'm working on in September in Los Angeles, which is going to be great at David Kordansky Gallery. Thinking only about music. And people can just go to these things, right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
They can just come, dude. Please come to the show. Just come. It costs no money. It's wonderful. So I wish more people went to galleries and museums. So I want to encourage people to just go. This show is all about the black voice. And I think this is a time where we need to raise our voices. I think the black voice is...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
emblematic of so many things uh around democracy that are really is really powerful so hopefully get you to la i'll do yeah i'll pop by all right i'll be there i travel man you know yeah you travel a lot my friend i travel yeah thanks for having me trevor thank you all right
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
It's true. Okay. So you want to hang differently. Yeah. And we struggle with this too, because unfortunately my brothers and I don't speak the language, which is, I mean, language is the, is the, it's the, it's the pass key. No, it is the thing. It's the thing. So we don't have that. And even though we're English speaking because of the British. Yes. It's still different.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
So when I go without my parents. it feels really different. There's like a piece of Ghana that you're locked out of. A little bit. It's like you approach the groups while everybody's speaking three and they change to English because it's polite to do. They want you to hear, but you're still like- It's not the same. It's not the same.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Because you can't handle the spice. Look, there is that of all the places, I mean, Ghana is the most welcoming to English speakers, to people returning home, yearning for culture. It's the best place. Isn't it getting overrun by Americans now, though? Stop saying that. I asked a question. Overrun?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
No, you know why I say that?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
There's a question mark at the end of it. No, I won't say that. The kid that was called African Booty Scratcher needs all of those kids that called him that to return. So there's no overrun. We need more to go back. So you're saying no, it's not? I'm saying no. Okay. Okay. I'm saying no. I've heard a lot of stories. I'm saying no, but I also know what you're saying.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like, I'm saying one thing with my eyes and another with my mouth. Right? We could do this. Right?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yeah. I mean, on some level, I mean, I mean, that's, but I look, I, I choose to stand for the marrying of the marriage of like the African cultural experience and the African-American experience. And the British American and everywhere else in the diaspora we exist. I mean, I think you definitely represent that. Oh, I love it. And so that's what I'm on. You know what I mean? Okay.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Like, it's not overrun. There's space enough. Okay. But you know what's happening is now there are, like, encampments and suburbs that are for, like, African Americans. And it's being marketed as such. And so as an African American, you could buy a home in the, like – In an African – African-American enclave in Ghana. I think it's fine. I don't know. I mean, if it works, it works.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
That's a big if, right? But... If it works, it works. It brings people back. We have to take you to a slave castle. Because... Have you ever been to any? Huh. That's a sentence that's never done well. Let me watch you deal with it. That's a... Let me watch you deal with that.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
But you have to experience the slave castle. Because... First of all, I didn't know that you hadn't done this. So I'm even more...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
convicted about it i've been to slave castles but i need to know why this one in particular okay well i think there's a moment well at least for me where you go to the door of no return yeah and it's in all the castles oftentimes it'll be like the port near the port somewhere there that's right they bring them in and there's a little area where they're going to get loaded onto a boat and that's the area of no return that's right yeah so it's similar in the one i went to was in zanzibar
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
Yes, yes. Very similar. So first of all, I mean, East African slave trade was different, just as brutal. But I think the dynamics are different East-West, but there's always that moment in the castle where you stand between where you are and where you're going. And for me, when I stand there, I get it. I get the whole diaspora. Like, I understand...
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
My experiences in Brazil, in Canada, you know, parts of Europe where there are Africans, like, I get it. Like, we all came through that door. And I don't know that there's another physical location that explains the movement of black peoples in the world quite like that point for me.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
You know, what do you experience there? Yeah.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I just... There is something. It's like a sacred site.
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
And then how do you, what expression do you make? How do I pose?
What Now? with Trevor Noah
Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People [VIDEO]
I see the somber. Yes, the somber. You see the somber.