Due to heavy rain in the forecast, tonight’s High Line Tour: From Freight to Flowers has been canceled. We look forward to seeing you on a future tour!
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Derek Fordjour
Backbreaker Double
Adjacent to the High Line at 22nd Street
Derek Fordjour’s practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, and performance to explore the intertwined histories of power, labor, representation, and the African American experience. Best known for his vibrant paintings layered with everyday materials such as cardboard, newspaper, aluminum foil, and glitter, Fordjour pockmarks and reveals textured surfaces that embody material history and repurpose practices. Through this collage-based process, he constructs exuberant yet introspective scenes often populated by athletes, musicians, and other performers, archetypes of spectacle, commerce, and symbolic representation. Figures are often depicted mid-action, highlighting both the vitality and vulnerability of the human form. Fordjour places these figures within lively scenes where their interactions with one another underscore his exploration of race and systemic inequity, juxtaposing individual achievement against the broader structural challenges historically faced by Black individuals and communities. His works oscillate between celebration and critique, evoking emotions that range from joy to melancholy, where effortless grace and conspicuous effort coexist and reveal the tension between personal striving and collective expectation.
For the High Line, Fordjour presents Backbreaker Double, a new monumental mural adjacent to the park at 22nd Street. The work depicts two Black marching band drum majors performing the “drum major backbend.” This iconic salute is an athletic, acrobatic stunt in which the drum major bends all the way backward, so that their shako nearly grazes the ground. The gesture is a recurring motif in Fordjour’s work, embodying the pride and ritual rooted in the traditions of historically Black colleges and universities. The drum major, commanding and magnetic, personifies both extreme effort and quintessential Black showmanship. On the High Line, the vibrant background and the figures’ matching red and white uniforms radiate unity and jubilation. Their contorted bodies, teetering on the edge of physical possibility, also highlight the tension between performative glamour and backbreaking labor. The title, Backbreaker Double, suggests both the physical form and psychological strain of expectation and hypervisibility.
Artist bio
Derek Fordjour (b. 1974, Memphis, Tennessee) lives and works in New York, New York. Fordjour has presented his work in solo and group exhibitions at institutions around the world. Recent group exhibitions include Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York (2024–2025); and Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California (2024). He is the recipient of the 2025 Gordon Parks Foundation Artist Fellowship, the 2023 St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Spirit of the Dream Award, and has previously served as a Visiting Critic at Yale and Columbia Universities. In addition to the High Line, he has received public commissions for MTA’s Arts & Design, New York City, New York (2018); MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, California (2022); and at Manning Family Children’s Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana (2026). He is the Founder of Contemporary Arts Memphis.
Support
Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, and Charina Endowment Fund. Major support of High Line Art’s digital infrastructure is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.
Project support for Derek Fordjour’s mural, Backbreaker Double, is made possible in part by Sarah Arison, and an in-kind donation from Meadow Partners and Canvas Property Group. Painted by the team at Overall Murals.
Program support for High Line Art is provided by Sarah Arison, Suzanne Deal Booth, Charlotte Ford, Joyce F. Menschel and Stardust Arts. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund and Shane Akeroyd.
Sobre esta obra
Derek Fordjour (nacido en Memphis, Tennessee, en 1974) trabaja desde la pintura, la escultura, la instalación y el performance para explorar las diversas dinámicas de poder, el trabajo, la representación y las experiencias Afroamericanas. Sus vibrantes pinturas creadas con cartón, periódico, papel de aluminio y brillantina, están talladas, amontonadas y perforadas para revelar superficies texturadas que evocan la historia material y el acto de reutilizar. A través de este proceso basado en el collage, Fordjour crea escenas llamativas pero también introspectivas, a menudo tienen como protagonistas a atletas, profesionales de la música y artistas, es decir, a figuras del mundo del espectáculo y la representación simbólica cuyos movimientos destacan tanto la vitalidad como la vulnerabilidad. Las obras de Fordjour equilibran la celebración y la crítica, al contrastarlos logros individuales con las desigualdades estructurales que han marcado la vida de la comunidad negra en Estados Unidos.
Para el High Line, Fordjour presenta Backbreaker Double, una obra reciente que muestra a dos “drum majors” (tambores principales) de bandas de música Afroamericanas ejecutando el dramático “drum major backbend” (arqueo hacia atrás del tambor principal), un saludo atlético en el que le intérprete se arquea hacia atrás hasta que su shako casi toca el suelo. Este gesto, un motivo recurrente en la práctica de Fordjour, evoca orgullo, ritual y las tradiciones de las universidades históricamente negras (HBCU, por sus siglas en inglés). Mostrándose radiantes con uniformes rojos y blancos a juego, los tambores principales encarnan tanto el espectáculo jubiloso como las intensas exigencias físicas y psicológicas a las que se enfrentan les artistas de la comunidad Afroamericana. El título, Backbreaker Double, hace referencia tanto a la forma física como a la tensión psicológica derivada de las expectativas y la sobreexposición.
关于这件作品
德里克·福乔（1974 年生于田纳西州孟菲斯）的创作跨越绘画、雕塑、装置和行为等多种媒介，探讨权力、劳动、表征方式及非裔美国人的生命经验。他以纸板、报纸、锡箔和亮粉为材料，创作色彩鲜明的绘画，通过雕刻、分层和穿孔的方式，显露出富有肌理的表面，呼应材料曾经的历史与再利用。借助这一拼贴式的创作过程，他构建出既热烈又内省的场景，常以运动员、音乐家和表演者为主体：这些人物既是视觉奇观、也是象征性表征，其动作既凸显生命力，也暴露着脆弱性。福乔的作品在赞美与批判之间保持平衡，将个体成就与塑造美国黑人生活的结构性不平等并置呈现。
在高线公园，福乔呈现了新作《Backbreaker Double》，描绘两位黑人行进乐队的指挥正在完成一种名为“指挥后弯”的戏剧性动作。这是一种极具体能性的致敬姿态，表演者将身体向后弯曲，弧度深至帽盔几乎贴地。作为福乔创作中反复出现的母题，这一姿势唤起了自豪、仪式，以及历史上的黑人学院与大学的传统。指挥们身着醒目迷人的红白制服，既展现了庆典式的表演魅力，也承载着施加在黑人表演者身上的强烈身体与心理压力。“Backbreaker Double”这一标题既指向动作本身的形态，也暗示了在期待与高度可见性之下的双重心理负担。
