Devin Allen lives and works in his hometown of West Baltimore. Allen gained national attention when his documentary photograph of the Baltimore Uprising following the death of Freddie Gray was published on the cover of Time magazine in May 2015. His work was featured on the cover of Time again in June 2020. His work in his own community has extended to activism as well. In 2015 he launched “Through Their Eyes,” a youth program that teaches photography to Baltimore city students, specifically those from districts that have underfunded education programs. The program includes giving cameras to students, as well as organizing educational workshops and art exhibitions of student work. More recently, he’s collaborated with Under Armour on the UNDR ARMR x DVNLLN collection: a full-scale creative endeavor that is equal parts community development program and performance-based style collection from Baltimore, for Baltimore that focuses on the city’s youth. Allen was the first recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship in 2017.
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https://about.underarmour.com/forbmore/DevinAllen
Derrick Adams was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and sound installations. Adams’s multidisciplinary practice engages the ways in which individuals’ ideals, aspirations, and personae become attached to specific objects, colors, textures, symbols, and ideologies. His work probes the influence of popular culture on the formation of self-image, and the relationship between man and monument as they coexist and embody one another. Adams is also deeply immersed in questions of how Black experiences intersect with art history, American iconography, and consumerism. Adams received his MFA from Columbia University, BFA from Pratt Institute, and is an alumni of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. He is a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship, Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. Adams’ solo exhibitions include Buoyant at Hudson River Museum; Where I’m From at The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall; Patrick Kelly: The Journey at Studio Museum in Harlem satellite Countee Cullen Library, NY; Sanctuary at Museum of Arts and Design, NY; Transmission at Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Network at California African American Museum, Los Angeles; and The Channel at Brooklyn Academy of Music. His work is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
http://www.derrickadams.com/