Devin N. Morris (b. 1986, Baltimore, MD; lives and works in New York)

I collapse memory and space to envision delicate new realms of existence. Through collage, painting, photography, physical assemblage, and video I consider the statement ‘use what you have to make what you need.’ This consideration began at a young age watching my mother and paternal grandparents enact care acts through various labor practices to sustain the growth and stability of my family in Baltimore, Maryland.

My works prioritize displays of personal innocence and acts of kindness within surreal landscapes. The work is made during a process of merging drawings, writings, and traditional art mediums with found objects in an arrangement akin to harmonizing sounds to make songs.

This process results in images that reflect my engagement with changing environments where space, kinship, social interrogation and found architectures and objects are explored and reflected.

The materials I source are exposed to the vulnerabilities of nature, and when I happen upon them I feel as if I am a predator and archivist. My work questions how the collective use and disuse of an object or body informs its future. It also questions how intimacy and ownership transform the utility of domestic spaces and extend their mythology. Each found material within these works houses its own history of use and is handled as an archive where markings, dirt and visible wear lend clues to domestic histories.

Employing various digital, physical, and immersive strategies, my multimedia practice primarily utilizes collage and dissonance as a means to engage societal conventions and gender expectations.

All work is care work, and collage is a way of living, just as quilting can be seen as a photo album. The works are emotionally charged and sumptuous, as subjects appear simultaneously familiar and out of reach. In these interactions between person and place, both intimate and imagined, I break down and reconfigure what one assumes of the spaces we occupy, both within and outside of ourselves.

Recent exhibitions include: And Ever an Edge: Studio Museum Artists in Residence, MoMA PS1, Queens, NY(2023); Portrait of an Unlikely Space curated by Mickalene Thomas & Keely Orgeman, Yale Art Gallery, New Haven (2023); Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, Frist Museum, Nashville, (2023). Copy Machine Manifestos: Artist Who Make Zines, Brooklyn Museum, NY (2023); Kindred Worlds: The Priscila & Alvin Hudgins Collection, Hudson River Museum, NY(2023); Earthly Pleasures, Deli Gallery, New York, NY (2023);
Minotaur's Daydream, Semiose, Paris (2023); Ways of Being, Collaborations, Copenhagen (2022); On Paper, Deli Gallery, New York (2021); and The Skin I Live In, Lyles and King, New York (2021).

Recent residencies: Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (2023); Residencia São João, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (2022); ISCP Vision Fund Recipient, Brooklyn, NY(2021).

Selected Bibliography: And Ever an Edge; Studio Museum Artists in Residence, New York Times, March 1(2024); For Devin N. Morris, Life's Roles Are Art and Inspiration, Cultured Magazine, July 12 (2023); Artist Devin Morris Creates Space to Explore Male Intimacy, Out Magazine, May 1(2019); Imperfect Tools for Navigation, The Brooklyn Rail, Feb 7 (2018).

Morris is the founder of 3 Dot Zine, a publication and public forum for marginalized concerns. He hosted the Brown Paper Zine and Small Press Fair with The Studio Museum in Harlem in 2018 and created a site-specific installation at the MoMA PS1 2018 NY Art Book Fair. His solo show at Terrault Contemporary was listed in Artforum as the “Best of 2017,” and Time named him as one of “12 African American Photographers You Should Follow” in 2017. Morris received the 2019 New York Artadia Award.

contact: devinnmorrisstudio@gmail.com