Curated by Wassan Al-Khudhairi with Misa Jeffereis

Dislocation and danger animate Derek Fordjour’s ramshackle architecture. For his first major solo mus-eum exhibition, the New York–based artist presents SHELTER, a jury-rigged installation that will fill the entirety of one of CAM’s eight-hundred-square-foot galleries. With dirt floors and corrugated-metal walls, the makeshift structure presents a selection of the artist’s sculptures and mixed-media paintings alongside detritus scavenged from nearby city streets. The canvases, several of which also hang on the institution’s newly revived Project Wall, address the black American experience—especially as it pertains to the spectacle of sports—and the artist’s Ghanaian heritage. Yet SHELTER is the show’s thematic focus: Providing scant protection, the ad hoc home underscores the precarity and vulnerability of migrant life.

— Jennifer Piejko