Derek Fordjour Brings History of Black Music to Life with “Nightsong”

David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles has been transformed by the dazzling and deeply immersive new exhibition, “Nightsong,” by the artist Derek Fordjour, who has collaborated with celebrated architect and Galerie Creative Mind Kulapat Yantrasast and his design studio WHY, along with a team of musicians led by Omar Edwards, to create a full sensory experience that combines painting, sculpture, live performance, and video.

Fordjour, who has long used musicality as a motif in his work, brings the history of Black music to exuberant life in this installation. Described by the artist as a “giant music box in the dark” and an “acoustic wilderness,” the exhibit immerses visitors in a four-hour song cycle composed specifically for the show. (The gallery is open from 6 to 10 p.m. to fully embrace the nocturnal theme, as the space itself has been transformed into a dreamlike landscape.) Rooms give way to forests, harkening back to the “hush harbors”—secret refuges where enslaved Africans would gather to sing and plan escapes.

Among the exhibition highlights are a number of new paintings that reference the work of other artists, including Village Quartet Remix (after Jacob Lawrence), Musicians on the Street (after William H. Johnson), and Banjo Lesson in Minor Key (after Henry Ossawa Tanner). These works, along with others featuring visual motifs like rotating discs, patchwork fabrics, and reflective surfaces, extend the artist’s signature, multi-disciplinary, collage-based approach. The installation also includes a poignant, primordial room with mud-caked walls and photographic portraits that invites viewers into a vigil for those who have passed. The show acts as both a joyful celebration of Black artistry and a vital elegy for what has been lost.

“Derek Fordjour: Nightsong” is on view through October 11, 2025