Terry Adkins

This first career-spanning volume of dynamic artist and musician Terry Adkins surveys three decades of multimedia installations and performances.

Born in 1953 in Washington, DC, Terry Adkins grew up deeply interested in visual art, music, and language. His approach to art making is similar to that of a composer, and Recital was conceived as a theatrical score that punctuates and demarcates space, creating interplay among pieces in different media and from diverse bodies of work. The works of art in Recital pay homage to the legacies of figures such as Bessie Smith, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Brown, Matthew Henson, and John Coltrane, among others. In his sculpture, photography, and video, Adkins transforms and re-purposes a range of found materials, archival imagery, and reclaimed actions in a process that he calls potential disclosure. This book features detailed biographical information, an interview with the artist, and a selection of Adkins’s writings.