Terry
Adkins

Terry Adkins was born in Washington, D.C. in 1953 and died in New York (United States) in 2014. He developed a multifaceted artistic practice at the intersection of sculpture, live music and video. Brought up in a family of musicians and himself a great fan of free jazz, he played the guitar and saxophone, and included John Coltrane, Nina Simone and Jimi Hendrix among his most important influences. Indebted to modernist sculpture as well as vernacular craft and the musical traditions of the American South, Adkins strongly advocated for abstraction. As a sculptor, he went beyond conventional interpretations of the past to create “abstract portraits” (in the form of recitals) of historical figures that were important for the culture of the African diaspora, such as botanist and inventor George Washington Carver, intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois, composer Ludwig van Beethoven and blues singer Bessie Smith.