Opening Reception: Saturday, March 14, 2020, 12-10 p.m.
Artist Talk: Saturday, March 14 at 4pm
Showing Through: Friday, April 3, 2020
pt. 2: Oakland is pleased to present We Matter, a solo exhibition of photographs by Adrian Octavius Walker. Walker’s work explores beauty traditions among Black men in America. The intimacy depicted in each photograph erases the possibility of threat often externally imposed upon Black men and instead pushes the viewer to see the power of kinship within the Black community. Walker seeks to expand notions of Blackness by challenging the American perception of Black men. Inspired by his investigations of the Black body, dynamics of the Black family and archival work related to the African American experience, Walker works in both film and digital-format photography to create intimate portraits based on his studies of human interactions in urban settings that share untold stories.
Adrian Octavius Walker (b. 1988, St. Louis, MO) is a mixed-media artist working primarily in film and digital format photography. In 2015, Walker self-published the book My Lens, Our Ferguson, a documentation of protests against police brutality after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, which was shortlisted for a Paris Photo-Aperture First Photo Book award and images from which were featured in a solo exhibition at the University of Alabama and five group exhibitions internationally. His work has been included in a variety of solo and group exhibitions including Black On Film (2016), Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style (2016), Brighton Photo Biennial (2016), Street Beautification (2014), and Imagery of Chess at the World Chess Hall of Fame (2016). Walker is one of the prize-winning artists in The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today Competition currently on display at the National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. He lives and works in Chicago, IL.