At the Whitney Museum, New York | RAQUE FORD

Raque Ford infuses abstraction with narrative potential, producing layered works that explore how identity is crafted from the remnants of popular culture. Known for her distinctive way with materials, Ford troubles the line between painting and sculpture, using reflective acrylic and transparent Mylar, welded steel chains and laser-cut text. Her high-gloss surfaces are incised with spidery script that quotes from a range of sources: song lyrics, snippets of conversation, excerpts from fiction and diaristic jottings. An accomplished printmaker, she has been a fellow at the renowned Robert Blackburn Workshop, recombining her signature elements into works on paper both intimate and bracing. Deeply attuned to the history of art, Ford channels the tactics of Minimalist masters like Melvin Edwards, Robert Smithson, and Richard Serra toward her own nuanced project. “That’s the interjection of being a woman of color and learning these ways of making sculpture,” she has said. “I want to have their energy, their aggressive scale and material…I’m taking all of that and making it my own.”
Raque Ford (b. 1986, Columbia, Maryland) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Solo exhibitions of her work will open at Greene Naftali on July 1, 2025, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit this fall. Recent solo presentations and public commissions include Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024–25); Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna (2025); The Print Center, Philadelphia (2023); and MoMA PS1, New York (2023). Significant group shows include White Columns, New York (2023); Albright-Knox Northland, Buffalo (2022); MoMA PS1, New York (2021); and SculptureCenter, New York (2016). Ford’s work is in the collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
RAQUE FORD artist talk for The Print Center, Philadelphia