A native Cincinnatian, Terence Hammonds grew up in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood and attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts before studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Hammonds's work is informed and inspired by the struggles and determination of African Americans seeking equality during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. 

Hammonds visual vocabulary fuses imagery from the decisive decades that make up the epoch of civil rights evolution in America, a visual index of soul, funk, rap and punk music. Hammonds appropriates imagery from various movements and civil rights history and combines them with decorative motifs and patterns that adorn, memorialize and abstract histories of racial identity in America.

For this exhibition Hammonds will be pulling largely from complex collages made of the last few years that deftly but unabashedly meld elements in a range from the deeply personal to the cosmological, speaking of personal and shared histories while using elements of historically tested collage, intuition, Afrofuturism, the decorative and applied arts. Hammonds’ collages incorporate illustrations of celestial bodies with images of Black figures cut from vintage magazines, such as Life, Jet, and Ebony, to create scenes that are simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic.

Artist Talk

Terence Hammonds Discusses Black Identity, Collage, Afrofuturism, and Protest Art | Transmission from the Mothership