Jordan Derron Brown (b. 1996, Silver Spring, MD) is an artist based in Baltimore, MD. Informed by masquerade storytelling, craft history, and performance, he works across disciplines to investigate the boundary between memory and dream. He holds an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
I define my practice as worldbuilding at the crossroads–an ongoing exploration of what happens when language, action, ideas, and physical materials meet. I transitioned to my current mostly object-based practice from a mostly performance-based practice grounded in dance. Influenced by my studies of performance, as well as meditation, sculpture, natural science and spirituality, I think of my body as a kind of crucible where information transforms via improvisation. My practice operates in three parts: first, I absorb different sensory techniques, such as movement languages and craft processes, as well as theoretical perspectives; then, in a subconscious and intuitive process of play, I let my body recombine them and produce various tangible objects; and last, I reflect on the intersections discovered, using the objects as evidence of this dialogue, and present them in a public context. As such, each single work belongs to a larger body of work that offers a window into a particular intersection of ideas. I work this way to prioritize the embodied wisdom gained from experiencing something firsthand, and to embrace non-definition, resist singularity, and remain in the space between tangible and intangible, exterior and interior, memory and dream–a state of constantly becoming.
CV (Updated June 2025)