Damon Davis

TED Fellow Damon Davis is an award-winning artist and philosopher whose work across a spectrum of creative mediums explores the intersection of power and myth. Through his illustrations, painting, printmaking, music, film and public art, he investigates how myths have shaped our political and interpersonal landscapes. Davis seeks to empower and give voice to the powerless and combat systems of oppression, focusing not only on pain but also on the joy of the Black experience.

He is well known for his solo exhibition, "Darker Gods in The Garden of Low Hanging Heavens," which premiered in St. Louis in 2018 and went to Art Basel Miami later that year.

Davis is the founder and creative director of music collective/ label FarFetched. Filmmaker Magazine selected him and Sabaah Folayan as part of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film 2016” for their work co-directing the critically acclaimed documentary "Whose Streets?" chronicling the Ferguson uprising of 2014. In 2020, critic Ben Davis cited his project "All Hands On Deck," which captured the hands of people who shaped and upheld the Ferguson movement, as one of the “100 Works of Art That Defined the Decade.” He is a Firelight Media, Sundance Labs, TED, and Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow.

Davis’ work is held in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts and the San Diego Contemporary Museum of Art.