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What Now? With Trevor Noah

Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People | What Now? with Trevor Noah Podcast

Interdisciplinary artist Derek Fordjour is one of my Favorite People. In the episode we discuss creating art, African diaspora, and assigning value within society. Above all else, we agree humans need storytelling.

Trevor NoahhostDerek Fordjourguest

May 8, 20251h 46mWatch on YouTube

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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

Knowing When a Work Is Finished
Trevor Noah opens by asking Derek Fordjour how he knows when something is finished. Fordjour compares it to a barber's chair and diminishing returns, and Noah relates it to writing jokes. Noah then introduces Fordjour and the themes of the episode.
- •Fordjour describes a creeping feeling that more work isn't making a piece better
- •Barber's chair analogy for diminishing returns
- •Noah says his own test is whether he still feels the same way about a joke
- •Noah introduces Fordjour as a painter and sculptor who brings history, identity and joy to life
Workplace Hierarchy, Holding Hands, and Childhood Beatings
The conversation starts with Fordjour's blocked nose and drifts to office hierarchy in America versus South Africa and Ghana. They joke about men holding hands, which leads to affectionate memories of being beaten by their parents with kitchen skillets and high heels.
- •Nobody admitted being sick at The Daily Show; Noah hadn't considered his position of power
- •Men holding hands as normal in Ghana, South Africa and elsewhere
- •A boss holding your hand could be more threatening
- •Fordjour was hit with skillets and pots; Noah with high heels
- •Noah's mom reacts to his reminders of the beatings with 'You want another one?'
Growing Up Ghanaian in Memphis
Fordjour explains his parents are both Asante from Ghana and recounts his father's kindergarten lesson about the Ashanti Kingdom living in him. They joke about a Black Panther origin story, the 'African booty scratcher' insult, and his father's journey from the village to become a doctor.
- •Both parents are Asante; his father said the kingdom lives on in him
- •Growing up in an apartment in Memphis and being called 'African booty scratcher'
- •His father left Kumasi with money the village pooled so he could become a doctor
- •His mother studied nursing in England
Returning to Ghana, Language, and the Door of No Return
Noah says he has never been to Ghana and wants to visit as a guest rather than a tourist. Fordjour talks about lacking the language, whether Ghana is being overrun by Americans, and the meaning of the slave castles' door of no return. They share how it feels to stand there.
- •Fordjour says language is the passkey to culture, and he and his brothers don't speak Twi
- •Fordjour rejects the idea that Ghana is overrun and wants the diaspora to return
- •The door of no return explains the movement of Black peoples for Fordjour
- •Noah feels relief that it is history, and also heaviness; he has never taken a picture there
Black Immigrants and Black American History
Fordjour wishes African immigrants could learn Black American history before entering society, comparing it to joining a game in progress. Noah tells of being booked by the wrong student union, and they discuss the splintering of Black identity, resentment, and Fordjour's Uncle Manny.
- •Fordjour's game analogy: wearing a jersey, losing, with mean refs and nobody explaining the history
- •Noah's mix-up between the African Student Union and the African American Student Union
- •Blackness being flattened and collective advocacy splintered
- •Some African immigrants bring respectability politics until they meet American racism
- •Uncle Manny later felt he had been used as a token
From Comfort to Cool, and Stolen Lineage
They discuss how African culture has gone from embarrassing to comfortable to cool for younger generations, helped by social media, Afrobeats and food. Fordjour recalls envy from Black American friends, and Noah reflects that slavery stole a place from a people. Fordjour then raises Roots and how the power of a story survives revelations that parts were fabricated.
- •Kids today are more comfortable with their cultures, and now it's cool
- •Fordjour describes Black American friends' envy of knowing his origins
- •Noah says slavery stole a place from its people
- •Roots was presented as factual, later found partly fabricated, but still mattered because people needed a story
- •Noah and Fordjour agree that facts matter less than the story
Being a Black Artist in a Gatekept Art World
Noah praises Fordjour's standing and calls the art world the most gatekept of all fields. They discuss how Black artists' stories are wanted but not their messy parts, and Fordjour brings up stereotype threat and the strategies in his work. He credits predecessors like David Hammons and Norman Lewis.
- •Noah says the art world is the most gatekept field he knows
- •Great artists' life stories are treated as part of their art, but Black artists' rough edges are unwelcome
- •Stereotype threat: anticipating racism has its own cost
- •Fordjour's work is about the gamesmanship needed to traverse troubled spaces
- •David Hammons's invisibility and Norman Lewis's unanswered letters to Leo Castelli
Suits, Shoes, and Hidden Systems
Noah argues that fields like fashion and architecture shape society more than people notice, using the suit in MLK's marches as an example. Fordjour says suits appear in his paintings as codes for navigating space, and tells how his dentist brother spends on shoes because his white colleagues notice them.
- •Fashion and sizing decide who feels included
- •Architecture shapes behavior through benches and house placement
- •Suits in Fordjour's paintings act as codes for anticipating perception
- •His brother, the only Black doctor in his practice, pays a tax on shoes
- •Some dealers claimed Black artists of earlier decades weren't making good work
Why All Work Is a Scam: Value and the Art Market
After the Uber segment, Noah says all work is a scam because its value is assigned arbitrarily, citing computing, women's professions, Louis Vuitton and Ferrari. Fordjour distinguishes art from the art market, explaining how prices jump without the object changing. He says Black artists complicate the system and the goal is ownership and infrastructure.
- •Noah says all work is a scam because its value is assigned by those with resources
- •Louis Vuitton and Ferrari rely on stories and limited supply
- •Fordjour separates art from the art market and its changing prices
- •Access determines who pays $3 for a work that later sells for millions
- •Fordjour wants Black participation in the whole apparatus, not only as artists
Trains, Luck, and Agreed Fictions
Noah offers his train analogy for success, either running alongside or waiting for it to stop, and says he distrusts advice from successful people who leave out luck. They tie this to Harari's intersubjective realities, and Fordjour describes keeping a firewall between the art made at 4 a.m. and its commerce. Noah contrasts his million relationships of one with Fordjour's one relationship with a million.
- •Society is a moving train; creators either chase it or wait for it to stop
- •Noah is allergic to success advice that omits luck
- •Money, business and art markets rest on agreed fictions
- •Fordjour keeps a firewall between the spiritual act of making and public value
- •The comedian's audience is democratic; the art world is not
Art in Our Original Coding: Subway Murals and the Banjo
Fordjour says art is in our original coding, since no society has failed to make things. He describes carrying paintings uncovered on the train and later getting his work in a subway station near where he lived during a dark time. He also discusses the banjo's African origins.
- •No society anywhere has lacked making
- •Fordjour rode the train with uncovered paintings to see if anyone cared
- •His murals are in the 145th Street station, which he calls the Derek Fordjour Underground Museum of the People
- •The station is near where he lived on an air mattress after a divorce
- •The banjo started in Africa with a gourd
- •Art as a space for new stories
Art as a Passive Buff and the Question Versus the Answer
Noah says he understood art's value after visiting Ukraine, and describes it as a passive buff to society using a video game analogy. They discuss billboards and advertising, with Fordjour saying design answers questions while art creates them. Noah credits Fordjour with making art less intimidating.
- •Noah saw spaces without art in Ukraine and felt the absence
- •Art works on us as a passive buff even when we aren't looking at it
- •Advertising and billboards also exploit passive influence
- •Fordjour: design solves a problem, art creates the question
- •Fordjour told Noah to just say what he likes
Art and Comedy: Jokes, Audiences, and Traveling
They compare art and comedy: Fordjour considered comedy before painting, and they discuss laughter as universal. Fordjour explains that an artist sets his own time, and they debate where a joke lives. Noah describes learning local humor when traveling, with Kevin Hart and Dave Chappelle's praise, and they discuss timeless jokes and Fordjour's own artistic path.
- •Fordjour once thought comedy wasn't serious enough, then saw its space for social critique
- •Fordjour says an artist works outside train time, and art completes when it enters the public
- •Noah says a joke exists when he thinks of it, and mastery is recreating it in the audience's mind
- •Noah immerses himself in local culture before shows, and Dave Chappelle called him Dubai's favorite comedian
- •Traveling taught Fordjour that his lived experience can resonate widely
- •Fordjour found vulnerability to avoid being compared to Kehinde Wiley
Pretty Pictures, Beauty, and Black Faces on Walls
Noah says pictures can simply be pretty and describes museum pressure over how long to look. Fordjour says beauty is more expansive than pretty and is a strategy in the glance economy. They discuss Black faces in collectors' homes and how painting a white Jesus changed the world, though Fordjour says a machine spread it.
- •Noah's discomfort with museum tours and performing appreciation
- •Fordjour says it's fine to say 'I don't get it'; beauty is layered while pretty is surface
- •Noah loves that Black people have stories in Fordjour's art
- •Noah says the first artist who painted white Jesus changed the world
- •Fordjour says a machine spread that image as propaganda; other images didn't travel
The CIA Art Theory, the Art Market's Origins, and Where to See His Work
Noah asks about the conspiracy theory that the CIA created American contemporary art. Fordjour calls it a fun story but unlikely, since the government barely supports artists, and gives the 1970s Scull auction as the art market's origin. He closes by telling people where to see his work.
- •Noah's retelling of the CIA theory about postwar American cultural power
- •Fordjour says humans have always created, so the market wasn't invented by the CIA
- •He says the market's origins lie in Scull's taxi-fortune resale of art and the Rauschenberg confrontation
- •He doubts the US government supports artists, citing Canada and Korea as contrasts
- •His subway station mural and an LA show at David Kordansky Gallery about the Black voice

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