Photo: Dondre Stuetley
American, b. 1990
Lives and works in Oakland, CA
Adrian Burrell’s practice includes photography, film, installation, and experimental media. His work examines the intersections of race, class, and intergenerational dynamics, inviting moments where collective storytelling creates space for remembrance.
Burrell’s work has been the subject of the recent solo exhibitions Venus Blues at the Minnesota Street Project Foundation (2023), and Sugarcane and Lightning pt 3 at the San José ICA, CA (2022), each investigating his own family history—archival, speculative, and fictional—as a means of understanding Black life, history, resistance, and liberation in America.
A third-generation Oakland artist and US Marine Corps veteran, Burrell received his BFA in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute, CA and MFA from Stanford University’s Department of Art & Art History, where he was also a visiting artist with Stanford’s Institute for Diversity in Arts (2022). Burrell has been awarded the Black Freedom Fellowship, Salvador, Brazil (2023); Black Rock Senegal Residency, Dakar, Senegal (2022); SFFILM FilmHouse Residency, San Francisco, CA (2022); YBCA 100 Creative Cohort Fellowship, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2021); and Juror’s Choice Award, SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA (2019). His works are included in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, and Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA. His first monograph, Sugarcane and Lightning, was published by Minor Matters in 2023.