Adrian Burrell

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.

Artist CV (PDF)

Taylor Dafoe, "Critical Geography | FotoFest Biennial 2024, Houston," Photograph, May 1, 2024

Madison Ford, "FotoFest Biennial 2024: Critical Geography," The Brooklyn Rail, April Issue, 2024

Michael McCarthy, “Rising Bay Area Artist Adrian L. Burrell Is A Master Storyteller,” San Francisco Magazine, December 5, 2023

Tony Bravo, “Adrian L. Burrell’s ‘Venus Blues’ bridges Senegal to Oakland through family journey,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 22, 2023

Max Blue, “Oakland artist reckons with the trans-Atlantic slave trade in new Dogpatch show,” San Francisco Examiner, November 6, 2023

Mark Taylor, “Singing the "Venus Blues" with Oakland Artist Adrian L. Burrell, “ SF/Arts, September/October, 2023

Mark Van Proyen, “Adrian L. Burrell’s ‘Venus Blues’ @ MSP Foundation,” Squarecylinder.com, October 30, 2023

Tony Bravo, “Oakland artist to create new multimedia installation in S.F.’s Dogpatch,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 20, 2023

Seph Rodney, “Adrian Burrell Explores the Difficulty—and the Promise—of Escaping Black American History,” Art in America, January 26, 2023

Marke B., “Pop-Up Magazine springs back onstage, with one of Oakland’s best young artists,” 48hills, May 19, 2022

Maya Chesley, "Shaking the Foundations of the American Dream," The New Yorker, February 2, 2022

Luke Williams, “At SFMOMA, Adrian L. Burrell’s Collective Self-Portraits Defy Gravity,” KQED, March 31, 2021