Reflect on the pool of Black genius with Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Lecturer Tremaine Emory
The SCAD Museum of Art’s Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies welcomes designer, aesthete, and founder of Denim Tears Tremaine Emory as the 2026 Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Lecturer. Denim Tears is a self-described “African American sportswear” label that explores the breadth of Black culture throughout the diaspora while confronting the complexities of American history. For this momentous talk, Emory presents the manifold influences that have informed his retrospective exhibition Denim Tears from the Pool of Black Genius, now on view in the museum’s Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies and André Leon Talley Galleries. The exhibition explores Emory’s expansive practice and his diverse sources of inspiration, including contemporary and historic artists. Renowned works from the museum’s Evans Collection of African American Art are prominently featured in the exhibition alongside works of his collaborators and Emory’s own peerless designs.
This event is free and open to the public and presented by the SCAD Museum of Art’s Walter and Linda Evans Center for African American Studies with generous support from the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation.
About the artist
Tremaine Emory founded Denim Tears in 2019, with each new collection intended to tell a story that reveals another facet of the African Diaspora. Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1981 and raised in Jamaica, Queens, New York, Emory utilizes the art of visual storytelling and clothing as a Trojan horse for his gestures to traverse the intersection between fashion, music, and culture, while producing dialogue and awareness of the critical issues that define our complicated national inheritance and shared global history. From his earliest output, Emory forged a fast-growing reputation as a visionary agent provocateur and countercultural catalyst. Amplified through creative playground No Vacancy Inn, co-founded with Ade “Acyde” Odunlami and Brock Korsan, his ability to widen the current cultural lexicon through collaborations centered on contemporary art provides some of the most designative cultural touchstones to date, which have garnered him numerous positions, awards, and accolades. His cross-generational group of collaborators and co-conspirators reads like a “who’s who” of culture today: Theaster Gates, Hank Willis Thomas, Virgil Abloh, Frank Ocean, André 3000, and Serge Becker, among many others. Emory continues to constantly innovate and eschew traditional definitions and bounds of media or genre — a true conceptual artist.