Tremaine Emory’s Denim Tears Gets a Museum Retrospective, With Jafa, Hammons and Jacob Lawrence on the Walls

Tremaine Emory has always dressed his ideas in denim. At the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, they now get a museum to go with them. Denim Tears from the Pool of Black Genius, a retrospective of the “African American sportswear” label he founded in 2019, opened Sept. 14 and runs through Jan. 11, 2027.

The title is the organizing idea. Chief curator Daniel S. Palmer pulls pieces from SCAD’s permanent collection by Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Alma Thomas and Faith Ringgold, then hangs them with work by artists Emory has collaborated with, including Arthur Jafa, Hank Willis Thomas and David Hammons. The museum’s artist list also names Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Virgil Abloh, Kara Walker and George Clinton. The pairing argues that Denim Tears belongs to a longer line of Black American art, not just fashion, as Hypebeast frames it.

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Emory has been blunt about why he works in clothes. Complex quotes him from a recent Highsnobiety interview:

The art world, as cool or credible as it is, doesn’t have a lot of access to the people that I wanted to reach. I felt I could get this message out and get these ideas out to more people through clothing.

Tremaine Emory, to Highsnobiety, Complex

The show leans on the real thing. One of its more archival objects is the pair of well-worn vintage Levi’s that started Denim Tears, per Complex, and the photos show a wall of graphic T-shirts in the museum’s André Leon Talley Gallery.

There’s a music thread, too. SCAD’s biography of Emory, who was born in Atlanta in 1981 and raised in Jamaica, Queens, lists Virgil Abloh, Frank Ocean and André 3000 among his collaborators, and describes him using clothing as a “Trojan horse” for gestures that cross fashion, music and culture. He co-founded the creative space No Vacancy Inn with Ade “Acyde” Odunlami and Brock Korsan.

SCAD Museum of Art is at 601 Turner Blvd. in Savannah. Denim Tears from the Pool of Black Genius is on view there through Jan. 11, 2027.

Added to the High Grailed archive on October 11, 2026.