David Hammons is a painter, sculptor, conceptual and installation artist, as well as a curator living and working in New York. He creates installations and site-specific works in which he uses found objects as a platform for social commentary inspired by dadaism, primarily exploring racial themes. Since the early 1970s, he has been creating works with materials such as grease, hair, barbecued ribs, cheap wine bottles and dirt, among other objects. Hammons places himself historically between Marcel Duchamp and the Arte Povera movement. He has risen to prominence while at the same time consciously avoiding the attention of critics, galleries, and museums, preferring to work in public places such as streets or vacant parking lots. As an African-American artist rooted in the black urban experience, Hammons develops his work out of the debris of his community's life to confront cultural stereotypes and racial issues.

Hammons's work is found in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Californian African American Museum. Hammons has exhibited in the United States, Europe and Japan, and most recently at the Ace Gallery, New York, in November 2002, and at the Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, in the summer of 2003. David Hammons is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award".