Inside adidas’ Ode to Black Excellence

Inside adidas’ Ode to Black ExcellenceCurators and creative duo Rog & Bee Walker take us behind their vision for the immersive celebration in Atlanta.By Erin Ikeuchi

Under the roof of a former perfumery along Atlanta’s Westside Beltline, adidas gathered hundreds of artists, athletes, musicians, writers, designers and leaders for the final act of its Honoring Black Excellence (HBE) capstone – an ode to the cultural architects at the helm Black creativity, innovation and brilliance. The iconic three stripes have long understood the transformative power of teamwork and sportsmanship, and in recent years its taken its steadfast commitment to community and social impact off the pitch and into the wider cultural bloodstream.

Launched in 2019, HBE initiative has become a pivtal platofrm platform for the brand, honoring Black voices shaping today’s creative and social landscapes. A cross between experience and exhibition, this year’s edition unfolded as an embodiment of memory and momentum. Centered around the theme of “Pathways & Pipelines,” the event spotlighted those who not only preserve legacy, but voices who are pave the way forward. To curate the event, adidas tapped Rog & Bee Walker, the duo behind Paper Monday, to transform the sprawling, industrial space with their sublime visual language, bringing their love for narrative and storytelling into a new, experiential dimension.

The night featured a tender short film directed by the Walkers, alongside a series of immersive installations — a mosaic of the honorees’ iridescent worlds: A willow shades over the belles of Gee’s Bend Quilters, the Alabama-based collective whose quilted odes to Black Southern life sit at the heart of American art history; testimonials from mothers who have been impacted by Jaycina Almond‘s Tender Foundation, a grassroots rewriting narratives around single Black motherhoods, sing from the cozy, corner nursery. Elsewhere, framed jerseys’s from Sekou Thornell‘s label Kitboys Club sits beside a stack of lockers. Fueled by his love of the game, Thornell blends streetwear and soccer to empower the new wave of Black creatives, both on and off the field.

Peppered throughout the space are portraits taken by the Walker’s — tender captures screen-printed on sheer veils of fabric, catching the light as if exhaling with the room itself. The images serve as a visual throughline, threading each installation with a dignity that doesn’t just captures its subjects, but holds them tight. Ahead of the HBE Capstone Experience, we caught up with Rog & Bee to discuss their practice and the vision that brought it all together.

“It’s definitely a balancing act, and what we do together is greater than the sum of our parts.”

How would you describe your practice in your own words?

Rog Walker: Visual storytelling sums it up. We use photography, film and pretty much any medium to capture identity, which is at the core of our work. It’s about exploring our stories and the stories of people around us.

Bee Walker: Through working we’ve discovered other dimensions of our practice that maybe weren’t initially intended, but are so beautiful to see. This whole HBE event has turned into 100’s of people coming out to Atlanta to screen the film and see the photographs and meet the featured honorees – that element of our work has been really surprising. It’s amplified really beautiful messages and it’s become a really important part of it all.

What are you respective backgrounds and how have those paths led you to where you are today?

RW: Bee’s been taking photos since she was like 13, whereas I started kind of late. I come from a standard, working-class family, and photography was not a choice that was even allowed. There was a lot of backlash, but it only made me want to pursue it even more – to tell my story and explore this path.

BW: To be honest, I wouldn’t call my background a creative one either. I did start taking pictures young because my father bought me a camera, but when I met Rog, it coalesced into something that we both loved doing and we just grew from there. It’s been such an amazing journey.

“True collaboration starts with the trust that someone believes in your vision, even if you’ve never done it before.”

As both creative and life partners, how do you strike a balance when approaching a new project?

RW: Just taking a step back, our personalities are so different: Bee is really outgoing and I don’t like talking to people, whereas I’m really technical and she just doesn’t like to fuss with that stuff. Our personalities just mesh well. But, also we fell in love with each other and with photography at a time when there was a lot of excitement. I remember running around on the street with our friends, and so many things were happening at that time, and we just loved it. We were exploring culture and having fun, which made it easy to collaborate.

BW: It’s definitely a balancing act, and what we do together is greater than the sum of our parts. It helps me stay focused and when I drop off a little bit, I always remember that none of this would be possible if it weren’t for both of us or our whole family now being a part of it.

How has your experience running Paper Monday inform your curatorial vision for this event, and the immersive installations within them?

RW: The adidas Purpose team reached to see if we wanted to curate the event, and though we’d never done this before, we saw how these stories are more than pictures, they’re real narratives. It was a matter of research, we were looking at Carrie Mae Weems, Tyler Mitchell and grasping onto different elements. True collaboration starts with the trust that someone believes in your vision, even if you’ve never done it before.

Courtesy of adidas. Event photography by Yvette Glasco. Portraits by Rog & Bee Walker.

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