{"id":10289,"date":"2021-09-30T15:50:40","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T15:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=10289"},"modified":"2021-10-26T08:08:49","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T08:08:49","slug":"deborah-roberts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=10289","title":{"rendered":"Deborah Roberts\u2019 Investment in Time Pays Off"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Deborah Roberts\u2019 Investment in Time Pays Off<\/h2>\r\n
By Shantay Robinson<\/pre>\r\n
Deborah Roberts has been an artist all her life, but her notoriety came relatively late. She received a bachelor\u2019s degree at the University of North Texas in 1985, and almost 30 years later, she earned an MFA from Syracuse University in 2014. It wasn\u2019t until 2017, at the age of 55, that she became known in the artworld. Roberts never thought people would know who she is, but now she\u2019s in major collections around the country and in several private celebrity collections.<\/p>\r\n
In 2017, Roberts\u2019 work was in the Volta Art Fair\u2019s Your Body is a Battle Ground<\/em> show. The day of the preview, she recalled a woman asking her, \u201cwho is this artist?\u201d She replied that she was the artist. The woman, who was on the board at MoMA, told her she was going to do well. Roberts responded with, \u201cFrom your lips to God\u2019s ears.\u201d She ended up selling all the work in the show, in her studio, and from the gallery. When she got back to Austin, she went to work right away. She produced more work and more people called. She became the face of the Studio Museum in Harlem\u2019s Fictions <\/em>show in 2017. The following year, she was featured in a spring collection fashion spread in New York Magazine. <\/em>She had a show at a New York gallery, and it kept going.<\/p>\r\n
She\u2019s in collections at the Whitney Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and Brooklyn Museum. Beyonce, Barack Obama, and Ava Duvernay own her work. But she had to grow into this level of success. She was always an artist.<\/p>\r\n
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\u201cAs they say, you come out as an artist. Either you\u2019re an artist or you\u2019re not,\u201d she says.<\/p>\r\n
Roberts started being an artist early on. In grade school, she drew race cars and Barbie dolls for other kids. She attended a black school where they were more interested in making doctors, lawyers, and teachers\u2014not artists. But she was moved to a gifted and talented program for three hours a day in high school where she just worked on art.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
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Deborah Roberts
\u201cSpell bound,\u201d 2021
Mixed media collage on canvas
72″ x 60″ framed. Courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles
Photo credit: Jeff McLane<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Although her mother and father didn\u2019t understand their child\u2019s determination to be an artist, Deborah Roberts was not deterred. She says, \u201cThe idea of anybody being an artist didn\u2019t make sense to them. And it wasn\u2019t because they were ignorant. They just didn\u2019t understand. They were hard workers.\u201d Roberts\u2019 father worked for the electric company and her mother was a domestic. Roberts\u2019 father made fun of her ambitions, but that just made her pursue it even more. He died before her fame and success, but her mother was able to see some of it before she passed.<\/p>\r\n
Though Deborah Roberts is known for collages of Black children, the conversation about Black Americana (that she\u2019s been having for a while) didn\u2019t start out with collages. She started making collages in graduate school. Before then, she was making Norman Rockwell-like paintings of Black girls in church or little boys walking down the street kicking rocks. The paintings talked about identity and humanity as well. \u201cThe language has changed, but the idea of the work is the same,\u201d she says. She is interested in conveying the humanity of Black children.<\/p>\r\n
Roberts\u2019 collages piece together disparate body parts to create a whole being who, in some ways, may look disfigured with limbs stretched akimbo and differently sized eyes placed unevenly on a face on a canvas. But the work stems from a place of compassion. Her work begs for us to see the figures in her work as children, not miniature adults. She says, \u201cit\u2019s telling you: you don\u2019t see me as a beautiful child, you see me as a monster no matter what age I am. You don\u2019t see me as a person trying to live in this world. You see me as something abstract, abnormal, and you don\u2019t see the beauty in my humanity.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Deborah Roberts
\u201cPool boys,\u201d 2019
Mixed media collage on canvas
65″ x 45″ framed
Courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles
Photo credit: Jeff McLane<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Incidents where Black children are not seen as children by law enforcement motivates this practice. Tamir Rice, who held a toy gun; Dajerria Becton, the 15-year-old teenager, who was wrestled to the ground by a police officer at a pool party; and the 9-year-old girl who was pepper sprayed were not seen as children. Their guilt was assumed by the color of their skin. \u201cAll of those things inspire me to do my practice and inspire me to say \u2018look at the beauty of this child. How can you hurt or harm her?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Her mixed-media portraits join the conversation in relation to Black art, American history, and Black history, but they are also having a conversation about identity and beauty. Roberts could create paintings that do this work. She\u2019s a fan of Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Rafael, and Rubens. She can draw a foot by memory because she studied it, but the idea of creating collaged children was hers. She says, \u201cWe all learn from each artist before us, and we take something because that\u2019s the gift they give to us.\u201d But she says, \u201cone of my biggest challenges is people who blatantly copy my work.\u201d To some degree, she understands why someone else would copy her work. After all, Roberts\u2019 work is successful and copying her work guarantees success.<\/p>\r\n
Experiencing theft of her work has relinquished the artist as the mentor she used to be. \u201cI no longer do all my talks as much. I don\u2019t give as much advice as I used to. I have a certain group of artists I talk to and artists I\u2019m trying to help with their careers.\u201d Roberts keeps a tight circle these days, naming Amy Sherald as friend and inspiration. Six years ago, they both received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She says of herself and Sherald, \u201cWe been through the trenches.\u201d They paid their dues and created original approaches to art that made them become noticed and appreciated. \u201cThere are about eight of us who really support each other in the way that black women should, and not only that but Black artists.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Deborah Roberts
\u201cNotorious Act: at play,\u201d 2021
Mixed media collage on canvas
65″ x 45″ framed
Courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles
Photo credit: Jeff McLane<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Though we can surmise the struggle that Black children face when looking at Roberts\u2019 work, beauty is even more evident. Roberts creates collaged figures against a white background; the scale and texture make them remarkable. Her statement is clear and not convoluted. The playfulness of the girls and boys she creates highlights innocence. She gives to the childish figure\u2019s virtuousness, as if all the burdens that Black children bear are nonexistent. Many of her works don\u2019t imply hardships or depict premature maturity. On her canvases, Black children are able to frolic. But there are some works that gesture to struggle Black children face. While many of her works celebrate carefreeness, there are those with boxing gloves, as a recurring image, that allude to the fight that Black children, especially, encounter.<\/p>\r\n
Roberts undermines stereotypes. In a sound and video installation titled What if, <\/em>which allows viewers to enter a confessional booth of sorts, Roberts is again changing the language she\u2019s using to converse about Black female identity. \u201cI\u2019m asking the audience to go inside this box and face yourself, so I have the names of those women and girls\u2026We have a big mirror facing you and then the sound of a man talking about how sexualized Black girls are. The next part is a white woman saying, \u2018that\u2019s not my child, she has blond hair, she has blue eye, she\u2019s a little me, she won\u2019t cause any trouble.\u2019\u201d By looking at a mirror in a confessional booth, anyone who enters must come to terms with their complicity in sexualizing and stereotyping Black girls and women.<\/p>\r\n
Roberts explained in a Spelman College Museum of Fine Art interview for her 2018 show Deborah Roberts: The Evolution of Mimi<\/em>, \u201cWhat I want as an artist is for the viewer to see that face, first and foremost, as the face of a child because that\u2019s the image I think you need to come to. I tell my audiences that this is the idea\u2014to \u2018see\u2019 that little girl! I am also hoping they see vulnerability, strength, and beauty. If you can find yourself in her face, then you can see and embrace your own humanity. Once you see me as human, then we can coexist equally. That\u2019s the basis of the work.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Roberts understands how difficult it is to achieve her level of notoriety in the artworld. \u201cI can\u2019t rest on my laurels and say a bunch of people like it. \u2018Oh, my work is being collected by the Whitney Museum,\u2019 all these great spaces, and stop growing. That\u2019s never going to be my issue. I\u2019m always going to be growing my work.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Deborah Roberts: I\u2019m <\/em>is currently on view at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver through January 30, 2022. The exhibition will include collages, painting, sound and video installation, and text-based work on paper.<\/p>\r\n
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\"Shantay<\/b><\/p>\r\n
SHANTAY ROBINSON<\/b> was a participant in the inaugural class of Burnaway<\/i> Magazine\u2019s Art Writers Mentorship Program, a fellow in Duke University\u2019s Center for Documentary Studies Digital Publishing Project Editorial Fellowship and was chosen for the CUE Art Foundation\u2019s Art Critic Mentoring program. In addition to writing for Black Art in America<\/i>, she has written for Washington City Paper,<\/i> Arts ATL<\/i>, Nashville <\/i>Scene, ARTS.BLACK<\/i>, AFROPUNK<\/i>, Sugarcane Magazine,<\/i> Number, Inc<\/i>., and International Review of African American Art.<\/i> She also published a scholarly article in Teaching Artist Journal. <\/i>She presented papers about art and education at SCAD\u2019s (Savannah College of Art and Design) Symposium on Art and Fashion, Georgia State University\u2019s New Voices Graduate Student Conference, Georgia State University\u2019s Glorious Hair and Academic Identities Conference, Northeast Modern Languages Association Conference, Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference, and New York African Studies Association Conference. In 2019, she sat on a panel at Prizm Art Fair during Miami Art Week. In 2020, she served as visual arts judge in Shreveport Regional Council\u2019s Critical Mass 8 Art Competition.<\/p>\r\n
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