Deborah Roberts: Twenty Years of Art/Work
“Deborah Roberts: 20 Years of Art/Work provides the definitive look at the artist’s practice over the past two decades. With newly commissioned texts and a thorough dive into Roberts’ archive, this monograph offers a comprehensive view of one of today’s most significant artists and social observers… “
I will not be taught how to behave
BY Joshua Bennett ART IN AMERICA May 4, 2021
“Throughout our conversation, Roberts’s responses were in the first-person plural: the focus in the work was not only her individual experience but ours, what our children go through, what they see and survive, how we might help them make it through that situation, and move on to a better one, together.”
In Deborah Roberts’s Art, an Interrogation of What Society Imposes on Black Children
BY Marley Marius VOGUE January 21, 2021
“Deborah Roberts is making some of the best work of her life—just ask the artist herself. In “I’m,” a solo exhibition opening this weekend at The Contemporary Austin (her first at a museum in Texas, her home state), Roberts’s interrogations of Black bodies—how they’re seen, and when prejudice diminishes them—have a new urgency. Her figures loom larger in the frame than they used to, claiming more space for themselves.”
Deborah Roberts has exhibited art worldwide. She hasn’t had a solo museum in her hometown–until now.
BY Doyin Oyeniyi TEXAS MONTHLY January 14, 2021
“When Deborah Roberts is about to start a new collage, she looks for a Black child’s face that possesses a certain purity. ‘It has to be a face that reminds me of someone who has not been touched by pop culture,’ the Austin-based artist explains. ‘That’s the innocent person I want you to find in the multiplicity of faces.’ “
Artists Flood the US With Massive Amounts of Anti-Trump Art in the Final Week Before the Election – See Images Here
ARTNET NEWS October 28, 2020
“New York Magazine cover with artworks by Shantell Martin, Shaina McCoy, Julie Mehretu, Duane Michals, Marilyn Minter, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Peter Paid, José Parlá, Adam Pendleton, Stephen Powers, Duke Riley, and Deborah Roberts.”
Harper’s Bazaar Limited Edition Covers
BY Helena Lee and Hannah Ridley HARPER’S BAZAAR November 2020
“…for the eighth annual issue of Bazaar Art, our magazine dedicated to women in the art world, we have four limited-edition covers by the artists Deborah Roberts, Cassi Namoda, Louise Bourgeois and Michaela Yearwood-Dan (in collaboration with the author Margaret Atwood).”
COVER IMAGE: “The unseen” 2020
The Arts Hour
BY Nikki Bedi BBC October 3, 2020
“Nikki Bidi’s guests this week are American artist Deborah Roberts who joins from Austin Texas to talk about her latest work, and VFX designer and filmmaker Paul Franklin.”
IMAGE: “Fight the good fight (RR)” 2019
Issue 109/110: The Place Issue
OXFORD AMERICAN Summer/Fall 2020
This double issue explores the theme of place, an idea as large and unwieldy as the diverse (and disputed) region of the South–from the Ozark to the coastline to the Delta, from rural communities to urban centers.
Features contributions by Minnijean Brown Trickey, Bryan Washington, Jayne Anne Phillips, Timothy Hursley, Mike Awake, Baynard Woods, Rosalind Bentley, Ansel Elkins, Marcus Wicker, John Lingan, and many others.
COVER IMAGE: “When you see me” 2019
The Postponement of ‘Deborah Roberts: I’m’ Let the Artist Make More Timely Art
BY Robert Faires THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE July 24, 2020
"Because this is my hometown," [Deborah Roberts] says, "doing this show at the Contemporary was a really personal act. I wanted to throw the kitchen sink at this show." More significantly, the postponement "has allowed something different to happen, which I'm really happy about."
Image Right: Either by the hawk or by the dove, 2018
Now We Can Deal with the Nuances of Who We Are
BY Teka Selman SOUTHERN CULTURES Vol 26 No 2 Art & Vision
“Amy Sherald and Deborah Roberts are friends, fellow southerners and tremendously talented artists. Each in her own way makes work that is meaningful without being didactic and facilitates thoughtful, critical consideration…..
….In January 2020, we caught up by phone in out respective locations–Amy in New Jersey, Deborah in Austin, Texas, and me in Durham, North Carolina–to talk about their work, ideas, and influences.”
Image Left: That’s not ladylike (No.2), 2019
Coffee chat: Deborah Roberts
BIG MEDIUM in conversation with Betelhem Makonnen July 16, 2020
Coffee Chats feature leaders in the creative community sharing their personal and professional experiences to inspire others pursuing careers in art.
Will the Art World Ever Be the Same? A Brief Oral History of a Tumultuous Year
BY Kelly Crow WSJ MAGAZINE July 13,2020
“From the coronavirus to Black Lives Matter protests, the first half of 2020 shocked and shook the art world. Prominent artists, dealers, collectors and executives discuss what happened and what the future might hold.”
Image Left: Highbrow, 2018
How to visit a gallery during a pandemic
Hosted by Ben Luke & Magarete Carrigan THE WEEK IN ART PODCAST June 12th 2020
“…in the latest in our series of Lonely Works behind the doors of closed museums, the artist Deborah Roberts explores Benny Andrews’ “No More Games” in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.”
Image Right: Benny Andrews, No More Games, 1970
Artist Deborah Roberts is using her pandemic downtime to edit her next museum show.
BY Helen Holmes OBSERVER April 13 2020
“Due to the fact that her upcoming exhibition at the Contemporary Austin in Texas was postponed from January to September, Roberts is using her quarantine-time to produce new works for the show and to deepen its themes.”
Pictured Left: We are soldiers, 2019
A Dream Deferred, For Now
BY Robin Pogrebin NEW YORK TIMES April 12 2020
“The coronavirus has pushed Deborah Roberts’s art exhibition at the Contemporary Austin at least to January. She is looking at the postponement as a gift.”
Pictured Right: Red,White, and Blue, 2018
Why Some Artists Turn Away Would-Be Buyers
BY Alina Cohen ARTSY March 27 2020
“Deborah Roberts, who shows with Vielmetter Los Angeles and London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery, is candid about her wishes. She directs her galleries to sell to museums, she said, so that “someone who looks like me can be inspired by my work and think, ‘I could do this too.’””
Pictured Left: One history, two versions (Bullet Points), 2019
6 must-see art exhibitions coming soon to Austin museums
BY Lauren Jones AUSTIN CULTURE MAP February 5 2020
“Austinite Deborah Roberts is having her first solo Texas museum exhibition at The Contemporary Austin beginning in September…In 2020, racism and violence are still seen in this country on a daily basis and Roberts wants viewers to question these issues and continue the conversation toward a better America.”
14 Best Black Art Books of 2019
BY Victoria L. Valentine CULTURETYPE January 10 2020
“The cursory observer might assume that artist Deborah Roberts’s origin story began about five years ago. That’s when her mixed-media collages of black girls began to be more widely recognized. But she’s actually been developing her practice for decades.”
Image Left : Cover of “Deborah Roberts: The Evolution of Mimi,” Edited by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, with a foreword by Mary Schmidt Campbell, contributions from Kirsten Pai Buick, Erin J. Gilbert, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and Antwaun Sargent, and a postscript by Franklin Sirmans (Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia for Spelman College of Fine Art, 160 pages). | Published July 29, 2019
Vision 2020: “Deborah Roberts: I’m”
BY Robert Faires THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE January 9 2020
“In 2020, Roberts is receiving a new measure of recognition at home. The Contemporary Austin is mounting a solo exhibition of new work by the artist – her first one in Texas. Curated by Heather Pesanti, the museum’s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, it will include collages and paintings, plus a pair of new interactive sound, text, and video sculptures and a figurative mural for the exterior of the Jones Center, commissioned by the museum. “Deborah Roberts: I’m” will open Sept. 12 and run through Jan. 21, 2021.”
Image Right : The Redress, 2018
Culture Type Picks: 14 Best Black Art Books of 2019
BY Victoria L. Valentine CULTURE TYPE January 10 2020
“The catalog documents an exhibition organized by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art that feature more than 80 works–paintings, collages, and hand-painted serigraphs made between 2007 and 2017. The show traced the evolution of Roberts from a figurative painter to a collage artist with a sustained interest in the power and vulnerability of black girls and the complexity of blackness….It’s a wonderful volume that provides invaluable insight into the timeless and timely work of Roberts.”
Hirshhorn Museum Celebrates Intergenerational Artist Crushes
VULTURE November 6 2019
“It was really cool because I love Amy’s practice. I think we have the same work ethic. I was really honored that she chose me for that….We just want to push the work as far as we can and try to tell a story, an American story, that happened to black culture. That’s important to us. I think our practices are similar in that vein.”
— Deborah Roberts on Amy Sherald
Pictured : Deborah Roberts, Jordan Casteel, and Amy Sherald. Photo: David Benthal/BFA.com
Deborah Roberts’ unique take on blackness featured in new book
ART DAILY October 8 2019
“Artists often use their medium to express identity — both how society views others and how we view ourselves….Authors Erin J. Gilbert, Kirsten Pai Buick and Antwaun Sargent each wrote an essay for the book from an academic perspective, examining Roberts’ use of serigraphs and collage, her focus on childhood and her text-based works.”
Deborah Roberts Renders the Complexity of Black Childhood in Collage
BY Elizabeth Fullerton ART IN AMERICA October 7 2019
“The overlaying of adult features on children’s bodies offers a sober reminder that white people often perceive black adolescents as threatening adults rather than innocent children, sometimes with tragic results. However, invoking the black luminaries also serves a positive function: to present a historical community of role models or guiding spirits.”
Austin Art Talk: Deborah Roberts Episode 71
BY Scott David Gordon AUSTIN ART TALK PODCAST October 4 2019
“Deborah shares how her work has been evolving and where it is headed, her studio practice, as well as giving us a peek into some ideas for her upcoming one women show at The Contemporary Austin a year from now.”
![ROB%2039%20Untitled_framed_d1[1].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5419ea64e4b073da92212ecf/1572887739662-NU65704LI8UVMKU8C8SJ/ROB%252039%2520Untitled_framed_d1%5B1%5D.jpg)
Get Up, Stand Up Now: Q&A with Artist Deborah Roberts
BY Bridget Minamore SOMERSET HOUSE August 30 2019
“Forcefully confronting the hyper-sexualization of women, and the media’s privileging of whiteness and youth, Roberts’ figures often take the form of young African girls whom she presents with strength and power. Her composite figures represent an expanded view of beauty that prioritises marginalized narratives, while fighting discriminatory perceptions of the Black female experience. Her Untitled piece in Get Up, Stand Up Now suggests bodily fragmentation, but the composite figures at the forefront of her world also exude imagination and vitality.”
The Hirshhorn Museum Asked Artists About Their Influences..
BY Victoria L. Valentine CULTURE TYPE August 25 2019
“For its fifth annual gala in New York, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is paying tribute to 42 artists, an “intergenerational vanguard” including Jordan Casteel, Faith Ringgold, Amy Sherald, Deborah Roberts, and David Hartt. The museum is assembling the group by inviting 21 artists to identify an additional honoree who ‘has influenced their thinking.’”
Deborah Roberts first solo in Europe
BY Katy Cowan CREATIVE BOOM May 16 2019
“Entitled 'If They Come', Roberts uses Baldwin’s words to highlight the cross-generational struggle against racism and the socio-political parallels between 1970 and 2019. Continuing this call for solidarity, Roberts’ use of collage speaks to the challenges encountered by young black children as they strive to build their identity, particularly as they respond to preconceived social constructs perpetuated by the black community, the white gaze and visual culture at large.”
[Image caption] “Hip bone” 2019 (Mixed media collage on canvas, 65 x 45 inches)
“Native Sons: Many thousands gone” at Vielmetter Los Angeles
BY Victoria L. Valentine CULTURE TYPE April 23 2019
VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES announced its representation of Deborah Roberts in late February and her first exhibition with the gallery opened last week.
[Image caption] “From feet to wings (Nessun Dorma Series),” 2018 (Mixed media collage on canvas, 65 x 45 inches)
Long-Running 'Anonymous Was a Woman' Grants Awarded for 2018, With Betty Tompkins and Deborah Roberts Among 10 Winners
BY Alex Greenberger ARTnews POSTED December 11, 2018
“The once-secretive Anonymous Was a Woman program has named the 10 winners of its 2018 grants, which recognize women artists over the age of 40. Each winner receives $25,000.”
fields Magazine
AUTUMN/WINTER 2018 ISSUE 10
fields is a print publication designed to spotlight writers, poets, painters, illustrators, and creative types of all stripes, with an emphasis on the up and coming and the unsung.
Queen of Snow Hill
BY L. Lamar Wilson OXFORD AMERICAN MAGAZINE ISSUE 103 November 20 2018
[Image caption] “Grillz, don’t pee on my head and tell me it’s raining [fish]” 2017 From the series “Not on Me”
Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media, and The Uses of Strategic Ambiguity
BY Ralina L. Joseph NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS October 2018
Postracial Resistance explores how African American women celebrities, cultural producers, and audiences employ postracial discourse—the notion that race and race-based discrimination are over and no longer affect people’s everyday lives—to refute postracialism itself. In a world where they’re often written off as stereotypical “Angry Black Women,” Joseph offers that some Black women in media use “strategic ambiguity,” deploying the failures of post-racial discourse to name racism and thus resist it.
Deborah Roberts at Luis de Jesus
BY Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LOS ANGELES August 2018 ISSUE 13
"Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla) is a quarterly magazine, online art journal, and podcast, committed to being an active source for critical dialogue surrounding L.A.’s art community. Carla acts as a centralized space for art writing that is bold, honest, approachable, and focused on the here and now."
ART REVIEW "Deborah Roberts: Fragile but Fixable"
BY Shana Nys Dambort ART AND CAKE June 10, 2018
"Her work employs a system for organizing elements of composition which mirrors the way the human brain learns and grows, by a sponge-like process of absorption, mimicry, experimentation, and eventually, decision-making. From many parts, one person.
Artist Deborah Roberts on Yinka Shonibare exhibition and why 'black is not a colour any more'
BY Ben Luke EVENING STANDARD June 6, 2018
"Shonibare taps into what he calls the “magic and subversive beauty” of art, addressing “the spirit of African resistance and representation”. For Roberts, the show is about diversity within blackness. 'It is not a colour any more,” she says. “So what does that mean, what does blackness mean? This show exudes blackness in a way that has never been seen before.'"
Roberts' powerful
statement of black female identity
BY Sharon Mizota LA TIMES May 29, 2018
"Roberts’ works capture perfectly what it feels like to have assumptions and expectations foisted upon you, to feel like a collection of pieces instead of a person. If you are lucky, you will also be buoyed and strengthened by the traces of those who came before, in the creation of someone unprecedented."
Deborah Roberts' #EvolutionOfMimi Art Tackles Heavy Topic of Colorism
BY Ashia Miller ROLLINGOUT May 25, 2018
"Bringing this heavy topic to the mainstream, Deborah Roberts, unashamedly tackled it in her #EvolutionOfMimi artwork which recently exhibited in the Spelman College and Museum of Fine Art. The exhibition featured a series of think-pieces that nudge the viewer to think deeply about their own preconceived notions, misguided thoughts, and implicit bias."
Art Review: "The Evolution of Mimi" at Spelman Museum
By Jordan Amirkhani BURNAWAY April 25, 2018
"Aware of the unrealistic standards and pressures facing black women in a society shaped by white standards of beauty, Roberts reconstitutes the misogynistic and racist stereotypes inflicted on black women into powerful images of female strength, vulnerability, and self-love."
BY Antwaun Sargent POSTED March 6, 2018
"EVEN BEYONCÉ ADORES DEBORAH ROBERTS'S COLLAGED PORTRAITS OF STRONG, BEAUTIFUL BLACK GIRLS AND WOMEN."
The power and pathos of girlhood defines Deborah Roberts' collages
BY Felicia Feaster POSTED March 6, 2018
Perhaps the ideal show for this #metoo moment, Deborah Roberts’ exhibition at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, “The Evolution of Mimi,” is at its heart a look at how black female identity is formed
BY Mark Van Proyen POSTED February 19, 2018
The hopes, frustrations and perilous potentials of African-American girlhood provide the subject matter for Deborah Roberts’ new series of 14 collages....Each simultaneously embraces and steps away from most of the well-known examples of the African-American collage tradition as practiced by the likes of Romare Beardon and updated by Mickalene Thomas, among many others....Whereas the work of those prior artists makes a point of placing their figurative protagonists in complex, highly narrativized environments, Roberts purposefully separates her figures from any indication of context save that which might be inferred from their flamboyant dress, ungainly body language and ambivalent facial expressions. All of these aspects come together to force the viewer to take note of what is truly salient about them, that being their affecting call for the viewer to exercise a particular kind of empathy toward the cobbled-together identities of young persons who, through no fault of their own, are represented in a state of uncomfortable isolation, with all of its potential peril.
portfolio: her breakthrough women
BY Amy Larocca
The New York Magazine, February 5, 2018 Issue
"The artist Deborah Roberts creates multimedia collages concerned with the challenges faced by black women and girls. 'I think all girls, but in particular black girls, start to question their own ideas of beauty when they're around 8 or 9," Roberts says. 'Black society is a matriarchal society. We assert our independence much earlier because we have to. These girls are powerful and vulnerable at the same time.'"
"For this project, Roberts, who frequently creates images of young girls, used more adults than she usually does–Rihanna's eyes, Michelle Obama's arms, and Issa Rae's hands, among others. She calls these subjects her "breakthrough women" and imagines them as the future of the girls she typically depicts. 'These women, they broke through!' she says, 'They told Misty Copeland she was too short, too old. She broke through! Rosa Parks sat down and didn't get up. She broke through!'"
MODERN ART NOTES PODCAST
By Tyler Green
INTERVIEW WITH NPR IN ATLANTA
“The Evolution of Mimi,” which conflates the album titles “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” and Carey’s “The Emancipation of Mimi,” puts selections from the last decade of Roberts’ work onto the walls of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.
“Lauryn Hill was so powerful and she knew who she was and her own identity,” Roberts says. “And Mariah Carey was going through this thing where people [were questioning] whether she was black or not, whether she was black enough. I wanted to merge those two ideas into what was black feminism.”
Here’s the List of 19 Emerging Artists to Feature in New Studio Museum Show
BY Carolyn Twersky POSTED 08/23/17 2:34 PM
Deborah Roberts, The Bearer, 2017.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND FORT GANSEVOORT
The Studio Museum in Harlem announced the list of 19 artists to show this fall in “Fictions,” the fifth of the institution’s so-called “F-series” exhibitions of emerging artists. (Past F-series shows, dating back to 2001, have included “Freestyle,” “Frequency,” “Fore,” and “Flow.”)
Opening September 14 and continuing into January 2018, “Fictions” was curated by the museum’s associate curator for its permanent collection, Connie H. Choi, and assistant curator Hallie Ringle. Works in the show draw on a variety of media and, as a group, “investigate the complexities of the contemporary moment,” according to a description of the show.
In a statement, Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum’s director and chief curator, said, “I am thrilled that Hallie and Connie are continuing the legacy of our beloved ‘F-shows’ with a new presentation of a diverse group of artistic voices, bringing to Harlem insightful perspectives from locations around the country, including Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas.”
The emerging artists to be presented in “Fictions” are as follows:
NEWS
Deborah Roberts: One and Many
November 29th, 2014 – BETSY HUETE
With the exception of one misstep, One and Many, Deborah Roberts’ current solo show at Art Palace, is raw, painful, beautiful, grotesque, vulnerable, and vicious. The first line of her handout quotes James A. Baldwin: “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” Roberts carries on her shoulders the Post-Black ideologies that she grapples with. Through paint, collage, and sculpture, she is locating herself within three histories she has inherited—of being black, of being a woman, and of being an artist working within the largely white, chauvinistic modernist vocabulary of photocollage and abstract painting.
http://glasstire.com/2014/11/29/deborah-roberts-one-and-many/
Upcoming & ONGOING Events:
Southwest School of Art: “Re/Devaluing Colorism: Intersections of Skin Color and Currency”, December 2019 - April 2020
National Portrait Gallery: “The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today”, October 2019 - August 2020
Rebecca Camacho: “Heritage: Melissa Cody, Bethany Collins, Deborah Roberts”, October - November 2019
Christian-Green Gallery: “Charles White and the Legacy of the Figure: Celebrating the Gordon Gift”, August - November 2019
MASS MoCA: “Still I Rise”, June 2019