ORIGINAL PHOTO BY AMBER ROBLES-GORDON
Womanhood and femininity finds itself in every corner of life. Church pews, miniature gardens and passed-down accessories— artists Lavett Ballard, Amber Robles-Gordon and Evita Tezeno bring Black womanhood and female friendships to the canvas through their exhibition, “Solace and Sisterhood,” at the University of Maryland’s David C. Driskell Center.
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D.C.-based artist Amber Robles–Gordon has created assemblages that cover swaths of the walls and floor, forming symmetrical arrangements of original paintings and objects along with bric-a-brac that could have been pulled right out of granny’s house. Among these talismans are coasters, sticks wrapped with rainbow thread, embroidery samplers, vividly painted wood planks, and live plants in glass cubes of water.
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Through their pieces, the artists reflect on shared experiences, understanding and a supportive bond that fosters resilience. They examine a sense of sisterhood within the Black community, which transcends individual stories and shared experiences, creating a space for solace.
Jamiyah Bonds, a sophomore government and politics major, said she always enjoys seeing other people’s world experiences through art.
Read MoreSolace and Sisterhood, The Driskell Center’s fall semester exhibit, amplifies the resilience and bond of Black sisterhood through the varying perspectives of three prominent female artists.
The exhibit, which is on view until Dec. 5, aims to encompass a diverse range of relationships between women, from biological relationships to friendships. It showcases the impact sisterhood has on these relationships and examines the solace and understanding Black women in these relationships receive, according to a press release by The Driskell Center.
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PrintbyPrint Group with sponsorship from ELNYA and Ode to Babel present
‘Fiber Talks: A Conversation with Bisa Butler, Stephen Towns, and Basil Kincaid’.
Moderated by Amber Robles-Gordon.
Bisa Butler, an artist and art teacher in New Jersey works primarily with fiber and textiles. Her work has been a part of the nationally renowned traveling exhibitions by Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi; Textural Rhythms, Constructing the Jazz Traditions, Quilting African American Women's History and The Journey of Hope in America , quilts inspired by President Barack Obama. Bisa is represented by the Hearne Fine Art gallery of Little Rock, Arkansas, The Thelma Harris Gallery of Oakland, The Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn, and The Claire Oliver Gallery in New York. She has artwork in private and public collections such as the Louis Armstrong House Museum, the Arkansas Art Museum, and the Kinsey Collection. She has exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and internationally, most notably at the Nelson Mandela Gateway Museum at Robben Island, and at the Emperors Palace in Johannesburg, South Africa. Recently Bisa Butler had the honor of having her artwork displayed with The Kinsey Collection at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and is currently exhibiting at Walt Disney World Epcot Center. While at Disney, Bisa taught workshops as a part of the Disney Dreamers Academy. Bisa was the featured artist for the annual Art in The Atrium gallery show in Morristown, New Jersey, and currently has artwork featured on the hit Netflix show, Luke Cage. This past spring Bisa exhibited art on the Tom Joyner annual cruise.
Amber Robles-Gordon, is a mixed media visual artist. She primarily works and is known for her use of found objects and textile to create assemblages, large-scale sculptures and installations. Her work is representational of her experiences and the paradoxes within the female experience. Robles-Gordon has over fifteen years of exhibiting, art education, and exhibition coordinating experience. Her work has been reviewed and/or featured in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Washington Informer, Examiner, WAMU American University Radio, WPFW 89.3, MSNBC the grio, Hyperallergeric, Ebony.com, the Miami Herald, Huffington Post, Bmore Art Magazine, and Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora. She has exhibited nationally and in Germany, Italy, Malaysia, London, and Spain. In 2010, Robles-Gordon was granted apprenticeship to create a public art installation with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, D.C. Creates Public Arts Program. Robles-Gordon was also commissioned to create temporary and permanent public art installations for numerous art fairs and agencies such as the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DCCAH, Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association (NVFAA), Humanities Council of Washington, D.C., Howard University, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Washington Projects for the Arts. Throughout her career, she serves as an advocate for the Washington, DC area arts community.
Mixed-Media Artist Stephen Towns currently based out of Baltimore, Maryland was born in Charleston, South Carolina. Towns primarily works in oil, acrylic, and fiber attributing much of his visual inspiration from medieval altarpieces, impressionist paintings and wax cloth prints. His work has been exhibited at Galerie Myrtis, Arlington Arts Center, Gallery CA, Platform Gallery, Hood College and is in the collection of the City of Charlestown, South Carolina. Most recently, Towns was honored as the inaugural recipient of the 2016 Municipal Art Society of Baltimore, Travel Prize and received the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance Rubys Artist Grant in 2015.
Basil Kincaid – “I am a Vessel, a Vivid Dreamer, and a World Builder. My work is guided by our connection to ancestral strength, insight, and imagination...I practice self-exploration, historical investigation, and critical social questioning to cultivate healing on a personal and cultural level, towards the remedy of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Within my practice I seek to promote empathy, curiosity, critical thought, conversation, and inclusion...My goal is to co-create healing sites that stimulate the ancestral memory of love as freedom within us, activating space to participate in shared liberation on local and global scales. I create experiences, objects, and spaces for interpersonal and ancestral connection. I write, quilt, collage, make installations, photograph, perform, and invent games as avenues of questioning. My work is primarily comprised of culturally contextualized, found, or donated materials. I often collect materials from people through social media. This methodology explores the seeming immateriality and physical disconnection of online spaces while observing how waste is reflective of lived experience. I am currently most interested in the practice of Quilting as a way to collaborate with ancestral energy and as a method of empowerment. It is imperative that I nurture the evolution of my creative family traditions, honoring my predecessors while adapting the practice to address the questions and concerns of contemporary life...Quilting as a practice is saturated on both sides of my family dating back over 100 years. My immediate influence as a quilter is Eugenia Kincaid, my grandmother on my father's side. She appears to me in dreams, guiding my hands as we collaborate on every quilt that I make on a spiritual level. I strongly believe that Quilting opens a portal for me to exist with all of my ancestors that maintained the practice and potentially beyond. Upholding family traditions in the face of oppression is essential within my healing process. My stylistic approach is influenced by the innovations, practices, and cultural products of Black Americans, and West Africans. More specifically, I am interested in Black American folk and fine art, music, poetry, and family traditions.”
Eventbrite: https://fibertalkspanel.eventbrite.com
ABOUT EMERGING LEADERS OF NEW YORK
Emerging Leaders of New York Arts (ELNYA)
Emerging Leaders of New York Arts is a multidisciplinary arts network and professional development group for creative leaders in their 20s and 30s. Through innovative programing, open dialogue, and a collaborative community we redefine what it means to be an emerging arts leader in New York City. ELNYA builds communities by creating connections and spaces for art leaders from all backgrounds to feel welcomed, empowered, and inspired. ELNYA strives to be a catalyst for change by fostering an environment of exploration and innovation, and providing access to experiences.
ABOUT PRINTBYPRINT GROUP
PrintbyPrint Group (PbPG)
PrintbyPrint Group is a NYC-based curatorial Arts Education and Advocacy group that uses twenty first century mediums and digital tools to network with industry professionals; providing the public, emerging artists and students from underrepresented groups, with educational and unique events/experiences, workshops, and access to resources and The Arts. Through our partnerships with emerging artists, local businesses, public education institutions and private corporations/organizations, we are focused on providing engaging creative experiences to the general public and STEM to STEAM education opportunities to underserved children, teens, and young adults.
ABOUT ODE TO BABEL
Ode to Babel
Ode to Babel is a cool low-key chill cocktail bar and lounge in crown heights Brooklyn that provides an authentic atmosphere as an extension of home- a place to sip, enjoy the vibe, and nosh on small bites. Ode to Babel also provides a platform for local and/or independent creatives to showcase their art- whether in the form of film, music, mixed media, and performance.
Solace and Sisterhood brings together the work of three artists of African descent who are friends and “sisters”: Lavett Ballard, Amber Robles-Gordon, and Evita Tezeno. Through their artwork, viewers are given an intimate look into their experiences and their sisterhood, which has developed over several years. By digging deeply into historical and contemporary perspectives on African American life, exploring traditions in the African diasporic community, or remixing commonly known objects, these artists span media and aesthetics. They tackle topics of self-identity, Black female beauty, and spiritual discovery. They resist single affiliations and simple answers to difficult questions. All the while, they maintain deep bonds that now transcend friendship. They are now sisters.
Read MoreRobles-Gordon is a multidisciplinary Afro-Latina artist based out of Washington, D.C., who was born in Puerto Rico, grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and has family living in the U.S. Virgin Islands, she said. The six double-sided quilts are meant to convey her perspective of these territories while deconstructing how they are affected by foreign and domestic policies and “stimulate further dialogue regarding the long arm of the American political machine.”
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Amber Robles-Gordon’s Successions: Traversing U.S. Colonialism, are a series of abstract textile artworks that interrogate the past and current hegemonic domestic and foreign policies within its federal district of Washington, D.C., and its other five inhabited territories. It is through these works that the viewer is granted a pathway through discursive criticism around issues impacting marginalized communities.
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LEFT: AMBER ROBLES-GORDON. RIGHT: DETAIL OF MONTGOMERY BRAWL. PHOTO CREDIT: AMBER ROBLES-GORDON AND JARRETT HENDRIX.
Who is worthy of care? Amber Robles-Gordon’s “Surely, she (he/we) is a little animal?” critically examines power, control, and societal implications. The show aims to visually demonstrate how unchecked control can lead to the mistreatment of both animals and children, emphasizing that these issues are universally connected and perpetuate a cycle of violence and abuse. The body of work, six mixed-media collages on wooden panels, also highlights the deep-rooted biases and racism that contribute to the devaluation of lives, particularly those of people of color, on a global scale.
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Surely, she (he/we) is a little animal? is a chronological visual exploration of the cross generational and long term impact of imperialism and colonialism. In each of the six mixed media on wood panel works Robles-Gordon begins with the transatlantic slave trade and leads the viewer on a panoramic sweep contemplating the modern-day systems and infrastructures that continue to uplift colonialism and imperialism.
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Who/what is worthy of care? Who cares for the defenseless? Who/what is defended? Incorporating the transdisciplinary study of human ecology into her practice and scope, Robles-Gordon uses the field as an anchor in her expansive investigations of race, history, the sciences and culture. The resulting new body of work rigorously explores colonialism and imperialism, global anti-blackness, child welfare and animal cruelty. Finding them all connected, just not equally, the exhibition exposes frank contradictions in American perceptions of human life, animal life and minority lives.
Read More20 October 2023 - 30 September 2024
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo / San Juan, Puerto Rico
Luego de cuatro años de ardua labor investigativa, el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico presenta su nueva exhibición “Puerto Rico Negrx”, primera muestra institucional en el país que presenta a artistas negrxs en un contexto histórico y un diálogo intergeneracional.
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Al encontrarlos todos conectados, pero no por igual, Amber Robles-Gordon vincula visualmente las historias y desarrollos de los movimientos estadounidenses de protección infantil y bienestar animal con los derechos civiles y las luchas en curso por la libertad.
Read MorePuerto Rico Negrx es la primera exhibición institucional que establece un diálogo intergeneracional y contextualiza históricamente la producción de artistas identificados como negrxs en Puerto Rico y su diáspora, a partir de una selección de obras realizadas desde la década de 1990 hasta la actualidad. La exhibición toma como punto de partida la exhibición Paréntesis: ocho artistas negros contemporáneos y la importancia que ha tenido como proyecto de un grupo que reivindicaba su identidad como puertorriqueñxs negrxs y artistas contemporáneos que rechazaban un vínculo inherente entre la negritud, el folclore y la artesanía.
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BUTTER is made possible each year through the combined efforts of GANGGANG, approximately 50 artists and makers, and about 100 creative entrepreneurs in Indianapolis. (Photo/Solo Mabry)
“We need to go positive towards each other because that’s the only way that we’re going to make real change,” Robles-Gordon said. “We have to deconstruct the lens of white supremacy, the lens of anti-Blackness, and that starts with us looking at each other and treating each other differently.”
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Curated by Wilfredo Valladares
“ Finding Home” art exhibition at Maryland Hall Chaney & Marino Galleries. Featuring Amber Robles -Gordon, Edgard Endress, Jin Lee, Sandra Perez-Ramos, Sunhee Jung, Trisha Kryner
Read MoreFibers of My Soul is an art exhibition that weaves together the diverse cultural experiences and traditions of a group of talented artists. Through a captivating array of mediums, including fiber collage, painted textiles, and hand-dyed abstracts, this exhibition serves as a bridge connecting the artists' narratives to the audience's shared human experiences. Each artist featured in this exhibition brings a unique perspective rooted in their personal journey, cultural heritage, and individual artistic expression.
Read MoreLa artista nacida en San Juan y criada desde pequeña en Arlington Virginia, Amber Robles-Gordon, está presentando la primera exposición individual en línea, Place of Breath and Birth, en la Galería de Arte de la Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, en Santurce.
Su trabajo artístico representa un retrato de sus recuerdos de niña. Según nos cuenta en entrevista, este momento en la vida de la artista fue muy complejo, no solamente por encontrarse en un nuevo lugar a temprana edad, con una cultura e idioma totalmente diferente a la de San Juan, pero además por el discrimen que la recibió en aquel entonces. Esta exposición es dedicada a esa parte de su vida y su afán por recuperar su herencia.
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Artist/Exhibition Conversation: On Saturday May 20, 2023 at 2:00 pm join us for a conversation between Amber Robles-Gordon, a featured solo artist during the month of May, and George Hemphill, renowned gallerist in Washington DC. Robles-Gordon and Hemphill will be discussing the underpinnings of her current body of artwork, the connective threads to the Washington Color School, and an undiminished love and appreciation of the artwork of Alma Thomas.
This program is organized in conjunction with Robles-Gordon's exhibition Remnants: a visual journey of memory and renewal, which will be on view through Sunday, May 28, 2023. The event is free to the public. Advanced registrations are welcomed.
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Soy Luz, amor, y frecuencia.(I am light, love and frequency), 2023, mixed media, 80 (L) x 60 (H) in
In this series, Robles-Gordon explores the emotional, physical, and psychic processes of loss. This body of work conveys the mental and physical effort it takes to move through loss. The artist works sequentially and within these works, deploying the lenses of abstraction, realism, photography, sacred geometry, symbolism, and installation art to convey a journey of self-awareness and growth. Together, these artworks present a visual telling of love, loss, and healing.
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