Photo gallery: Images of the VIP opening for Prizm Art Fair in Miami

BY D.A. VARELA

UPDATED NOVEMBER 30, 2022 12:00 AM

Artist Marryam Moma strikes a pose with her art collage at the Art Prizm Fair. D.A. VARELA dvarela@miamiherald.com

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-basel/article269379152.html#storylink=cpy

Now in its 10th year, Prizm Art Fair on Flagler Street gives artists of African descent the opportunity to showcase their work. “The market doesn’t generally highlight and celebrate enough Black artists,” founder Mikhaile Solomon said. “This is a place where you can come to see all of the best artists who are emanating from Africa and its diaspora.” This year’s theme is “Vernacular À la Mode,” which Solomon deemed a way to honor all people of African descent. “We wanted to celebrate all the ways in which people of African descent exist in various parts of the world,” Solomon said.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-basel/article269379152.html#storylink=cpy

Artist Amber Robles-Gordon strikes a pose in front of her artwork entitled ‘At The Altar: Dance of the Serpents’ at the Art Prizm Fair during Art Basel in the Design District neighborhood of Miami, Florida, on Tuesday, November 29, 2022 D.A. Varela dvarela@miamiherald.com

Artist Matthew McCarthy strikes a pose with his installation entitled ‘Serious Tings Ago Happen’ displayed at the Art Prizm Fair. McCarthy created the artwork with collaborator Maxine Walters. D.A. Varela dvarela@miamiherald.com

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-basel/article269379152.html#storylink=cpy

FEATURED

Crawl Space: July 2022

FEATURED

July’s First Saturday events will feature extended exhibitions worth a second look

• JOE NOLAN

• JUN 30, 2022

Northern Mariana Islands, Political, Spiritual,

Tinney Contemporary will be sticking with its June show through July 9. I reviewed Amber Robles-Gordon’s Sovereignty exhibition for the Scene — it’s a prime example of how artists can incorporate political and social content into a body of work while also making art that’s formally striking. We’ve seen lots of messaging about social and political issues in the contemporary art of the 21st century. However, much of that work will never be remembered or reconsidered — timely art is rarely timeless. Robles-Gordon’s work is visually successful irrespective of its critiques of the U.S. policy toward — and governance of — its populated territories and the District of Columbia. I’ve seen powerful political art and dim political art, and I often question whether visual art is an effective medium for political messages. But the work in Sovereignty is formally distinctive. Tinney Contemporary will be open this Saturday from 2 to 8 p.m.

https://www.nashvillescene.com/arts_culture/visualart/crawl-space-july-2022/article_4d18f0c8-f6e7-11ec-a1b5-8f437edaf809.html

Instagram Live CONVERSATION TOMORROW 6/28 @ 2PM with Dr. Kellie Morgan and Amber Robles-Gordon

PLEASE JOIN US TOMORROW FOR A CONVERSATION WITH DR. KELLI MORGAN AND AMBER ROBLES-GORDON STREAMING ON INSTAGRAM LIVE.

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THESE AMAZING AND ACCOMPLISHED THINKERS WILL BE ENGAGING IN A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE IMPRESSIVE VISUAL PRESENTATION AND CRITICAL INVESTIGATIONS PRESENT IN AMBER’S CURRENT EXHIBITION ON VIEW AT OUR GALLERY, SOVEREIGNTY: ACTS, FORMS, & MEASURES OF PROTEST & RESISTANCE

AMBER ROBLES-GORDON lives and works in Washington, D.C., and is a key advocate and participant in the arts community there. She is a member of the Delusions of Grandeur Artist Collective and Black Artists DC (BADC). Her artwork has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally.

Most recently, her work has been featured in exhibitions at Galleria de Arte, Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, (Sacred Heart University), in her birthplace of San Juan, Puerto Rico, (PR), by Tafeta Gallery in 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London, England, American University, Katzen Art Center, by the Royal Academy of Arts Sumer Exhibition in London, England, and more.

She has created numerous site-specific commissions, including a public installation with the D.C. Creates Public Arts Program. Her work has been extensively covered in publications such as The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Art Daily, Puerto Rico Black Art Blog, Bmore Art, Culture Type, and more. She has been selected for various teaching residencies internationally, including the Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano, in Limon, Costa Rica, and Washington Projects for the Arts and DC Public Schools.

DR. KELLI MORGAN is a Professor of the Practice and the inaugural Director of Curatorial Studies at Tufts University. A curator, educator, and social justice activist who specializes in American art and visual culture, her scholarly commitment to the investigation of anti-blackness within those fields has demonstrated how traditional art history and museum practice work specifically to uphold white supremacy.

Besides her own curatorial experience, she mentors emerging curators and regularly trains staff at various museums to foster anti-racist approaches in collection building, exhibitions, community engagement, and fundraising. Over the past year, Dr. Morgan has become a leading and influential voice in bolstering anti-racist work in art museums. She has held curatorial positions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and teaching positions at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, and the Tyler School of Art at Temple University

She earned her Ph.D. in Afro-American studies and a graduate certificate in public history–museum studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2017

“Guam Political,” Amber Robles-Gordon

Amber Robles-Gordon’s Polemic Quilts Balance Form and Content

SoveREIGNty: Acts, Forms, and Measures of Protest and Resistance is currently on view at Tinney Contemporary

By JOE NOLAN / JUN 15, 2022

Tracking art-world trends often means simply noting the shifting balance between form and content over time. Midcentury American painting was formalist, elemental art for art’s sake. It was interested in line, shape, space, form, tone, texture, pattern, color and composition. An important work of art was something, but nowadays an important work of art is oftenaboutsomething: politics, social causes, various identity expressions.

Midcentury art favored abstraction over figuration, but contemporary art is full of figures along with the narrative content they inevitably inspire. Luckily, no matter how the trends swing, we can always look back to the Greeks and remember that there is beauty in balance. And it’s not surprising that some of today’s best art manages to message and signal and narrate after first capturing the eye, drawing attention, and igniting the imagination of the viewer.

Even the title of Amber Robles-Gordon’s Tinney Contemporary exhibition — SoveREIGNty: Acts, Forms, and Measures of Protest and Resistance — expresses an activist message. And it’s emblematic of a display of large-scale, mixed-media quilts brimming with signals and symbolism interrogating U.S. policy toward — and governance of — its populated territories and the District of Columbia…

Amber Robles-Gordon’s anti-colonial quilts and personal histories at American University Museum at the Katzen Center

“y mi bandera vuela mas alto que la tuya,” 2020. Mixed media collage on canvas, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.

By Andrea KirshDecember 17, 2021

An artist’s visit to her mother’s birth place in Puerto Rico awakens her to the complexities of immigration and family – and to the dubious socio-political actions and inactions, by the U.S. government in its far-flung territories. Our reviewer Andrea Kirsh is moved by the powerful collage works and double-sided quilts of Amber Robles-Gordon. The show closed Dec. 12.

Amber Robles-Gordon‘s first grade classmates in Arlington, VA bullied her for speaking Spanish, so she learned to speak to her mother in English. It wouldn’t be until middle age that the artist finally visited her mother’s birthplace in Puerto Rico. Successions: Traversing U.S. Colonialism, her solo exhibition at the the American University Museum at the Katzen Center (August 28 – Dec. 12, 2021) in Washington, D.C. was the product of that initial trip and a her return for a six-week residence on the island in 2020.

The exhibition presented two bodies of work. The first, “Place of Breath and Birth” is a series of ten vibrant collages on canvas, all 18 x 24 inches; two, represented by full-scale pigment prints. The collages are constructed from masses of tiny images cut from paper; even the bands of color that form their backgrounds are assembled from minute, colored fragments. And there is a very personal rhythm – like distinctive brushwork – in the way Robles-Gordon arranges the fragments.

Another personal language of Robles-Gordon’s appearing in the fragments is inspired by multiple, non-Western cultural traditions and imagery taken from magazines and photographs. These fragments are used as structuring and framing elements, incorporating the artist’s drawings of detailed and decorative, spiky, geometric patterns. An occasional small trinket or charm adds surface texture, as does the profusion of tiny, sparkly beads which outline the central, circular forms on each collage. The beads and high-keyed colors capture the intense sunlight of the Caribbean and lend a festival-like quality to the series.

Robles-Gordon culls her imagery from photographs she took in Puerto Rico or found elsewhere that evoke its lush, intensely-polychromed environment – both natural and human. While on the island, she was fascinated by the rubber trees and palms, the coconuts and mangos, street murals and public art. The titles of individual collages suggest the range of topics that were prompted by her visits: “Observation of Influencers: Taino culture and heritage, the climate and machismo,” “For bioluminescent bays and turtles.”

Her long-time interest in spirituality and syncretic, New World religious practices inspire aspects of the collages’ format, which the artist likens to personal altars. The imagery of fruit and floral offerings, flickering candles and the crystalline forms of her drawing run throughout the series and reinforce their spiritual associations. She includes photos of herself – both earlier and contemporary images – in several collages, and there is no question that the series itself is a diary of self-discovery.

“Reflexiones sobre el yo, la virgen maría y el colonialismo,” 2020. Mixed media, collage on canvas, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Quilts of pointed anti-colonial critique

If the collages capture Robles-Gordon’s connection to her ancestral culture in the form of personal, spiritual reflection, the second part of the exhibition responded to her developing political understanding of Puerto Rico’s position as a U.S. Territory. The works are a public forum in which to teach, to encourage discussion, to heal, and to begin building a congregation of territorial residents. Six, large, double sided, appliqued quilts hung throughout the high-ceilinged gallery. The installation, which gave its name to the exhibition, was titled “Successions; Traversing U.S. Colonialism.” The quilts include dense references to histories that have yet to be acknowledged and the dark underside of U.S. power. Their format entangles the conventionalized emblems of history and patriotism with the domestic craft of quilting, the masculine pursuit of territory and power with a feminine tradition of healing.

On one side of each quilt Robles-Gordon addresses political history, with references to each of the U.S. Territory’s flag or seal, as well as to the exploitation of its indigenous people for medical experimentation, military support and economic interests; on the other side she constructs an altar dedicated to healing the damage of historical exploitation and the racism which underpins it. Both sides bear central medallions; they are greatly enlarged versions of the circles in the collages, and make references to the circle as a foundational religious image and form of celebration – to healing circles and ceremonial dancing. The healing altars are constructed with the same spiky, geometric patterning that Robles-Gordon used in the collages, and all have hieratic, symmetrical designs. Here they suggest abstracted figures of deities, and their patterning makes reference to a variety of Afro-diasporic and non-Western decorative histories seen in painting, textiles and ceramics. Although painted, they appear to be drawings in chalk on black backgrounds, which suggests religious images in various cultures which are intended to be temporary.

The timing of Robles-Gordon’s residency in Puerto Rico reinforced her understanding of the disparity between U.S. government support to the island after the overwhelming damage from Hurricanes Maria and Irma in 2017, and the level of disaster relief Americans have come to expect on the mainland. This understanding, in turn, led to her interest in the U.S. Territories as a group; areas under United States dominion with the highest percentage of poverty, where the government has exploited resources and sited strategic military bases, with little concern for the inhabitants – all people of color, who are largely, only nominally U.S. Citizens. The territories function, rather, as U.S. colonies.

Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands are unfamiliar to many on the mainland United States. Few Americans know that their residents are U.S. Citizens with the right to vote – although they lack full representation in Congress. Robles-Gordon included Washington, D.C., her current home, among the territories because it’s residents, too, fall under U.S. jurisdiction but have no fully-empowered Congressional representative.

Robles-Gordon used her childhood bullying as a spur to understanding her own cultural traditions, and it is characteristic of her long-developed career of teaching and producing art that she didn’t respond to the history of territorial exploitation with rage, but with honesty, offering understanding, teaching and healing as a foundation on which to advocate for social justice in the outlying regions of the United States and in powerless communities internationally. The sense of spirituality and turning towards a better future pervades her work as much as her personally-developed language of forms and patterns, use of repurposed materials, passionate polychrome, and fusion of visual traditions.

Amber Robles-Gordon, “Successions: Traversing U.S. Colonialism” is now closed. It was on view at the American University Museum at the Katzen Center in Washington, D.C., August 28–December 12, 2021.

“The eternal altar for the women forsaken and souls relinquished. Yet the choice must always remain hers/ El altar eterno de las mujeres abandonadas y las almas renunciadas. Sin embargo, la elección siempre debe ser de ella.,” 2020. Mixed media collage on canvas, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.