These two bodies of artwork are about claiming and occupying space. The exhibition features photography and large-scale painted collages. The large-scale collages and some of the photography reflect the phenomenon, known as the Terminator Crossing, “the line that divides the daylight side and the night-side of a planetary body”. In this work, the planet is the Earth.

Juxtaposing Whiteness, are a series of self-portraits and images of my apartment at American Academy in Rome (AAR), in Rome, Italy, taken during my two-week residency. In the images, I’m either documenting the whiteness of the environment and or using my body and personal items to interrupt the whiteness.

This work also reflects the attempt to integrate both blackness and color within the white and traditional classically influenced spaces that I have encountered during my residency. To further articulate this concept, I am hosting this exhibition in my apartment at the AAR to specifically highlight the apparent othering that happens to people of color that are excluded from the rightful historical, societal and cultural narratives that hence formulate subsequent global norms, behaviors and political outcomes.

Somewhere, as I crossed between the night of France and the day of Italy, I looked into the night and committed to reflect, claim and testify the all-encompassing beauty that is blackness and all that is derived from within it.

I have chosen to include both of these varied sets of images and mediums to convey an instance of how these varying perspectives of dark and light and black and white, can naturally exist simultaneously in nature and or be introduced purposely and yet harmoniously.

Please join me for wine and artwork.

Exhibition:

American Academy in Rome

Via Angelo Masina, 00153

Roma, MA

Apartment: 272

Friday, January 18, 2019

8-9 pm

Amber Robles-Gordon