"These amazing and accomplished thinkers will be engaging in a discussion about the impressive visual presentation and critical investigations present Amber’s current exhibition on view at our gallery: soveREIGNty: Acts, Forms, & Measures of Protest & Resistance."
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FEATURED
Crawl Space: July 2022
FEATURED
July’s First Saturday events will feature extended exhibitions worth a second look
JUN 30, 2022
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
Amber Robles-Gordon’s Polemic Quilts Balance Form and Content
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.
Read MoreAmber Robles-Gordon’s anti-colonial quilts and personal histories at American University Museum at the Katzen Center
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.
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.
Hyperallergic
Washington, DC — Seven “flags” hang in Amber Robles-Gordon’s show at the American University Museum: one for each of the five unincorporated United States territories in the Caribbean, one for the District of Columbia, and one to signify the artist’s place in between those locales.
Read MoreBmore Art
People, food, and horticulture are among the things that move. Amber Robles-Gordon’s use of the Ficus Elastica is part of the symbology that reverberates throughout her exhibition, Successions: Traversing US Colonialism, on view at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC, through December 12, 2021. The Ficus Elastica—colloquially known as the rubber tree—has its roots in South Asia, though it was later nativized in the West Indies through the rubber trade. Dear reader, among your houseplants you are likely to find the genus of the rubber plant.
Read MoreMuseums Review In the galleries: Artist’s works criss-cross the paths of U.S. colonialism
Residents of D.C. are used to seeing the place as an almost-state, much like Maryland or Wyoming, yet not quite. Amber Robles-Gordon, a longtime Washingtonian who was born in Puerto Rico, has a different take. Her American University Museum show, “Successions: Traversing U.S. Colonialism,” groups D.C. with her birthplace and four other inhabited territories: Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. She represents these disenfranchised territories on two-sided quilted banners, one face for “political” and the other for “spiritual.”
Read MoreAmber Robles-Gordon’s Colorful Abstraction of Medical and Environmental Trauma at the Nicholson Project
In DC, neighborhoods are facing an unprecedented amount of change in appearance, racial makeup, and social policies that runs counter to the once-prevalent idea of DC being “Chocolate City.” However, there are ways to balance change with paying respects to DC’s living history. The Nicholson Project, an artist residency that recently opened in Ward 7, hopes to demonstrate this change effectively with the inaugural resident artist Amber Robles-Gordon, who lives only eight minutes from the building. For me, it feels like a house turned into a relic, with its period-accurate rehab details; however, the Nicholson Project owners do not focus on the actual former owners, but highlight contemporary artists of color instead.
Read MoreBarry Farm Recreation Center Showcases Work from East of the River Artists
The mission of the DC Department of Government Services (DGS), according to the agency’s website, is “to build, maintain and sustain the District of Columbia’s real estate portfolio, which includes more than 191 million square feet of state-of-the-art facilities in Washington, DC.” The website says further, “This work allows the agency to foster economic viability, environmental stewardship and equity across all eight wards.”
DC residents may not know that the agency spends approximately one percent of its building budget on public art. Murals, sculptures and other public art seen at DC-owned properties such as libraries, schools and parks derive funding from this source.
Read MoreAt Hemphill Fine Arts, The Past, Present, and Future of Abstraction
"MORE or LESS" showcases how D.C.'s affinity for Abstraction has always been a part of its artistic DNA.
by KRISTON CAPPS, Washington City Paper
MAY 24, 2018 11 AM
Process-based abstraction has always been a staple of painting in D.C. The Washington Color School was built by artists who defined their work by their approach to the canvas, whether by staining it or draping it or something else. MORE or LESS, a group show on view at Hemphill Fine Arts, shows how new trends in contemporary painting continue to line up with the work that put D.C. on the map in the 1960s and ’70s.
Read MoreKeep a Third Eye Open for Amber Robles-Gordon's Newest Show
By Lyric Prince, www.sugarcanemagazine.com
Morton Fine Art, a gallery that is off to the side of the U Street Corridor in Washington D.C., fills in a niche for vibrant artists of color that are pushing boundaries and expectations on art and its potential. Mixed-media installation artist Amber Robles-Gordon's solo exhibition Third Eye Open, which closes on May 20th, was comprised of 8 assemblages produced in 2018, and presented the meeting between the physical world and the intuition of human experience. The chosen forms of the show – circles and ovum – alluded to the ongoing cycle of inserting and patterning elements for self-discovery, incubation, and introspection. Throughout, Robles-Gordon explored abstract art's potential for demonstrating spiritual growth and emotional connection on a metaphorically cosmic scale – where the rules of time and gravity fall to the wayside.
Read MoreAMBER ROBLES-GORDON: THE FINE ART OF INTROSPECTION AND EXTROSPECTION
by Renee Royale, www.supportblackart.com
Her work is multilayered; upon first glance there is an overall image presented of cellular circles that contain significant amounts of patterned dark matter, or space, and then heavily layered nuclei that are brightly colored with strategically placed materials giving balance to the form. Then, upon closer inspection, one discovers tiny details, be they altering textures or hand drawn ink strokes, all seamlessly weaving their individualities into the cohesiveness of the piece. Her art is steeped in duality and the connection to divine feminine, an examination of what femininity means and how it is viewed in relationship to the masculine. Her spirals are comprised of bits of lace, portion of a blouse, lanyard reminiscent of childhood art endeavors, and other found materials that represent the realm of womanhood. The pieces spiral, reminiscent of kundalini energy, further enhanced by the subtle abstract snakes that are strategically woven into the tapestries.
Read MoreFreelon & Robles-Gordon
by Mark Jenkins, Washington Post
Fabric scraps and damaged tissue paper are the essential ingredients of new work now at Morton Fine Art. Those materials might sound negligible, but Amber Robles-Gordon and Maya Freelon employ them with ambition and impact.
Robles-Gordon, a D.C. native, is known for hanging strands of textiles and other found objects in intricate arrangements. The pieces in her “Third Eye Open” are wall-mounted rather than suspended, and feature circular drawing-collages orbited by smaller rounded objects, some partly covered in bits of garments. The forms suggest zygotes and planets, as well as eyes, but at the heart of each of the larger circles is a leafy motif. Whether seen as cosmic or botanical, the artist’s circling compositions exalt natural cycles.
Read MoreThe Divine Feminine
by Kimberli Gant, PhD, McKinnon Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art
“…an Earth alive in my consciousness as a living crystal being whose etheric geometric skeleton could be mapped in its patterns of energy flows…in ocean currents, the winds, river systems, and distributions of precious minerals. It seemed to me that ancient humans had known this sacred, hidden body of Earth and had settled on it in ways that took advantage of very visceral powers of place.” - Bethe Hagens
Read MoreAt the Washington Project For the Arts, Beltway Public Works Showcases a Lending Library For Art The WPA's latest exhibition introduces the idea of art on loan to the public.
At face value, there’s an able group show at the Washington Project for the Arts, filled with work that ranges from the aesthetically pleasing, to the conceptual, and the socially relevant. A 55-color lithograph, “Ramble,” by Benjamin Edwards, is a dizzying map exploding with color and shape. Margaret Boozer’s “Red Dirt Print,” a four-foot square patch of dirt, re-contextualizes the ground beneath our feet into an aesthetic object to hang on the wall. Naoko Wowsugi’s “Thank You For Teaching Me English” presents several photographed portraits against high-key color backgrounds: people mouthing English words for the artist to learn (English is her second language).
Read MoreArt Watch: The place for what’s new – The Delaware Contemporary
This week’s Art Watch is all about an important center for the arts that most of you have never been to. The Delaware Contemporary, or DCCA, is a fascinating art center with ever-changing art installations that is located just 24 minutes from Longwood Gardens, and is free to the public and open every day except Monday.
DCCA has a large parking lot, is easy to get to from I-95 or down Route 52, and offers a safe, light-filled, airy space full of new art to nudge the senses. Such a cool place, and most of us have never been there! Artists often sigh that there are not enough places that show contemporary art (that is, art that shows a new take on what’s going on in the world around us), but sigh no more because we have DCCA.
Read MoreMuseums Review In the galleries: A colorful survey of Washington artists
Amber Robles-Gordon’s “When a Honey Is Looking Just Right,”
East of the River
Although it doesn’t attempt to be comprehensive, Honfleur Gallery’s annual “East of the River Exhibition” usually offers a broad survey. This year brings a tighter focus, with only three contributors. Both Sheila Crider and Amber Robles-Gordon work with fabric and found objects. The art of painter Asha Elena Casey is less closely related, but she does inscribe textile-like patterns into thickly applied, mostly black-and-white pigment.
Read MoreExhibits Showcases East of the River Artists
Between the two galleries housed in the Anacostia Arts Center and the Honfleur Gallery on Good Hope Road, there’s no shortage of art that conveys the level of talent that lies East of the River in Wards 7 and 8.
he 11th annual East of the River Exhibition at the Honfleur Gallery features three female artists who have their own distinct styles and inspirations, but the pieces on view have a strong affinity between them and come from similar creative places. Each artist makes an individual statement about spirituality, identity and the repetition of forms and textures, but together they create a continuum.
Asha Elena Casey, Sheila Crider and Amber Robles-Gordon’s work meld together in this annual exhibition as if they were created to be contained in one space. Both Crider and Robles-Gordon work in mixed media, employing the use of fabric, jewelry, photographs and other materials that fold into their works, conveying traditions, personal statements and statements on race and inclusion.
Crider, who received multiple Small Project Grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, is a familiar fixture in the arts scene in Anacostia, having recently created a public art project at the new St. Elizabeths. Her work at Honfleur stems from a project that she intended to result in quilting. Instead, her “Paducah Residency Project” made use of the quilt batting in a unique way with braided lengths of fabric representing humanity, interconnectedness, binding and chains.
Similarly, Robles-Gordon’s “Let Me Tell You About the Baes and the Bees” series, which usually employs found objects, relates to Crider’s work in the repetition of chains, although Robles-Gordon uses jewelry and strands of pearls to create the same verticality of mixed textures.
Casey, the most junior of the three women, uses the repetition of a central image in “Petra in White” and “Petra in Black,” layering on deep and varied textures around the face of a black woman.
hile the exhibition creates a rhythm that draws on related elements of the three artists’ works, next door at the Anacostia Arts Center’s Blank Space Gallery, the inaugural DC Artist East Exhibition is an eclectic amalgam of different media and approaches by more than a dozen artists who live East of the River, some familiar to exhibits there and around the city, and others who are exhibiting for the first time. The artists included in this exhibit are members of an online community of creators living and working East of the River.
emy Aqui, a photographer who has lived in Anacostia for the past four years, is showing his enhanced photography for the first time at the center. He joins more familiar names such as photographers Jonathan French and Bruce McNeil and mixed media artists Jay Coleman and Malik Lloyd in this expansive show, which takes up every bit of wall space in the broad, light-filled lobby and hallways.
fter fellow artists encouraged him to show his work, Aqui entered two of his photographs into the exhibit which were selected by Anacostia Arts Center’s creative director.
ne of his photos, “Townhouse in NW,” shows a very different view of what might normally be an everyday part of Washington’s landscape. The multi-textured house has a large banana tree in the front, and, according to Aqui, is reminiscent of a tradition in his former home of San Francisco, “where a new homeowner is accepted into their neighborhood by having a tree presented to the new neighbor as a welcoming gesture.”
”I attempt to turn photos of mine into colorful imagery of work [such as old postcards] depicting a fading neighborhood landscape,” he said, describing the surreal façade of the house’s bright, tropical colors.
third exhibit by photographer Vincent Brown looks at the plight of the homeless in D.C., taken with his iPhone, titled “City Under Siege” in the Vivid Solutions Gallery. Although he had intended his work to be focused on other aspects of life in Washington, Brown was taken aback at the prevalence of homeless people on the streets, which then demanded his focus.
art of the annual art exhibits at this stretch of Good Hope Road also includes the bestowing of the annual East of the River Distinguished Artist Award. In 2012, the East of the River Distinguished Artist Award was created to celebrate the exemplary caliber of artists from Ward 7 and 8. This year, the award went to James Terrell for his brightly colored abstract paintings included in the exhibit in the Blank Space Gallery.
Is acrylic painting “Kind of Blue” was inspired by jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and the song it is named for. The East of the River Artist Award provides prize money for the artist to use to further their creative career.
ll three exhibitions are on display until Aug. 5 at the Honfleur Gallery at 1241 Good Hope Road SE and the Anacostia Arts Center at 1231 Good Hope Road SE.
For more information, visit www.archdc.org or call 202-631-6291.
Identity and inspiration on display in 'i found god in myself'
A view of the exhibition "i found god in myself," with works inspired by the choreopoems of Ntozake Shange's play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf." The show is on view at the Houston Museum of African American Culture through April 15.
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