review

Dr. Kelli Morgan, Curator and Visual Artist, Amber Robles-Gordon in Conversation

Dr. Kelli Morgan, Curator and Visual Artist, Amber Robles-Gordon in Conversation

"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

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

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.

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Bmore 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.

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“Successions: Traversing U.S. Colonialism” on Exhibit at American University Museum

“USVI Spiritual, Moko Jumbie: Walk Tall and Heal Forward” Mixed Media on quilt, (back of “USVI Political”) 2021 (Courtesy of Amber Robles-Gordon)

Amber Robles-Gordon’s “Successions: Traversing U.S. Colonialism” has a dual purpose. It consists of her “Place of Birth and Breath” solo exhibit viewed first in her native Puerto Rico in 2020, and it has evolved into a component exhibit, which is an exploration of the historical underpinnings of U.S. Colonialism.

Robles-Gordon is a mixed media visual artist whose solo exhibit at the American University Museum opened in August and can be viewed Fridays through Sundays, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. until Dec. 12.

What began as a quest, “to heal my five-year-old self: to empower her to fight for herself, her language and her culture,” the exhibition took on “the intersections of language, culture, institutional racism, anti-blackness and their immeasurable impact within the U.S. territories,” said Robles-Gordon.

A native-born Puerto Rican with family from St. Thomas, St. John, Puerto Rico, Tortola and Antigua, Robles-Gordon created a visual discussion of the historical and political plight and resilience of the District of Columbia, where she resides, and the five U.S. territories that her two-sided quilts represent. They embody the artist’s creation of a political study of the territories and on the reverse side, a spiritual and cultural study.

Robles-Gordon’s early love of art and creativity moved her delight with fabrics, quilts and found objects to the discovery that these could and would be her artistic narrative.

A writer uses words to express; my medium of expression is my art, she said. “I use a myriad of materials according to what I’m trying to convey in a particular project or a particular narrative. It’s very essential that I match up with what I’m trying to convey,” Robles-Gorden said.

The decision to dismiss her native language, Spanish, came as a result of the teasing and ridicule Robles-Gordon experienced as a five-year-old kindergartener at her school in Arlington, Virginia, far away from her birthplace of Puerto Rico. She did not look like a Latina girl that was familiar to her classmates, and hence developed the bullying of this little brown-skinned girl.

In time, Robles-Gordon realized the importance of embracing her language and her culture and the need to find ways to heal through her research and employ it through her art as the medium on her journey to healing.

Speaking of her years as an artist, Robles-Gordon’s journey toward healing is what she brings creatively in her discoveries about U.S. Colonialism, “I think that it’s a beginning. There’s not an end to my journey. It’s a part of my journey. I think I’ve done a hell of a job in starting it. I actually feel proud about it in my own life. That feels good,” she said.

Robles-Gordon made the universe know how important this part of her journey is. “I think I’ve done that,” she said.

“Successions: Traversing U.S. Colonialism” exhibits the component of Robles-Gordon’s body of work containing six quilts embodying the Commonwealth of the District of Columbia, and the five U.S. territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa. The other component, “Place of Birth and Breath,” is the collage on canvas series created in 2020 and exhibited at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon, (University of the Sacred Heart) in Puerto Rico.

“Place of Birth and Breath” is Robles-Gordon’s 10 mixed-media collage canvases that are a result of the visit with her mother to Puerto Rico where both women recaptured their roots, one of her childhood home, and the other of her birthplace.


“Isla del Encanto” collage, 18×24, 2020. (Courtesy of Amber Robles-Gordon)

A foundational symbology of the “Birth and Breath” body of work is the rubber tree that grows on the campus of the University of the Sacred Heart, which Robles-Gordon was introduced to while in Puerto Rico. “This tree appeared to be a literal fusion of past, present and future states of creation or sustaining an ecosystem. Throughout the series, are abstracted representations of the rubber tree – an entanglement of strong roots – as an example of its resiliency this tree most recently stood-fast to its native soil while 155 mph winds battered the campus,” Robles-Gordon noted.

Robles-Gordon shares her intricate ideas of how she layered her work depicting and interpreting the transitions of day to night and night to day. She relates to three major ethnic/racial groups – the Taino, the Spaniards and Africans, the stranglehold of the United States and the impact of the Caribbean Sea with its threat of hurricanes, scorching summer heat and lush landscapes.

Successions: Traversing U.S. Colonialism at American University exhibition closes on Dec. 12. The journey continues. The conversation continues. The healing continues.

See Amber Robles-Gordon’s website here..

Museums Review In the galleries: Artist’s works criss-cross the paths of U.S. colonialism

Museums 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.”

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Art Watch: The place for what’s new – The Delaware Contemporary

Art 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.

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