Amber Robles-Gordon

The Male and Female

Mixed Media on Canvas, Installation, 2015

The message I attempt to depict through this artwork is of a cellular nature. The intention is to awaken the genetic coding of our African ancestral greatness and knowledge, despite the white patriarchal plain we exist within.  In African and African American culture and community, the importance of communalism, family and specific male and female roles are intricate parts of a tribal existence, survival and growth. I believe we are at a critical mass, at a juncture of being of African decent, and a bi-product of the American experience yet   

The artwork is divided into four pieces; each has an outer and inner circle. The outer white circular form is The Male, The Architect, The Protector, the inner circle is The Universe.  The outer black circular form is The Female, The Oracle, The Nurturer, and the inner circle is The One, The Source Within. These outer circular forms represent the potentiality of masculine and feminine energy, within the black male and female. While the inner circles represent our connection and reliance to each other, to ourselves and to universe.

Each circular form is enshrined in a protection circle and fortified in a culmination of the varying elemental and spiritual based symbolic interpretations of palm leafs, triangles, circles, and the serpent and the umbilical cord.  Each circular form, has been crafted to summon the undeniable divine and innate cellular power within.