My New Year’s resolution is to post regularly on The Art Minute, and I can find no better subject to write about than the upcoming exhibition of work by the very smart, funny, and brilliantly talented Deborah Roberts that will open at The Contemporary Austin on January 23rd and runs through August 16th.
Roberts uses collage and paint to create her images of Black children that investigate the formation of identity. She celebrates the potential of young Black children in the context of the oppressive reality of American culture. An example is her work of art entitled, Unbothered (2017), which depicts a Black girl with her hand raised in a playful moment of defiance as she appears to be saying, “Talk to the hand.”
Roberts explains, “I wanted to talk about how we become women… I couch my argument in the fact that Black women start as vulnerable as anyone else. But society puts so much on us that you have to grow up fast to take on this role as protector-of-self before any other girl. We have to get out and fight the struggle.”
The exhibition, Deborah Roberts: I’m, features all new work in the galleries in the Jones Center on Congress Avenue as well as the mural, Little Man, Little Man (2020) on the exterior of the building.
