Summer 2019 Artist-in-Residence
tamarind by Adee Roberson
May 18–July 12, 2019
Exhibition Opening: May 18, 4-8pm, 2019
This body of work is focused on visual representations of landscape, emotion, and memory as they concern the diasporic movements of black people. Through abstract paintings, soft sculptures, and video, summer artist in residence Adee Roberson offer a refracted timeline of black movement. Here, the forced migration of black people via the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, and the subsequent movements of black peoples in the Caribbean, North America, and Western Africa are collapsed, expanded, and offered as a type of energetic visual field.
Speaking about the work, she says: “I will develop work that explores movement and migration as channeled through my experience of being second generation Jamaican living in the U.S. My grandmother moved from Kingston, Jamaica in 1961 to New York, then to Florida where I was born. I grew up having a connection to Jamaica through stories, photos, food, music and holiday time with extended family. This in-between space is something I would want to explore during my residency, as a part of a larger body of work that I have been creating around the profundity of black movement and the un/making of home. Using sound, color, sculpture, and family archives, I will piece together my specific story of home and migration. The objects and visuals created would then become a part of my family legacy and archive.”
Adee Roberson was born in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1981. Her work weaves sonic and familial archives, with landscape, technicolor, rhythm, form, and spirit. She has exhibited and performed at numerous venues including, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Antenna Gallery, Project Row Houses, Charlie James Gallery, Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, MOCA Los Angeles, and Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario. She is based Los Angeles, California. @adeeroberson
photos by Gilda Davidian
Events & Workshops
Black Ocean Atlantic Ocean
Sunday, May 26, 7-9pm
Presented by Adee Roberson
Free / RSVP
Time traveling through rivers and oceans.
SOUND is one of the most ancient tools in FREEDOM and black liberation. Eternity Bath and tropic green will activate the installation with sound and song as a way to evoke and channel memory and movement.
tpɨtɨ, łpasini: acorn cake and relations across saltwater
Saturday, June 15, 4-6pm
Presented by Adee Roberson
Free / RSVP
Speaking from her own context as tasitʸuyu yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini (a woman of yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe, San Luis Obispo County), living at xučyun (Oakland) nitspu chochenyo ktitʸu (in the land/world of the Chochenyo-speaking people) and as a visitor nitspu yaanga ktitʸu (in the land/world of the people of Yaanga [Los Angeles], Tongva homelands), Sarah Biscarra Dilley will share historical, lived, and contemporary contexts on the political lives of Indigenous peoples whose homelands are situated in what is now known as California, sharing acorn cake and in conversation with the practice of artist in residence, Adee Roberson, that speaks across saltwater.
Closing: tamarind by Adee Roberson
Thursday, July 12, 7–11pm
Presented by Adee Roberson & WCCW
Free
Join us for the final showing of tamarind by Adee Roberson!
Press
Women’s Center for Creative Work’s Artist in Residence program is made possible with support from Pasadena Art Alliance.
View other WCCW Artists in Residence and learn about the program here.