Deborah Roberts: I'M

Deborah Roberts’s work critiques notions of beauty, the body, race, and identity, often through depictions of Black children, historically among the most vulnerable members of our population. Playful and serious, heroic and insecure, these youth are given complex portrayals that highlight the fraught assumptions and perceptions around them. 

Deborah Roberts: I’M presents new works, including figurative mixed-media collages, paintings, prints, text-based works on paper, a sound and video installation, and the artist’s first ever outdoor mural. Together, these works extend Roberts’s ongoing dialogue with American history, art history, Black culture, and popular culture.

Deborah Roberts: I’M includes a foreword by Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation; scholarly essays by Heather Pesanti, the former Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Contemporary Austin, and Eddie Chambers, Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at Austin; and a conversation between Deborah Roberts and Zoé Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery, London. 96 pages.