Come stroll in my sneakers

Deborah Roberts’s first solo exhibition in New Mexico, Come stroll in my sneakers, is on view at SITE Santa Fe by means of November 6. The artist’s figurative collages and work mix discovered photographs with hand-painted particulars for example the various experiences of Black boys in the US. With the intention of making and holding house for the complete personhood of her topics, Roberts goals to current complicated, multi-dimensional, and layered photographs of childhood, prominently that includes an innocence, vulnerability, and curiosity usually denied to Black youth. 

Deborah’s work wrestles with stereotypes connected to Black kids from an early age and divulges how systemic racism and adultification form the best way they develop up and expertise childhood.

Brandee Caoba, SITE Santa Fe Curator

Come stroll in my sneakers showcases 15 large-scale figurative collage works (2018–2022) accompanied by “trumpet of consciousness” from Roberts’s 2019 sculpture collection. Manufactured from wooden, a steel automotive jack, and stacked books, “trumpet of consciousness” alludes to a Sixties lecture by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Roberts’s artwork will lengthen past the gallery partitions to occupy SITE Santa Fe’s public artwork initiative, the Billboard Undertaking. Work situated on the western exterior of the constructing expands the exhibition’s dialog on how Black kids navigate their Blackness and childhood. These items are supposed to query stereotypes and create room for a extra nuanced, empathetic understanding of the expertise of Black kids in America.

Permitting her topics to occupy house, discover, and be seen, Roberts hopes to supply a robust critique of systemic injustices, society’s expectations, and the various biases that proceed to impression Black lives in the US. 

Come stroll in my sneakers is curated by Brandee Caoba and arranged by Jakia Fuller, Max Holmes, and SITE Santa Fe.

To study extra, go to sitesantafe.org.