Stacey Robinson, “Black Imaginings”, July 26-September 7, 2019

Exhibition Catalogue, Stacey Robinson and Black Kirby

Robinson’s exhibition “Black Imaginings” features large-scale digital images that explore representational justice informed by the work of W.E.D. Du Bois and his notion of “double consciousness.” Robinson creates multimedia works as resistance to Black oppression by illustrating the global conflicts of integration, miseducation, unresolved slavery, unresolved emancipation, and colonialism’s effect on Black people’s collective ability to self-organize and self-govern. His graceful yet powerful digital illustrations stand as counter-assessments to Black stereotypes and misrepresentations of Black existence.

Robinson makes his intentions clear in “Radical Imagination,” the work that opens “Black Imaginings.” He calls viewers together, speaking to the collective “we” directly. “We must speculate, then actualize our future existence as a militarized revolutionary act.” The hand of the artist reaches into the image, empowering both the regal figure and the viewer tasked with safeguarding our radical imagination.

As Robinson’s work looks to a utopian future, it also challenges the Western canon of the past. Black Zodiac reimagines the astrological symbols within an Afrocentric context. Robinson adds Egyptian iconography, incorporating the scales of Osiris weighing one’s heart against the feather of truth. The weight of truth is present in all of Robinson’s work, challenging viewers “to be very conscious of our strategies for survival.”

Biography

Stacey Robinson completed his Masters of Fine Art at the University at Buffalo and is currently a Nasier Jones Hip Hop Fellow at the Hutchins Center for Research for African & African American Culture at Harvard University. He is originally from Albany, NY, and graduated from Fayetteville State University with a Bachelor of Arts. He recently art directed Unveiling Visions: the Alchemy of the Black Imagination for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, NY. He was a part of the exhibition Invisible Ink: Black Independent Comix at University of Tennessee, and the “Beyond the Frame: African American Comic Book Artists” presentation at the Flint Institute of Arts. Robinson’s collected works reside at Modern Graphics in Berlin, Bucknell University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.