In his exhibition essay, visiting scholar and writer Luke Williams writes:

How often do we remember the importance of skin? As the largest organ of the body, it is our primary layer of contact with the natural and manmade world. The skin is a technology of protection–as much from heat and rain as from hate and racism. Endowed with symbolic significance, the skin is the material and metaphysical landscape through which we come to understand society’s deepest challenges and greatest possibilities. In A Suh Wi Dweet, Stuart V. Robertson represents Black life through dynamic epidermal surfaces to challenge and inform how we think about skin, our most intimate surface. 

Robertson renders his subjects through a medley of lustrous materials including, metal, domestic debris, and textiles. The conglomerated paintings shine like bling, articulating material strength and resilience, alchemically turning discarded debris into spectacular portraits. They channel the desire of the gaze while dispersing its effects across the surface of abstracted metallic figures. In so doing, the exhibition responds to the ambivalence of representation and the allure of being seen.

A Suh Wi Dweet depicts both Robertson’s biological and chosen family from a place of protection and care. Viewers may recognize the people captured in several of the portraits, as Robertson seeks to thank and to celebrate Black folks in Charlottesville who warmly welcomed him into their community. At the same time, recognizing them may be a challenge because Robertson depicts his metal-clad subjects only partially, framing not their face, but their hands, mouths, and other parts of their bodies. In so doing, he invites us to ask questions about the mundane, and extraordinary, inner lives of Black people. 

Stuart Robertson (b. 1992, Kingston, Jamaica) is a mixed media artist who paints, collages, and assembles images of Black life inspired by the nostalgia for his birthplace, confrontations with the American dream, and fantasies of the African Diaspora’s future. His creative and educational practices prioritize interdisciplinary discourse and aesthetic innovation that better serve the representation of the Black diaspora in contemporary art. Robertson received a BA in studio art from Davidson College in 2015, a MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, and MFA from Stanford University in June 2020. He was a 2020-21 Graduate Fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts and an honorary artist-in-residence at the Kala Art Institute. Robertson is currently a full time teaching artist-in-residence at the Lawrenceville School, NJ and is a prizewinning finalist for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.

In conjunction with this exhibition, Second Street Gallery is hosting the following programming opportunities:

• Call for Writing Submissions: Stuart Robertson’s A Suh Wi Dweet Second Street Gallery invited writers of all ages to create and submit a short poem, prose, story, or essay that responds to the themes represented in Stuart Robertson’s solo exhibition in the Main Gallery. The prompt for this call was conceptualized by visiting scholar and writer, Luke Williams. Learn more about Williams on his website. Click HERE to read through all submitted works.

• Artists in Conversation: Stuart Robertson + Luke Williams Watch a recording of the virtual conversation HERE.

This exhibition is a Season 48 Call for Submissions pick and is generously sponsored by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and an Enriching Communities grant from the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF).

Installation photography courtesy of Derrick J. Waller