Come walk in my shoes

Deborah Roberts’s first solo exhibition in New Mexico, Come walk in my shoes, is on view at SITE Santa Fe via November 6. The artist’s figurative collages and work mix discovered pictures with hand-painted particulars for example the numerous experiences of Black boys in the USA. With the intention of making and holding house for the total personhood of her topics, Roberts goals to current advanced, multi-dimensional, and layered pictures of childhood, prominently that includes an innocence, vulnerability, and curiosity typically denied to Black youth. 

Deborah’s work wrestles with stereotypes hooked up to Black youngsters from an early age and divulges how systemic racism and adultification form the way in which 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 sequence. Fabricated from wooden, a metallic automobile jack, and stacked books, “trumpet of consciousness” alludes to a Nineteen 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 youngsters 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 youngsters in America.

Permitting her topics to occupy house, discover, and be seen, Roberts hopes to supply a strong critique of systemic injustices, society’s expectations, and the numerous biases that proceed to affect Black lives in the USA. 

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.