Spotlight Artist

Josie Love Roebuck

South
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We can Grow or Wither

Tapestry with six embroidered portraits and green vines on a red background.

screenprint ink, screenprint, upcycled fabric, upcycled tassel trim, upcycled trim, upcycled fabric, vintage hangs, vintage candle fixture, vintage doillies, soft pastel, fabric, and yarn

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Tapestry with six embroidered portraits and green vines on a red background.
Subscriber accessSubscribe to gain full access to all artworksSubscribe
Tapestry with six embroidered portraits and green vines on a red background.
Featured in New American Paintings1 / 3

Artist Statement

 The summer of 2020 brought chaos to the world. We were faced with a global pandemic and searching for peace and justice for people of color. The inquisition of Josie Love Roebuck’s heritage came into play during the Black Lives Matter movement: her identity, experiences, fears, concerns, and what she would like to change were thrown into the spotlight. Roebuck’s process addresses the contemporary complexity of identifying as biracial, where symbolizing pain and triumph, exclusion and acceptance, is achieved by layering fabrics and patching together portraits. Roebuck has tried to make herself whole by examining her existence as a biracial person. She has been confronting the ever-present feeling of being in the wrong skin and of not belonging to a specific racial group, while wondering how can one ever be whole when we live in a society that thrives on racial divide.

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