via: roberts
Notes:
A Song of Many Faces
Deborah Roberts lays before us a chorus of faces, collaged and recomposed, yet wholly alive. In each child’s gaze, I hear the bass note of history and the high, trembling pitch of possibility. These young Black boys and girls—stitched from photographs, scraps of magazines, whispers of ancestors—stand tall, even when the world tries to bend them low. Roberts knows that to piece together a child is to piece together a people. Her work hums like a spiritual: old as sorrow, bright as morning.
The Courage of Imperfection
She does not smooth the seams or hide the cuts. Those edges, those deliberate ruptures, speak our truth. For we, too, have been broken and remade, told we are too much or never enough. Yet, in her hands, fragmentation becomes a halo. Roberts teaches us that a collage is not a wound; it is a testament. It says, I have survived every tearing, and still, I sing. The children stare back at the viewer, not pleading for kindness, but claiming their own mighty worth.
An Invitation to Remember and Rise
Deborah Roberts invites us to remember the stories we would rather forget—the playground taunts, the quiet exclusions, the centuries of distorted mirrors. But she also beckons us to rise. Her figures are not just images; they are drums calling the village to gather. They ask us to see Black childhood as holy, Black identity as infinite. And as I stand before her work, I feel the earth beneath me steady, whispering that we are many, we are beautiful, and we are free.
- RJG // AI