Equity Gallery is pleased to present a live streamed performance by artist Robyn Gibson from our 245 Broome Street gallery space. Gibson, one of the participating artists in the 2020 Members Invitational exhibition, will hold a poetry reading in response to her featured artwork, Different. This special event can be viewed live online via Equity Gallery’s social media channels this Thursday, December 10th, 6 - 7 PM.
“Poetry is an important of my art practice. I often connect my drawings to my poetry. Sometimes they are a direct response to the written word, the feeling and flow, the rhythm and motion created, or they relate in ways I cannot always explain. The drawing in this show, Different, was influenced by a poem of the same name. I will read this poem and others during a performance at Equity Gallery. I hope to share a little bit of my story as I make my way on my journey of self empowerment. These poems are part of a collection from a zine I put together called Catch These Hands.” — Robyn Gibson
About The Artist:
Robyn Gibson is an emerging artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Louisville in 2014, earning a BFA in Painting and a BSBA in Marketing. Since receiving her MFA in 2018 from the New York Academy of Art, Gibson has been developing her multidimensional art practice. She has recently finished a seven month residency at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
After she started boxing in 2016, Gibson began incorporating it into her art practice. Larger-than-life-sized bold, gestural charcoal figures on canvas, a lyrical writing style meant to pack a punch, and voluptuous vessels inspired by her own curves all convey the movement and force important to her work and inspired by her boxing practice. The act of taking up space and claiming ownership of it is important to her work. As a black artist focused on self-portraiture and the exploration of her trauma, Gibson grapples with black identity, the depiction, perception and value of black bodies, and what it means to be authentic.
Gibson is a black woman artist asserting her multifaceted identity through poetry, drawing, ceramics, and performance. She uses voluptuous, bodily forms, violence, movement, and distortion to share the trauma of her truth, and the hope of her healing. Boxing is the means through which Gibson confronts both herself and the viewer and adds power to her work. As she reveals her experience, her goal is to connect, move, empower, and sometimes, even overwhelm. Trauma is a universal truth from which we all need to heal. Through her work she uses her weakness and turns it into strength. It is her hope to encourage others to do the same.