Stuart V. Robertson

 STUART V. ROBERTSON moved to the United States from Jamaica at the age of 16. Stuart has always been a painter, but when he arrived at Stanford he started moving into assemblage, specifically using a patchwork of everyday materials such as aluminum cans, bubble wrap, felt, and cardboard. Feeling a bit of a battle with craft, the transition to working with these materials has been challenging. Often overlooked as cheap or discarded, aluminum has an interesting history and significance to Stuart. In Jamaica, bauxite rock, which has a high aluminum content, is strip-mined and exported. The politics and economics of aluminum in Jamaica are difficult and involved, a post-industrial complex — few Jamaicans benefit from the industry but many suffer from the destruction of land, pollution, and health problems associated with aluminum mining.

With the metal’s history and connection to Jamaica, it’s a complicated and layered material for Stuart. At first it was just another assemblage material until he brought it outside and saw it sparkle. In the African Diaspora, men decorate themselves. Hip-hop and Dancehall cultures use “bling” as a big component of showmanship and entertainment. “The idea of shiny things has always been a part of my visual references,” Stuart says. Metal is also a symbol of armor and strength, while also reflecting back. It’s an illusion of luxury and value, then it’s discarded. “Aluminum is armor, it’s bling, it’s percussion, it’s weatherproofing...”

“ALUMINUM IS ARMOR, IT’S BLING, IT’S PERCUSSION, IT’S WEATHERPROOFING...”

Stuart questions how to paint Black culture without giving it away, how to protect the Black body while celebrating heritage. “I’m trying to layer in a different type of relationship with Blackness that doesn’t have anything to do with skin color and skin tones — but has everything to do with how the skin performs and how we exist in the world,” he says.

In his new work, Stuart has moved away from portraying the full figure and is using hyper-cropping “like the kids do on their phones.” By using a close crop he can move away from exact representation. “How much of my face do you need to see in order for it to be a portrait?,” he asks. He looks for images on social media of people he really wants to be friends with: What is it about that person? He then takes elements of the found images and combines them into his own self-portrait.

ARTIST BIO

Stuart V. Robertson (b. Kingston, Jamaica) is a mixed media artist who paints, collages, and assembles images of Black life inspired by the nostalgia for his birthplace, the lure of the American dream, and the African Diaspora’s future. His goal is to advance the tradition of painting through interdisciplinary discourse and material innovation to 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 2020. His work has been shown in the Jamaica Biennial (2014) and the Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition (2019). This year, Stuart is a Graduate Fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts and an Honorary Artist in Residence at the Kala Art Institute.

Visit Stuart’s website