Central Campus Presents All Things to Your Remembrance
The exhibition features work by photographer and arts educator Jamie Robertson, who treats the American South as a living archive of Black life.
The San Jacinto College Central Campus Art Gallery opens All Things to Your Remembrance on Tuesday, March 5, featuring work by native Texan Jamie Robertson. The show—on view through Tuesday, April 9 —is presented in conjunction with the 2024 FotoFest Biennial and Critical Geography. The series draws from the artist’s continual exploration of familial Black landscapes of Leon County, Texas, where she’s committed to seeking a deeper connection to Jewett and Buffalo, the “home places” of her maternal grandmother, Verna.
Robertson, who works in photography and video, views her family history as an emotional source to channel the primordial essence of the land itself. Among the artists’ influences are the writings of Robert Farris Thompson, Yale scholar of the Afro-Atlantic world, whose seminal book Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art & Philosophy determined the impact the breadth of African culture had on shaping the identity of Black people in the United States, and more broadly in the New World.
In this sense, the rural landscape, overgrown foliage, and humble church buildings featured in Robertson’s work possess a visceral energy reverberating the accumulation of her family’s lived experience passed down through multiple generations.
The photographs on display are part of a larger body of work documenting years of the artist’s return to her ancestral roots as a labor of love and a means to maintain and strengthen ties while paying homage to those who came before her.
“This new series of images equates to a powerful photographic essay of the southern Black experience that reinforces the importance of oral histories, archival research, and human connection to our immediate environment,” said gallery director Carmen Champion.
Robertson earned an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Houston and an MSc in Art Therapy from Florida State University. She has exhibited her work at Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas; SF Camerawork, San Francisco, California; Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, Texas; and 516 Arts, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her works are held in the collection of McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and her photobook Charting the Afriscape of Leon County, TX, was published in December 2020 with Fifth Wheel Press. She lives in Hampton Roads, Virginia, where she is an Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University.
Exhibition:
All Things to Your Remembrance
Jamie Robertson
March 5 – April 9
Artist Talk:
Tuesday, April 9, 12 p.m.
Admission:
Free and open to the public
Location:
San Jacinto College Central Campus Art Gallery
8060 Spencer Highway
Pasadena, Texas 77505
C21.163
Contact:
Carmen Champion, director/curator
832-279-6229
