Amber Robles-Gordon: The Temples of my Familiars Project
Identity Totum, 2019
About:
Robles-Gordon is a visual artist of Puerto Rican and Caribbean descent who resides in Washington, DC.
Amber Robles-Gordon, is a mixed media visual artist. Known for recontextualizing non-traditional materials, her assemblages, large sculptures, installations, and public artwork, in order to emphasize the essentialness of spirituality and temporality within life.
Abstracted concepts and VisualLanguages, 2019
Driven by the need to construct her own finite path, innovate, and challenge social norms, her artwork is unconventional and non-formulaic. Her creations are representational of her personal experiences and the paradoxes within the imbalance of masculine and feminine energies with our society.
Ultimately, the intention is to examine the parallels between how humanity perceives its greatest resources, men, and women versus how we treat our possessions and environment.
The Temples of My Familiars series is about the intersections between my identity, the diverse visual languages in my artwork and the narratives they reference. The title is most definitely borrowed from the 1989 Alice Walker novel, The Temple of My Familiar. A womanist narrative about several women of color and their evolutionary process to know self, their identity and their struggle for happiness within a patriarchal society.
Lace Marbles and Sacred Places Within, 2019
However, I chose the title because of the distinct visual reference my sculptural geometric-like renderings took on once I inverted them. They became temples, a place of spiritual practice and sacrifice in which I could place my familiars —my visual languages. A place where they could be re-rooted, re-formulated, and take on a new life.
Anointed and Deserving, 2019.
Being an artist has facilitated a very specific type of data collection, visual documentation, analysis and a vast array of methods of self-expression and personal exploration regarding issues that concern me. During a recent journey through past work, contemplations, beginnings and endings; I encountered fragments of myself. These fragments vibrated silently, yet continuously, like piercing questions waiting to be answered. The various languages beckoned and bemoaned to be unified. Once combined, the equations gracefully revealed themselves in harmony. Each artwork, 18 x 24 in, mixed media collage, within the series begins with title The Temples of My Familiars and then has a distinct sub-title.