In Conversation: Deborah Roberts and Mara Brock Akil

Deborah Roberts will be in conversation with television writer and film producer Mara Brock Akil on Friday, February 13, from 6-8PM.

About:

Deborah Roberts was born in Austin, Texas, USA in 1962 where she continues to live and work. Roberts' use of collage reflects the challenges encountered by young Black children as they strive to build their identity, particularly as they respond to preconceived social constructs perpetuated by the Black community, the white gaze and visual culture at large. Combining a range of different facial features, skin tones, hairstyles and clothes, Roberts explains that “with collage, I can create a more expansive and inclusive view of the Black cultural experience. ”

Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, writes: “In her mixed-media works, artist Deborah Roberts acknowledges the syncretic nature of Black female identity. Debunking societal definitions of ideal beauty and dress, as well as stereotypes of social media, she questions the construction ofrace and the racializing gaze endemic to Western culture. Her collages and text-based works not only articulate a critique of accepted typologies of the unified self but also affirm the untold value of difference.”

Roberts last solo exhibition in New York, What about us?, opened at Stephen Friedman Gallery in November 2023. This coincided with the launch of her new monograph, 20 Years of Art/Work published by Radius Books. Other recent solo and two-person exhibitions include those at SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2023); McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (2022) and The Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK (2021). The artist’s major touring exhibition I’m opened at The Contemporary Austin, Texas in January 2021, following the installation of her first outdoor public mural there in September 2020. The show travelled to Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Colorado; Art + Practice in collaboration with California African American Museum, Los Angeles, California and Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida (2021–22). Her work featured in the touring exhibition Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, which first opened at Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee (2023). Other group projects include those at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2024); Ruby City, San Antonio, Texas (2024); Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany (2024); Dallas Museum of Art, Texas (2024); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2024); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2024); Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, North Carolina (2024); Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Massachusetts (2022); Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Park, Washington, DC (2022); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2022); Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia (2021); Scottish National Galleries, Edinburgh, Scotland (2021); Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson College, North Carolina (2020); Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida (2020); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts (2019) and Somerset House, London, England (2019).

Roberts was named 2023 Texas Medal of Arts Award Honoree for the Visual Arts. She was a finalist in the 2019 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and her work was exhibited in the accompanying show The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today, which toured from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (2019-2021). The Anonymous Was a Woman Award was presented to Roberts in December 2018, a prize granted each year to ten female artists over the age of 40 in the USA and at a critical juncture in their career. She was a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2016 and was an Artist in Residence at The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Florida in 2019.

Mara Brock Akil has written and produced over 400 episodes of television, leaving her mark on Hollywood. She’s received Essence Magazine’s Visionary Award and the prestigious Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award by NATPE, and has been named in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter’s Showrunner Power Lists, as well as The Hollywood Reporter’s "Women in Entertainment Power100" multiple times. In 2020, Brock Akil entered into a deal with Netflix to exclusively produce television shows for the streaming platform under her new banner, story27 Productions.

Her credits include writing and producing the hit show Girlfriends (2000-2008), The Game (2006-2015), Being Mary Jane (2013-2019), and executive producing Netflix’s STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING which was on the Academy Awards® Documentary Feature Shortlist. Brock Akil’s most recent project was the critically acclaimed Netflix series adaptation of the 1975 Judy Blume novel FOREVER, starring Karen Pittman, Wood Harris, Lovie Simone, Michael Cooper Jr., and more. The series was renewed for a season 2 and premiered to rave reviews.

In 2021, Mara expanded her passion for non-profit work and started her very own non-profit writing residency in Los Angeles, the Writers’ Colony. The mission is to support up-and-coming underrepresented writers/creatives. The impact of the Writers’ Colony is something Mara’s very proud of. She is delighted to continue the colony’s commitment to nurturing emerging writers, and providing them with exposure, access, and the tools they need to continue on their journeys.

Brock Akil resides in Los Angeles and is married to fellow writer/ producer/director Salim Akil. They have two sons, Yasin and Nasir.

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