Deborah Roberts: Book Launch and In Conversation with Sarah Elizabeth Lewis

Talk: Deborah Roberts In Conversation with Sarah Elizabeth Lewis: 4–5pm
Book signing: 5–6pm

On Saturday 4 November, a book signing and In Conversation between the artist and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis will take place at Stephen Friedman Gallery, New York to celebrate Deborah Roberts' new monograph. This coincides with Roberts' solo exhibition 'What about us?', which inaugurates the new gallery, 3 November – 22 December 2023.  

'Deborah Roberts: Twenty Years of Art/Work’ provides the definitive look at the artist’s practice over the past two decades, with newly commissioned texts and a thorough dive into Roberts’ archive. Published by Radius Books, the expansive monograph contains new texts by Dawoud Bey, Ekow Eshun, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Carolyn Jean Martin. There will be an opportunity to buy the book at the event and have it signed by the artist.

Contact rsvpnewyork@stephenfriedman.com to reserve your place. RSVP is encouraged to secure your space – but walkins are welcome

Click here. (This link opens in a new tab). to purchase a copy via Radius Books.

Deborah Roberts (b.  1962, Austin, Texas, USA)

Combining collage with mixed media, Roberts' figurative works depict the complexity of Black subjecthood and explore themes of race, identity and gender politics. Roberts was named 2023 Texas Medal of Arts Award Honouree for the Visual Arts. She has exhibited internationally, with solo and two-person shows at institutions including SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2023); McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (2022) and The Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK (2021). Her major touring exhibition ‘I’m’ opened at The Contemporary Austin, Texas in 2021. Roberts' work is held in significant public collections including: Scottish National Galleries, Edinburgh, UK; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; He Art Museum, Guangdong, China; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Smithsonian National Museum, Washington DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Sarah Elizabeth Lewis

Sarah Elizabeth Lewis is an art and cultural historian, curator, and author. She is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and the Founder of Vision & Justice. Her books and edited volumes include Carrie Mae Weems (MIT Press, 2021), 'Vision & Justice' by Aperture magazine (2016), and The Rise (Simon & Schuster, 2014). Lewis was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2022. Her scholarship has received awards including the Arthur Danto/American Society for Aesthetics Prize, the inaugural Freedom Scholar Award from The Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. Lewis’s forthcoming publications include The Unseen Truth (Harvard University Press, 2024), Vision & Justice (One World/Random House), and Groundwork: Race and Aesthetics in the Era of Stand Your Ground Law.