Roberta Joy Rich

Roberta Joy Rich is a multi-disciplinary artist also working as an educator and sometimes a curator based in Narrm (Melbourne, AUS). Often drawing upon her lived experiences as a diaspora Southern African kaapse woman, Roberta utilises language, text, video, archives, photo-media, satire, spatial practices and storytelling as platforms to interrogate constructs of race, gender, imperialism, Western singularity and notions of authenticity. With a focus on communal knowledge systems, alterity, socio-political histories, positionality and popular culture, much of her installation and mixed media projects explore resilience, power, memory, belonging and truth-telling. She is interested in critical fabulation and anarchiving as processes for unearthing silenced and emergent narratives, and the possibilities they conjure. Roberta's work aims to deconstruct colonial modalities whilst proposing empowering sites of collective self-determination.

Rich has exhibited projects locally, nationally and internationally including Wits Art Museum, Gallery MOMO, Firstdraft, Urban Theatre Projects, Metro Arts, Institute of Modern Art, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, FELTspace, Blak Dot Gallery, Arts House, Footscray Community Arts and La Trobe Art Institute.