Roberta Joy Rich is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in critical fabulation and anarchiving as processes for unearthing silenced and emergent narratives, and in doing so, the possibilities they conjure for Black empowerment. Roberta often draws upon her lived experiences as a diaspora Southern African kaapse woman with African and Asian lineages in settler nation Australia. With a focus on communal knowledge systems, alterity, imperialism and socio-political histories, her projects explore resilience, power, memory, belonging and truth-telling. Her practice utilises text, video, installation, photo and print media, archives, satire and storytelling as platforms to interrogate constructs of race, gender, history and notions of authenticity. Roberta's artwork aims to deconstruct colonial modalities and Western singularity, while proposing empowering sites of self-determination.

 

Roberta has exhibited widely across so-called Australia as well South Africa. Recent exhibitions include in every room; Campbelltown Arts Centre (2025), Lying Inside; Latrobe Art Institute Biannual Façade Commission (2024) and The Purple Shall Govern; Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2023), Footscray Community Arts (2022). Roberta is based on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung Country of the Kulin Nation (inner west Melbourne, south-eastern Australia).

 

"I acknowledge that my creative practice and experiences take place on the lands of the Wathaurong, Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples. I recognise the Wathaurong, Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples as the custodians of the lands, waterways and skies, that I was raised upon and continue to live, work and benefit from. I pay my respects to their Elders, ancestors and their families, acknowledging their deep, ongoing spiritual connection to Country. I come with an intention to learn from my peer First Nations communities, to deepen my own understanding of my ancestral pathways as a diasporic being.

 

I recognise that sovereignty was never ceded, and the Wathaurong, Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples are the original custodians of the lands I traverse. I wish to extend this acknowledgment and pay my respects to Indigenous peoples across the nation state and acknowledge peer African communities viewing this website."