Born on Wathaurong Country (Geelong, Australia 1988), Roberta Joy Rich is a multi-disciplinary artist

also working as an educator and curator. Often drawing upon her lived experiences as a diaspora Southern African 'Cape' woman with Afro-Asian lineages, Roberta utilises language, text, video, archives, photo-media, satire 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, the environment 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.

 

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 owners 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."