Jimmy Robert interrogates the idea of inclusion and exclusion through a multidisciplinary practice that includes performance, photography, and sculpture. Robert is interested in how the body can become an object and visa-versa. He often cites art history, film and literature which add to his layered narratives and allow the audience different avenues to engage with the work.
The series Frammenti is the result of collaging and photographing images of classical sculptures in and around Naples. Robert positions photographs of his own body, of various polychrome sculptures around Naples and other images together. Each work is framed in different ways, which extend the possibilities of paper as a sculptural medium. Robert’s collages also contend the aesthetics of White Imperialism generated by the false belief that in ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were white. In reality, these sculptures usually had brightly painted clothes, skin, hair and even makeup. As sculptures were subject to the elements the pigments faded, and when they were unearthed the pigments mixed with dirt and calcite, were brushed away in cleanings.
In 2023 The Hunterian redisplays its entire art collection, which aims to make the art gallery more meaningful to a wider audience. The filmmaker and scholar Manthia Diawara and art historian and curator Terri Geis collaborate to create an exhibition, ‘The Trembling Museum’, that showcases and reinterprets The Hunterian’s collection of African art. In this context Frammenti V will be valuable in reflecting the representation of the Black body and Blackness in classical statuary.
