Dana Robinson 

Dial Tone

When you catch something and try to save it, it changes. The frieze of the Ancient Greek Parthenon entered the collection of the British Museum in the seventeenth century because the Earl of Elgin wanted to “protect what was left of the treasure.” Carried away from its original location, the frieze is experienced in a fundamentally different way when viewed as a recreation in a museum display in London rather than as a landmark in Athens.

Robinson’s work addresses the cycles of maintenance and transformation that people, and the materials they inhabit, undergo when they are preserved. Using vintage Black media, she pulls images of people out of the pages and gives them a new life. Mixing the past and present, she builds her own world and abstracts and collages with care, making it clear that these quotidian materials—the crumbling pages of 1950s magazines, the antique advertisements of Black women, the Newport cigarette ads—are as precious and deserving of preservation as the Parthenon Marbles.

Shown at A.I.R. Gallery in 2022

Eye 001, 2022, 11x14 inches, multimedia in clear acrylic case
Eye 003, 2022, 11x14 inches, multimedia in clear acrylic case
From Day to Day, 2022, 11x14 inches, multimedia in clear acrylic case
Hand 003, 2022, 11x14 inches, multimedia in clear acrylic case
Hand 004, 2022, 11x14 inches, multimedia in clear acrylic case
Mouth 002, 2022, 11x14 inches, gouache and collage on paper on wood panel in clear acrylic case
Mouth 003, 2022, 11x14 inches, gouache and collage on paper on wood panel in clear acrylic case
Mouth 006, 2022, 11x14 inches, gouache and collage on paper on wood panel in clear acrylic case
Mouth 009, 2022, 11x14 inches, gouache and collage on paper on wood panel in clear acrylic case



©Dana Robinson | Brooklyn, NY