LJ Roberts

View works. Detail of LJ Roberts, Alice O’Malley in her kitchen with Nelson, 2015
Alice O’Malley in her kitchen with Nelson, 2015 (detail)
View works

LJ Roberts (b.1980 Royal Oak, Michigan, USA) creates large-scale textile installations, embroideries, artist books, and collages. Their work investigates overlaps of queer and trans politics, activism, protest, and craft. Roberts lives and works in Providence, RI. 

Roberts's work has been shown throughout the United States and internationally across many institutions, including The Victoria and Albert Museum, UK; The Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington D.C., Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, CA; The 8th Floor, NY; Museum of Arts and Design, NY; Vox Populi, PA; Smack Mellon, NY; The Orange County Museum of Art, CA; The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, NY; The Powerhouse Museum, Australia; The Museum of the City of New York, NY; The Oakland Museum of California, CA; The DePaul Art Museum, IL; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT; The ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at The University of Southern California, CA; and The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, ME. Their work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery, both in Washington D.C, USA and The Brooklyn Museum, New York. 

Roberts also maintains a critical writing practice that bridges craft and queer theory. Their writing can be found in the anthologies Extra/Ordinary: Craft Culture in Contemporary Art published by Duke University Press and Craftivism: The Art of Craft and Activism on Arsenal Pulp Press. They have contributed writing to publications such as Studio Potter, Hyphen Magazine, and Art Practical. Most recently Roberts wrote the introduction to DUETS: Dean Daderko and Elaine Reichek on the late Nicolas A. Moufarrege published by Visual AIDS.

Roberts has been the past recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Fountainhead Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University, and residencies at IASPIS (International Artists' Studio Program in Sweden, Stockholm), Ox-Bow School of Art, ACRE, The Textile Arts Center, and The Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa. They were a 2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY.

In 2015, Roberts was one of nine recipients of The White House Champions of Change Award for LGBTQI artists from President Barack Obama. They also received the 2019 President's Award for Art and Activism from the Women's Caucus for Art.

Their first solo exhibition in New York City, Carry You With Me: Ten Years of Portraits opened at Pioneer Works in 2021 and the  Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts in 2022 , accompanied by their first publication. 

LJ Roberts CV (102 KB) (PDF, opens in a new tab.)