Robert E. Green
Site: Rudo Studio
Community activist Robert E. Green is a self-studied artist who uses assemblage to create three-dimensional wall pieces and sculptures. Through rescuing parts of buildings, neighborhood cast-offs, old signs, and other objects found around his home and studio in North St. Louis, Green gives new life to works steeped in multiple meanings. For Counterpublic 2023, Green’s St. Louis Place studio will be a site for studio tours and community conversations, as well as an exhibition and a permanent public artwork created from and installed within a building at 2205 St. Louis Avenue in North St. Louis that was rescued and renovated by Green over the past several years. Embedded in these works is the artist’s personal story of growing up in the legendary Pruitt-Igoe housing complex and the trauma he and his family suffered when the community was displaced due to its demolition. Together, Green’s contributions to Counterpublic 2023 root his practice in the long arc of lived history, active organizing, and spatial and social imaginaries for Black solidarity and self-determination in North St. Louis.
- Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, Independent Curator
PROGRAM INFO
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Robert E. Green’s artistic practice combines physical artmaking (assemblage, sculpture, painting, photography, and video), with acts of social justice that take the form of cultural festivals and events, creating a kind of “Gesamtkunstwerk.” His works and actions celebrate Black Pride and foster economic success within the Black community. Green’s artistic practice has also included the rescue and collection of African/African-American historical and cultural artifacts. He uses the collection and the community events he organizes as catalysts for education and the advancement of Black Pride. Across these initiatives, Green speaks to the spatial displacement of lives and communities fractured by the politics that have fostered years of systemic oppression of African Americans in St. Louis. Recipient of an artist grant from the RAC, Green has also shown his work at The Sheldon Art Galleries, 10th Street Galleries, The Griot Museum, 14th Street Art Gallery, and Webster University, among others.
