Jimmy Robert Guadeloupe, b. 1975

Jimmy Robert works across photography, performance, and video, creating installations that explore the tensions between image and body, language and space. His practice centers on issues of Black bodily representation, identity, and visibility, often questioning the instability of representation itself and the structures of visual narrative. Robert frequently places his own body at the core of his work, using movement, gesture, and materials that are delicate or prone to tearing and creasing, such as paper. In doing so, the body becomes more than something to be seen. It acts as a medium through which systems of perception and recognition within society are exposed and reimagined. His work draws from a wide range of artistic and literary influences, including the nouveau roman literature of Marguerite Duras and the practices of artists such as Bas Jan Ader, Yvonne Rainer, Yoko Ono, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, General Idea, and Ian White. These are not simply historical references but artists whose work and lives have intersected with Robert’s own cultural and social context. Rather than quoting them, he enters into a dialogue with their legacies, extending their approaches through his own visual and performative language.

He was educated at Goldsmiths College in London and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Currently he lives between Paris and  Berlin, where he is also a professor of sculpture and performance at the Universität der Künste. Robert has had recent solo exhibitions at institutions such as Künstlerhaus Bremen (2022), Museion in Bolzano (2021), and Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham (2020). He has presented large-scale performances at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2019), Performa 17 in New York (2017), and the Centre d’Art Contemporain in the Synagogue de Delme, France (2016). 

His work is held in public collections including The Hunterian in Scotland, The Hepworth Wakefield in England, the Stedelijk Museum in the Netherlands, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Centre national des arts plastiques and FRAC Île-de-France in France, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center in the United States.