AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 4

ARTISTS & ARTISANS
Malik Roberts
On a nondescript stretch of Broadway in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, stands a print
shop empty of customers or seemingly anything to sell. It is a miracle establishment,
not unlike the neighborhood it sits in. You wonder how it has survived Amazon and
gentrification, and you wonder for how much longer.
It is a frigid day in mid-February, as,
above the print shop, I arrive at a large
warehouse full of artists’ studios. I walk into
one and find myself surrounded by a majesty
of blues and grays and flashes of gemstone
colors. Bootsy Collins’ tonal gyrations sing
out across the studio as I am greeted by
a slippered Malik Roberts, paintbrush in
hand, wearing his trademark hat and glasses
and a smile so warm and genuine that, for a
moment, I am genuinely taken aback.
This authenticity, a willingness to be
real, is most apparent in Roberts’ work. BLK
& BLUE, his 2018 show at ABYX gallery, was
inspired by Picasso’s Blue period. But more
poignantly, it is a telling description of what
it is to be Black in America — an exploration
of the damage wrought from a dueling
existence that demands our strength as
much it denies our pain. Using a palette of
blues and grays, Roberts pulls back the thin
veil that covers mental illness in the Black
community. Familiar scenes and tropes
of Black existence are contextualized in
classical forms and dismantled, bringing
into sharp relief the truth that was there all
along.
Recently, I asked Malik about his
current work as he sat in front of a piece
in progress, adding delicate inflections of
paint on a folded brown thigh.
AphroChic: You met the Pope — how
did you even get to the Vatican?
Malik Roberts: My mentor Domingo
(the artist Domingo Zapata), called me right
after BLK & BLU. He called me randomly,
“Papa I’m doing something with the Pope ...
give me a painting, give me any painting!” I
was like “ok”, so I just sent him a picture of
a painting. Then he was like you’re going to
have to pull up to the UN for a charity event.
So I was like cool, I pull up to the UN, and
that’s how I ended up giving my speech at
the UN. [Then] after, he was like “Papa, if
someone buys your painting (at the charity
event) the Vatican will fly you and the person
who buys the painting out there.” So time
passes by then he calls me up, “Are you ready
to go to the Vatican March 21?” That’s pretty
much how it went down.
AC: Do you think about where that
painting is now?
MR: They said they were going to put it
into a little private thing called the archives.
So, in a hundred years when they are going
through the archives at The Vatican, they are
going to see some painting of a Black man on
the cross. They are gonna pull up a picture of
the artist and see a nigga with grills ... It was
a big moment.
AC: Your parents are from Trinidad
and Guyana, but you were raised in the US,
Words by Tedecia Wint
Photos by Sarah Tekele
Styling by James LaMar
110 aphrochic