Robin Rhode
(b. 1976)Robin Rhode’s interdisciplinary practice incorporates performance, photography, painting, and drawing to activate public spaces.
Biography
Rhode grew up in Cape Town, South Africa shortly after the end of apartheid, an experience that shapes his practice as it relates to broader societal concerns, including race, power, and diasporic experience.
Rhode’s practice involves painting on public walls in urban environments, often in Johannesburg, and using illusion and storytelling to destabilize reality—as he adds shapes and forms to his paintings, he invites individuals to perform in front of every iteration of the work, photographing each choreographed action as documentation. Presented as multipanel works in sequential order, these photographs convey Rhode’s interventional strategy of disrupting and activating a static, public structure. The team with which Rhode collaborates is mostly from formerly segregated post-apartheid neighborhoods in Johannesburg. His engagement with local communities and work in public spaces speak to the ways political circumstances affect everyday life.
From 1996 to 2001, Rhode studied at the University of Johannesburg and the Association of Film and Dramatic Arts (AFDA). Rhode’s work first entered the Studio Museum collection in 2004, and he has participated in exhibitions such as 30 Seconds Off an Inch (2009–10) and Represent: Selected Works from the Studio Museum in Harlem (2006–07), presented at the New York State Museum. His work was also featured in two iterations of the museum’s “VideoStudio” exhibition series, VideoStudio Fall/Winter 2008 (2008–09) and VideoStudio: Rodney McMillian/Robin Rhode (2011–12). Rhode has participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the South African National Gallery, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, among others.
Robin Rhode
(b. 1976)Robin Rhode’s interdisciplinary practice incorporates performance, photography, painting, and drawing to activate public spaces.
Biography
Rhode grew up in Cape Town, South Africa shortly after the end of apartheid, an experience that shapes his practice as it relates to broader societal concerns, including race, power, and diasporic experience.
Rhode’s practice involves painting on public walls in urban environments, often in Johannesburg, and using illusion and storytelling to destabilize reality—as he adds shapes and forms to his paintings, he invites individuals to perform in front of every iteration of the work, photographing each choreographed action as documentation. Presented as multipanel works in sequential order, these photographs convey Rhode’s interventional strategy of disrupting and activating a static, public structure. The team with which Rhode collaborates is mostly from formerly segregated post-apartheid neighborhoods in Johannesburg. His engagement with local communities and work in public spaces speak to the ways political circumstances affect everyday life.
From 1996 to 2001, Rhode studied at the University of Johannesburg and the Association of Film and Dramatic Arts (AFDA). Rhode’s work first entered the Studio Museum collection in 2004, and he has participated in exhibitions such as 30 Seconds Off an Inch (2009–10) and Represent: Selected Works from the Studio Museum in Harlem (2006–07), presented at the New York State Museum. His work was also featured in two iterations of the museum’s “VideoStudio” exhibition series, VideoStudio Fall/Winter 2008 (2008–09) and VideoStudio: Rodney McMillian/Robin Rhode (2011–12). Rhode has participated in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the South African National Gallery, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, among others.