ARTIST STATEMENT
My research-based art practice explores the relationship between memory and migration using an interdisciplinary approach that includes film, photography, printmaking, installation, text and archival materials. I want to get to the root of lost memories, especially in relation to migration, whether the move forced or initiated by a search for new opportunities, we all have a migration story in our bloodlines. I study the fragments of memory and repurpose them. The lives of my ancestors are the catalyst behind my artwork and their stories are woven into every detail. Why did they leave? What were they hoping to find? What remains? I want to explore every fracture, fold and glitch to release the trauma that lives inside, while also simultaneously uplifting the forgotten moments that should be celebrated. I do this using a somatic approach where a focus on materiality is key, whether that is explored by making my own paper using fibers connected to ancestry or creating a glitch in a film to represent release, recovery, imminent loss of a moment in time, or even a glimpse into the future. The act of forgetting is often a mode of self-preservation to keep us moving forward and from falling apart. However, to truly move forward it’s important to do the work to be released from the invisible chains that keep us from truly being free.
I hope viewers find relationship in my work. Migration is something we all have in common at some point in our histories and migrants speak a common language. Each journey is varied, but we are connected by the questions we ask ourselves in that search. Movement is a familiar thread that connects us all.
BIO
Trina Michelle Robinson is a San Francisco-based interdiscipinary artist exploring the relationship between memory and migration. Her work is deeply tied to materiality to get to the root of lost memories using a somatic approach where the visual arts meets the archive. Her work has been shown at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Art Commission Main Gallery, Minnesota Street Project, New York’s Wassaic Project, ICA San José and the triennial Bay Area Now 9 at Yerba Buena Center for Fine Arts. She was commissioned by For-Site Foundation in partnership with the National Park Service in 2025 to create a film installation in the group exhibition Black Gold: Stories Untold located at Fort Point in San Francisco. She currently has a dual-site solo exhibition called Open Your Eyes to Water at 500 Capp Street and Root Division. She had a solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), a Smithsonian Affiliate, as part of their Emerging Artist Program 2022-23, is a 2024 SFMoMA SECA Finalist and was nominated for the 2024 Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) Award. She previously worked in print and digital media at companies such as The New York Times T Magazine, Vanity Fair and Slack before receiving her M.F.A. from California College of the Arts in 2022, where she now teaches.
As a storyteller, she traveled the country and told the story of exploring her ancestry with The Moth Mainstage at Lincoln Center in New York, in addition to touring with them on stages in San Francisco, Portland, OR, Omaha, NE and Westport, CT. Her story aired on NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour in October 2019 and a second story aired in 2024.