Artwork Description
Walter Robinson – Puritan Taliban
Dimensions: 34 x 16 x 1″ finished size
Year: 2019
Medium: leather, aluminum, human hair, misc. found objects
Walter Robinson’s “Puritan Taliban” is a prime example of his artistic practice as socio-cultural anthropologist. Using text and strategies of appropriation, conflation, and dislocation, he uncovers subconscious human imperatives hidden beneath social, political, religious, and capitalist packaging. Robinson’s work is a partial response to his upbringing in a household where he could never quite tell what the reality was. His father was a Cold War era cryptographer in California, and Robinson’s childhood was filled simultaneously with sunny skies, beaches, and fear of annihilation through international conflict. Likewise, Robinson uses the loose and familiar “mudflap lady” and Twitter bird to contextualize two groups with authoritarian lifeways.
Walter Robinson’s works have been featured in numerous museum exhibitions and are held in choice museum collections. Among these museums are the Crocker Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; San Jose Museum of Art; Sheldon Museum of Art; Chaney Family Collection; diRosa Preserve; Nevada Museum of Art; Djerassi Foundation; New Mexico Museum of Art; Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe.