For b. Robert Moore, art is personal — and political.
The Des Moines-based artist does not shy away from sharing the scars of his past in his new exhibition “In Loving Memory,” on display at the Des Moines Art Center through Oct. 20.
On a personal level, Moore’s body of work pulls from deeply rooted family trauma, but also from moments of joy. Visitors exploring the exhibition will eventually find themselves in the middle of a living room — a replica of his grandmother’s — where they can watch old home videos on the couch and even take a piece of hard candy on the way out.
In the next room, a different kind of video plays on a loop. It’s Moore and his mother, talking as adults in front of a family portrait he painted. The painting shows Moore as a young boy, sitting between his father and mother, only his mother is near impossible to make out.
It’s revealed in their recorded conversation that she abandoned him in his youth. The painting, entitled Without a Shadow of Doubt (Daddy's Boy), was his way of reconciling her absence.
“Life and death, the dichotomy of life and death, of black and white, of presence and absence, of light and dark, to me, are very connected,” Moore said about the overarching themes of the new exhibit.
Tribute and protest
While exploring his identity as a biracial man in America — and in the predominantly white state of Iowa, no less — Moore dissects the American experience through a racial, social and spiritual lens. He taps into universal themes of visibility and erasure, innocence and war, violence, loss and legacy.
In one corner of the exhibition, black granite tombstones, lined up like soldiers, stand before a wall of folded flags. Most of the headstones are unmarked, anonymous. But two are etched with the words:
Involuntary Veteran of the United States of America
Husband Father Son Brother and Friend
In Loving Memory
Pan-African flags are framed and hung in neat rows up and down the wall. Each is marked with the name of a Black American killed at the hands of police.
To Moore, the two installations function as equal parts tribute and protest.
“As both a Black American and also a veteran of the United States Army, it is my civil duty to use art as a form of peaceful protest, to look at the truth and present my findings in a different light in public space,” he said.
Moore first started exploring art as a form of protest in 2020 with the project “Harvesting Humanity,” in which he projected dozens of images of Black Americans on grain silos in rural Iowa.
“There are art forms that can promote change and are great forms of protest,” Moore said. “But if you look through my body of work, I'm always protesting. I’m doing it subtly. I’m doing it diplomatically.”
Filling the gaps
For Moore, growing up in both Des Moines and its surrounding suburbs played a key role in shaping his perspective as an artist.
“That drastic cultural difference heavily shaped my environment — because I have a lot of experience with a diverse set of castes, environments and groups of people, growing up in my adolescence,” Moore explained. “As I got older, that completely switched on me, and I had to adjust. So I think Des Moines, Iowa — both — the environment, the geography, the culture, I think interpersonally, my family, the interracial structure, my identity and my race, my experiences in life, all shaped the body of my work.”
It’s a body of work that embraces an extremely vulnerable and personal point of view — a point of view that Moore believes has been ignored in the art world for far too long.
“I am painting what I think is missing, what there needs to be more of in the world,” he said. “That’s a very, very big obligation I feel like artists and creators should have, to fill any gaps we feel are missing through our own expression, through our own form, through our own eyes, through our own experiences, but make sure we're not filling the world up with a lot of the same.”
For Laura Burkhalter, senior curator at the Des Moines Art Center, that highly personal point of view is what makes Moore’s body of work stand out from other contemporary artists.
“Robert's work is direct. He's telling his story, but he's also telling stories about America and about social issues,” Burkhalter said. “He's using this personal narrative and personal imagery to tell a story that is going to appeal to and speak to a lot of people. And that sort of really raw emotion is not necessarily something you see in a lot of contemporary art.”
Energy in the room
After visiting Moore’s studio, Burkhalter and the rest of the Des Moines Art Center’s curatorial staff reached out to him to showcase his work in the 2024 edition of their annual Iowa Artists series. The exhibition, entitled “In Loving Memory,” kicked off its months-long stay at the Des Moines Art Center on Friday, June 21, with an opening celebration. That night, hundreds of attendees packed into the museum’s lobby, where Moore delivered a heartfelt speech about the emotional power of art.
“There's a certain way on how things are composed that that energy is transferred, and it's emotional,” Moore said that evening. “And it's in the lyrics. It's in the paint. It's in the room. And sometimes, when that's done with authenticity, people reciprocate that, and then that energy is recycled.”
Christian Elloie Route was one of the people reciprocating that energy. Route, who had followed Moore’s career since 2020 and had previously purchased two of his pieces for her personal collection, traveled from Texas to attend the opening celebration in person. Despite being familiar with the emotional nature of Moore’s work, Route said the exhibition exceeded her expectations.
“I personally did not have the experience of growing up without my mother. But I did have complications in terms of parental relationships growing up,” Route said. “And so to see that resonate, to see that he felt almost an obligation to work through that, through his art, and then share it with us, something so vulnerable and so personal, to give us an opportunity to experience it in a different media, in a different way, it was even more powerful than I thought it would be.”
Indeed, the opening celebration was a multimedia, multisensory experience. Music spun by DJ cDisiac reverberated off the walls of the Harriet S. and J. Locke Macomber Lobby, while attendees enjoyed complimentary coffee selections from BLK & Bold Specialty Beverages, an Iowa-based and Black-owned business.
Following Moore's remarks, Iowa-based poet Teresa Zilk recited her poem “Women Do Not Turn Into Ghosts.” She began with an impassioned dedication.
“This poem is dedicated to the ancestral mothers, the ancestral mothers who lost their children to the Middle Passage, whose children landed in the Americas, were constricted into slavery, were constricted into wars,” Zilk proclaimed. “This poem is dedicated to them. This poem is dedicated to children, actual child soldiers, constricted into wars. This poem is dedicated to children dying in classrooms because people won't make laws to ban guns. This poem speaks to the idea of love, that love is also resistance.”
Sprinkling in culture
Zilk’s moving poem was just one of many times Moore welcomed and embraced other art forms — music, spoken word, literature — alongside his own. According to Moore, his work remains in constant dialogue with cultural figures and artifacts, both past and present.
“I love to sprinkle in cultural references — and not only the visual pieces but also the written pieces,” Moore said. “I do a lot of research, and my inspirations really come from all of those cultural pieces, whether it’s a cultural iconic pillar, like a Toni Morrison or a James Baldwin, or even biblical, in a sense, because I grew up in the church. It could also be hip-hop or cultural references in the sense of music. So I love to sprinkle these things in. I think it's important as a part of my work.”
That work extends beyond the visual components — whether it be a painting, a projection or an installation — to written descriptions. Although some artists are opposed to sharing interpretations of their work, Moore sees it as an opportunity to foster discussion and open new doorways for connection.
“I feel confident in my writing ability. I feel confident in my speaking ability. It's my product,” Moore explained. “I'm forever in search of someone, especially an art professional, curator, historian, critic, writer, that can describe my work as good as, if not better than, I can myself. I’m drawn to that because it’s such an intimate connection to the work. And taking the time to do the research and decompose the work and make sure I'm drawing multiple layers of symbolism is also a way for me to give someone an option to connect with the work.”
Art is about curiosity
If the reception to “In Loving Memory” thus far is any indication, many are connecting to Moore’s work in both personal and profound ways.
“I came because I've had the opportunity to sort of watch him grow from afar over the last four years in terms of the art that he’s shared with the world and how he's continued to connect with me,” Route said at the opening celebration. “This is the first time I’ve considered myself a collector of any art.”
Burkhalter believes the story-driven nature of Moore’s work is what makes it so powerful for so many.
“I think that people want to be challenged. They want to see themselves reflected. They want to hear other people's stories,” Burkhalter said. “Art is about curiosity. You're curious what the artist was thinking. You're curious about how they made this. You're curious about what an artist's life is. I can't imagine looking at this exhibition and not wanting to know more about him, but also thinking about your own experiences and your own similarities to what he's presenting.”
Inspiring the next generation
According to Moore, one of his biggest goals as an artist is to represent his community, while also inspiring Black boys and girls who might grow up to be artists themselves. Moore explained that it was only after he attended a Black artist’s exhibition as an adult that he decided to fully pursue a career in the arts.
“I’m a Black boy, now grown up, doing his first solo show in a museum, and my first inspiration to do this wasn't because I saw someone like myself as a kid. I saw someone like myself as an adult. And that was in 2016 at Jordan Weber’s solo show,” Moore said. “And it set that first spark, so I’m very grateful for that. That was life-changing. It took me a few years to figure out it was life-changing, but I'll never forget that.”
Weber, a Des Moines-based multidisciplinary artist, will be joining Moore and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones for a conversation at the Des Moines Art Center on Sunday, July 28. The event, which is free to attend, will be recorded and shared online at a later date for those who are unable to join in person.
The exhibition “In Loving Memory” is on display in the lower galleries of the Richard Meier building at the Des Moines Art Center now through Oct. 20.
