Trina Michelle Robinson

Trina Michelle Robinson explores the relationship between memory and migration through film, print media and archival materials. She wants 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. She studies the fragments of memory and repurposes them. The lives of her ancestors are the catalyst behind her artwork and their stories are woven into every detail. Why did they leave? What were they hoping to find? What remains? She wants to explore every fracture, fold and glitch to release the trauma that lives inside. Her work has been shown at galleries and film festivals throughout the country including including the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) - a Smithsonian affiliate, the San Francisco Art Commission Main Gallery, Southern Exposure and Root Division in San Francisco, and New York’s Wassaic Project.

As a storyteller, she traveled the country and telling 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. She received her MFA from California College of Arts in Spring 2022.

Her earlier written work was featured in the Museum of the African Diaspora’s I’ve Known Rivers Project, and New Jersey Dramatists Which Way to America at the Jersey City Museum and Puffin Cultural Forum. She has worked in production in print and digital media for companies such as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, California Sunday Magazine and Slack, in addition to working as a teaching artist with Women’s Project and Productions in New York.

She has been invited to be a speaker or guest teacher at multiple conferences, colleges and high school campuses, including the being the keynote speaker at the 2021 Oregon Heritage Conference, 2019 Kentucky Borderlands Conference, Feminist Border Arts Film Festival at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, N.M., and Design Tech High School in Redwood City, C.A. In addition to discussing her research and approach to storytelling, she also enjoys discussing the importance of raising marginalized voices and how to mindfully create a diverse and inclusive environment at her speaking and teaching engagements.

Trina is included in the Museum of the African Diaspora’s (MoAD) Emerging Artist Program 2022-2023 which will include a solo exhibition in October 2022.

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Features and Highlights

 

Bay Area Now 9

  • Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

  • October 6, 2023 through May 5, 2024

Bay Area Now 9 is the ninth iteration of YBCA’s signature triennial exhibition highlighting artists working throughout the Bay Area’s nine counties. Each BAN is an attempt to answer the question: What are artists making, thinking, dreaming about right now? Central to BAN—and to YBCA as an institution—is the investment in and platforming of the vibrant creative communities which surround us. Featuring over 30 multidisciplinary artists—a nod to YBCA’s upcoming 30th anniversary—the exhibition features numerous new commissions spanning our campus.

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