LJ Roberts: Carry You with Me: Ten Years of Portraits

Embroidered portraits of New York City’s queer and trans communities

The result of a long-term, ongoing project by Brooklyn-based artist LJ Roberts (born 1980), Ten Years of Portraits consists of six-by-four-inch embroidered portraits of the artist’s friends, collaborators and lovers within New York City’s queer and trans communities. Stitched entirely by hand and typically completed during transit on subway trains, these textile works–culminating in Roberts’ first publication as well as their first New York solo exhibition at Pioneer Works–aim to illustrate how politics, culture and identity manifest in both visible and subtle ways through everyday encounters in daily life. Depicting both the rectos and versos of each embroidery, this publication presents portraiture in both figurative and abstract form while also providing us a glimpse into the textile craft. For Roberts, the adaptability of these techniques mirrors the flexibility, resilience and resourcefulness needed to navigate the world as a queer, gender nonconforming and nonbinary person.