The Queer Mechanix of the Lands Currently Referred to as the U.S. & Canada Before & During the 54th Year of the Stonewall Era, 2025

LJ Roberts (b.1980 Royal Oak, Michigan, USA) is an artist and writer working in Brooklyn, New York and Pioneertown, California. Their work addresses queer and trans temporalities and movement, material deviance, chosen kinships, archives, and narrative. Recently the artist has been featured in exhibitions at Pioneer Works, Hales New York, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Brooklyn Museum, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Toledo Museum of Art, and The Renwick Gallery at Smithsonian American Art Museum. The artist has been the past recipient of a Fountainhead Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University, and residencies at IASPIS, MacDowell, Ox-Bow School of Art, ACRE, Pioneer Works, Bag Factory, and Textile Arts Center. Their work is included in the collections of National Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art (Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC), Brooklyn Museum (NY), Renwick Gallery (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC), Oakland Museum of California and Leslie-Lohman Museum (NY). LJ was awarded the 2015 White House Champions of Change Award for LGBTQI artists and the 2019 Women’s Caucus for Art President’s Award for Art and Activism. In 2022 they were a Colene Brown Art Prize Awardee. LJ Roberts is represented by Hales, London and New York and teaches at Parsons School of Design.