Akeil Robertson (b. 1990, Philadelphia, PA) is an artist in transition. As a black artist who found his artistic voice in the American Criminal Legal System, Akeil is often drawn to projects that explore and delve into what this framing means for his practice and his life. Very often this work investigates the expectation of black artists to engage in a public practice that forwards internal dialogues responding to white oppression while also imagining ways outside of systems of white validation and retribution. Akeil likes to leave space for both abstraction and direct questioning that his positionality has usually left little room for. Rejecting the traditional binaries in stories of Black Excellence and Hood Narratives, Akeil’s work seeks alternative ways of framing his and others’ trauma even as he realizes the famed and fraught monetary power of generic black pain. His work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer (2023), “Reading Works’’ by Xaveria Simmons (2022), and Wherever there is Light with Larry Cook (2024). And was most recently Artist in Residence at Haverford College’s Visual, Culture, Arts and Media Center (2023). Akeil is currently the creative director of the Mellon Funded Graterford Archive, a project to tell the history of the State Correctional Institution at Graterford where he spent most of his time.

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Read The Blues by Akeil Robertson