Aminah Robinson


Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson was an American artist.

Life

Robinson was born in 1940 and raised in Columbus, Ohio, within the close-knit community of Poindexter Village, one of the country's first federally funded metropolitan housing developments. Robinson received her formal art training at the Columbus Art School. She continued to live and work in Columbus. She attended the Columbus Art School from 1957 to 1960, then studied art history and philosophy at Ohio State University, Franklin University, and Columbus' Bliss College.
Robinson was christened "Aminah" by an Egyptian cleric during her visit to Africa in 1979. She changed her name legally to include the forename in 1980.
She has shown at the Columbus Museum of Art, the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. She died on May 22, 2015 of heart problems.

Work

Her diverse body of work ranges from drawings and woodcuts to complex sculptures made from natural and synthetic materials, such as twigs, carved leather, music boxes, and "hogmawg," her own material composed of mud, grease, dyes, and glue. The artist's "Memory Maps" contain "the idea and symbols of Africa—as a reservoir of culture, as the abode of spirits and inspiration for form and meanings that have traversed the great transatlantic African Diaspora to the Americas."
Robinson had been the subject of nearly two hundred solo and group exhibitions before the 2002 retrospective, Symphonic Poem: The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson at the Columbus Museum of Art.

Awards