Andrew Cornell Robinson, "Confabulation Fantabulosa: Queer Abstraction as a Living Archive"

Cornell Robinson’s new body of sculptural assemblages, comprising layered printed and painted surfaces onto crushed metal and ceramic sculptural substrates, expands the role of abstraction, memory, and material culture in queer archival practice. These hybrid forms, merging portraiture, abstract gesture, and image transfer, contain visual traces of queer histories—faces, fragments, and symbols that are both revealed and obscured, like memories surfacing through time. Each assemblage includes a scannable QR code, bridging real life objects with a digitalized vault connecting viewers to queer oral histories and visual fragments—and to which they may contribute their own reflections. This participatory extension transforms the work into a living, decentralized queer archive. Cornell Robinson notes, “My interdisciplinary practice explores identity, memory, and material culture through sculptural substrates on ceramic sculpture, metal, paint, and custom printed decal transfers. This project emerges from my desire to hold space for erased narratives of queer lives, creating artwork that functions as both record and rupture, acknowledging how history is shaped by what is preserved and what is lost.” Confabulation Fantabulosa responds to these absences. It reimagines the archive not as fixed repository but as ongoing, participatory process. The title references "confabulation"—filling memory gaps with imagined narratives—and "fantabulosa," a Polari (a queer code-switching slang) meaning fantastic/fabulous. This dual gesture of speculative memory and flamboyant invention is central to how queer people have historically preserved stories facing erasure. “I use abstraction to allude to presence and absence” Cornell Robinson adds, “Crushed metal and cracked, burnished, scarred ceramic substrates—speak to resilience and loss. Image transfers from archives and personal photographs suggest memory's spectral nature. The resulting works are devotional, destabilizing, and fragmentary.” Remarking on the importance of exhibiting Confabulation Fantabulosa and NYAE’s efforts to support and secure funding for Cornell Robinson to realize his project, Michael Gormley, NYAE Executive Director, notes that the artist brings 30+ years of experience as visual artist, educator, and curator. He has exhibited extensively across the U.S., participated in residencies at Peter's Valley, Guttenberg Arts, Agastya Foundation, and Edward F. Albee Foundation. In addition to his recent NYSCA grant, Cornell Robinson has received support from Creative Capital, LMCC, NYFA, and Queens Council on the Arts. Additionally, he has produced large-scale works, community-engaged projects, and solo exhibitions, including collaborative public art in New York, Haiti, India, and Miami. Most recently he installed a monumental interactive sculpture titled Bellwether at Socrates Sculpture Park. Lastly, Cornell Robinson’s digital design experience includes 17+ years working as a creative director on award-winning projects including an innovative video platform which was awarded a Silver Cyber Lion at Cannes.