by Christy Rodriguez de Conte
Scholar and artist Roopali Kambo straddles the worlds of culture, identity, art, and design at this year’s new Movers & Makers art exhibition.
The exhibit at the Artport Gallery, which includes artwork from local artist-jurors, panelists, and volunteers who have supported the Council on Culture & COCA with their time and expertise, runs through Nov. 4.
While art is an expression of creativity and imagination that engages in emotional power, design purposefully plans and arranges visual elements toward functionality and productivity. The vagueness in this oversimplification only highlights the gray area between art and design, an area scholars and artists alike have spent lifetimes investigating.
So it has been for the artist and lead faculty for the Graphic & Web Design program at Tallahassee State College, Roopali Kambo. “To this day, I straddle both (community and academia), further chipping away at the porous boundaries between art and design,” says Kambo.
Born in India and immigrating to Tallahassee in the 1990s, Kambo grew up around many architects and artists. Her father was a professor of architecture at Florida A&M University, which made her home a community university of sorts for creatives from across the world to talk, think, and create together. Their inspiration led Kambo to embark on her own artistic journey.
Her studies took her away to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Art in graphic design, but she always returned to the luscious canopies and vibrant artistic scene Tallahassee provides. This connection to ancestry floods her work as she explores hyphenated identities of Indian-American, artist-scholar, and art-design.
“I feel suspended between the East and the West, creating my own hybrid universe that appears harmonious but is actually full of discord,” says Kambo. “Finding expression in my work, in all aspects of my life, frankly, I have to trust and draw comfort from those who have walked before me.”
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