Mariah Robertson is a New York–based artist whose work explores the systems, rules, and assumptions embedded in photographic practice. Using the darkroom as a site of improvisation and performance, she embraces chance, scale, and material limitation as a way to probe larger questions about authority, value, and societal structures. Robertson has exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally, with works held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art, among others. Beyond exhibitions, Robertson has co-founded two artist-run spaces and created The Free Art School, a podcast sharing lessons and dialogues for artists.
She has had solo exhibitions at Van Doren Waxter (New York), Green Gallery (Milwaukee), M+B (Los Angeles), Lora Reynolds (Austin), and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, England). Her work has also been included in major group exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 (New York), the International Center of Photography (New York), the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, DC, 2023–24), the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, 2023–24), and the Art Institute of Chicago (2024).
In 2025, Robertson completed Portrait, Translation, Interpretation, a permanent installation commissioned for the United States Consulate in Erbil, Iraq
Upcoming solo exhibitions include CHART Gallery (New York, 2026) and participation in the Guild & Greyshkul survey at Cooper Union (New York, Fall 2025–June 2026).
Robertson received her BA in Religious Studies, focusing on Buddhism, from the University of California, Berkeley (1997), and her MFA from the Sculpture Department at Yale University (2005).
Art21 CloseUp
Episode #1: Mariah Robertson
A look back at contemporary art photography in the mid/late aughts hosted by Matthew Porter. Hear about the transition from film to digital.
2012 Studio Visit:
Mariah Robertson
Gorky’s Granddaughter: A documentary art project and video blog created by painters Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting, which features studio visits and conversations with contemporary artists.