Growing up in Roxbury during the Hip-Hop Golden Age, I saw the power of graffiti as a form of self-expression. Graffiti became a tool for me, and others in my community, to chronicle and immortalize our culture and history. For me, graffiti acts as a contemporary form of hieroglyphs, a way to document and pay homage to underserved, underheard communities in the city. My vision is to beautify the predominantly Black and brown communities of Boston, this is a driving force behind my artistic practice and vision.

​​Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs is a visual artist and organizer who has transformed the cultural landscape of Boston through graffiti art since 1991. Throughout his work, ProBlak draws upon Black portraiture, Afrofuturism, and non-Western cosmologies to create a celebration of the intergenerational strength, collective imagination, and joy of Black life. His large-scale public artworks can be found across Boston and, most recently, on Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, Gibbs’ alma mater, as part of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts Mural Project. 

As a father and long-time arts educator, Gibbs’ practice also manifests itself through the multiple generations of young Boston artists he has mentored across Boston for the past three decades. In 1991, Gibbs co-founded Artists for Humanity (AFH), an arts non-profit that hires and teaches youth creative skills, where he currently directs the Paint Studio. Most recently, Rob served as a guest lecturer at Northeastern University for their “Foundations of Black Culture: Hip-Hop” course, curated the 2019 BAMS Fest’s “Rep Your City” exhibition and was invited to be one of two inaugural Artists-in-Residence with Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.