Mellaney Roberts

Mellaney Roberts (b. 1988) is a South African ceramic artist, academic, and educator whose work explores material memory, land-based narratives, and intergenerational histories within marginalised communities. She attained a National Diploma in Fine Arts (2010), BTech Fine Arts specialising in Ceramics (2011), and Masters of Fine Arts, cum laude (2017) from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Finland.

Currently serving as a lecturer in Fine and Applied Arts at Tshwane University of Technology, Roberts has over a decade of experience in higher education, previously teaching at Lovedale TVET College, Ubuntu Education Fund, and Nelson Mandela University. Her academic work is further strengthened by roles as an external moderator and examiner for Nelson Mandela University, the University of Johannesburg, and Rhodes University.

Roberts’ work has been exhibited at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2025), Ceramics Brussels Art Fair in Belgium (2024) and the Turbine Art Fair and RMB Latitudes. Since 2023, she has participated in various group exhibitions at Berman Contemporary. Her ceramic sculptures are housed in the collections of the Spier Arts Trust, Art Bank of South Africa, Corobrik Collection, and the University of Pretoria. In 2025, she presented her first solo exhibition ‘Waar bloed nie loop nie’ at Berman Contemporary. In the same year she also participated in the Art/Educator Residency at the University of Education Weingarten, Germany.

She has received numerous accolades, including the 2024 Certificate of Artistic Merit from La Pinacothèque Museum of Luxembourg and a Top 21 finalist position in the 2024 Henrike Grohs Art Award. She was also the 2017 recipient of the prestigious Nina Hole Memorial Residency at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark.

Mellaney Roberts is represented by Berman Contemporary.

As a Coloured, in the collective memory of my story, I always felt like an invisible individual trapped between Black and White classifications. Therein lies an untold story of being somewhere between and not represented, creating the feeling of ‘not-belonging’. Through constructing narratives of lived experience, hybrid communities can challenge dominant stereotypes and subvert discourses of otherness and difference.

My body of work focuses on presenting ceramic sculptures depicting the fluid shift of borders. I use borders as a metaphor for the way that our identity transforms as we experience various spaces. My ceramic sculptural forms are often cut, pierced, or demarcated showing the divisions in cultural differences. The divisions emphasise how the parameters of identity are often blurred and how an object’s placement in space can reference things other than itself, acting as a memory trigger.