Artists’ Film International:
Nicole Miller
November 22, 2014–February 22, 2015
Ballroom Marfa
108 East San Antonio Street
Marfa, TX 79843
Curated by Erin Kimmel
Organized in conjunction with Whitechapel Gallery, London, Ballroom Marfa is pleased to present the sixth season of Artists’ Film International, a program that showcases international artists working in film and animation. This year in the north and south galleries Ballroom Marfa will feature two video works, David (2012) and Death of a School (2014), by Los Angeles-based artist Nicole Miller.
Miller’s videos explore self-representation and self-presentation in narrative form as a tool for the reconstitution of both physical and psychic manifestations of loss. In David, a man re-tells the story of losing his arm in a brutal act of random violence while concurrently re-generating his phantom limb through exercises performed in front of a mirror. Interspersed throughout the two galleries, the four-channel work Death of a School is a predominantly silent and languid meditation on a soon to be shut-down school in Miller’s hometown of Tucson, Arizona where the artist’s mother taught for the majority of her life. Presented together, the videos embrace malleable identity as a function of the story we construct about ourselves as subject or artist—one in which representation not only mediates knowledge through fragmentation and negation but constructs it as well.
Additionally, each of the 16 participating institutions has selected one artist from their region whose works will be screened as part of the international AFI program. Ballroom Marfa’s center gallery has been transformed into an interactive screening room for the viewing of the entire selection of works for the duration of the exhibition.
Nicole Miller (b. 1982; Tucson, Arizona) lives and works in Los Angeles. Solo shows include Believing is Seeing (LACMA), Death of a School (Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneve); The Conductor (LAXART) and Daggering (HMAAC). Nicole Miller has also participated in collective exhibitions such as Made in L.A.: Los Angeles Biennial, Dallas Biennale and The Bearden Project (Studio Museum in Harlem).
