ThreeWalls Blog

Interview with Adia Millett

posted September 11, 2010 in residents

Adia Millett The In Betweens #1

During her residency this summer, Adia Millett created a constantly changing installation.  The project was on view at threewalls and acted as the backdrop for a series of photographs.  Based in California, Adia Millett works in various media, including film, photography, and installation.  More information about her work can be found at www.adiamillett.com.

While at threewalls, you've been working on an installation that changes each week.  Can you tell us about that project?

The project that I began at threewalls is one that I will be working on for the next ten months. It’s entitled, The In Betweens. The structure I built at threewalls is being re-built in my studio, here in Oakland where I will continue producing temporary installations inside of an 8’x8’x4’ box. While the installations I build in museums or galleries are usually designed for viewers to enter and interact with, the temporary installations, like these, are primarily constructed for photographing.  The images of this series will take a few different forms. In the Spring I will start an on-line photo novel, in which a new image from the series will be added each week. Each image will help to expand an intricate story containing more than 30 characters.  There will also be a series of printed triptychs and eventually a book. And my hope is that this project will be the fountainhead for my next film.

Is there anything else you've been working on, or plan to work on during your residency? 

While in Chicago, I also built an installation which was the second of a series of three entitled, Blood, Sweat, & Tears, at SAIC. A photograph, documenting the installation will be part of a show there entitled Process in Product, in October.


There’s a strong visual presence in your work that comes both from a saturated palette as well as repeated forms – birds, paper planes, chairs and domestic objects, among other things.  Can you tell us more about your use of color and imagery?

I think I’m less concerned with color than I am with light. Directing the viewer’s eye towards a specific place within the frame is most successfully done through the use of shadows and focused light. More importantly the light or lack there of, influences the psychology of an image. My work is always attempting to develop a conversation between the allure of darkness,  fragility, innocence, and senescence.  I believe that my use of light and imagery help to convey those connections.

Your work has an accessibility to it that I appreciate, and it doesn’t always necessarily reflect a specific place or time.  Is having that flexibility to interpretation a primary concern of yours, or has it just naturally emerged?

Thanks!  Accessibility is an issue that keeps me up at night. My philosophy is that successful   work, figures out a way to be extremely simple yet somehow complex in a way that requires it’s viewers to question their own psyche. When  an idea I have for a piece becomes to locatable in any way, I’m likely to change it.

Your installations involve a number of media and types of skills.  What did you focus on while in school?

I painted most of my undergrad, until my last year, when I took a few photo classes with an amazing photographer , Lewis Watts. That initial training as a painter still plays a huge role in the composition of my photography. Grad school was two years of training myself how to be a craftsman/woman, building miniature homes and cross-stitching, as well as developing a conceptual palette to build work from.


There are often two (or more) ways to experience your work - as installations and as documented in photographs.   In person, I really appreciate being able to see the labor you’ve put in to the piece through the physical structure and details.   As photographs, an ethereal presence emerges.   Can you describe that process, from making and gathering the components of the installation to the final documentation of the work?

Like I mentioned before, there are often two types of installations. In both cases I want the viewer to feel like they are entering a painting or a photograph, a space where reality is slightly altered. Theoretically the spaces are built according to an idea I want to speak to, like domesticity or death, but often I am simply inspired by an object, like a wedding dress or a pair of crutches.

As a minimalist at heart, I hate collecting found objects, but I see them like a poet sees words. You find one you really love and you figure out a way to make it scream.
 

Although often referencing the home, these spaces don't necessarily feel inhabited, or maybe, no longer inhabited, until entered by the viewer, creating an intimate and temporary experience.  I’ve read some of your writing on Bardo and intermediate states – can you tell us more about that and other ideas you’ve been exploring in your work?

Oh boy, I could write a novel on this one. I’m constantly exploring a variety of ideas, usually initiated by my skepticism with what our society calls normal. The way that my mind has learned to process the contradictions, failures, fears and desires of what I witness, is through the use of metaphor. Here is an example: You have grown up your whole life believing that you are white. You are taught that marriage will ensure commitment in your “love” relationships. Being naked in public is not okay.  And if you don’t believe in God, you’re probably not going to heaven.  I try to create spaces where we can find clarity, space where one can be critical of and embrace an idea simultaneously, where death is beautiful and your identity is a myth.

The Buddhist term Bardo is probably one of the most profound examples of a physical and mental space that we all come to eventually, the space between being alive and being dead. This concept has been present in my work since I can remember, as my racial, gender, and intellectual identity has exists somewhere in between a variety of categories my whole life.


There’s often an atmosphere of memory, dreams, and melancholy present in your work, hinting at an unidentified narrative.  Are your installations structured around a sort of narrative?

My installations, miniatures, embroidery, and photography all operate as traces of multiple narratives. I have pieces that I did six years ago which are connected to a story I plan to tell this month. Sometimes I will make a piece and I will have six different versions of what is happening in the space in my mind. In my film the Birth of Bardo, I’m telling five different stories all at once.


Much of your work includes some sort of architecture, whether it’s something like the structure you’ve been creating your installations within at threewalls, or the miniatures that you’ve built.  Are you interested in architecture, or do you consider these structures more as a part of the language of your work? What/who are your influences?

I think I was more interested in architecture  about four years ago when the outside of the space s were being taken into account. As a metaphor I do think architecture is a great example of human subjectivity. We gain so much information based upon the design, materials, age, and location of a building, just like we do with people. What my work does have in common with architecture, is it’s investment in space: angles, size, openings, light, etc.

I’m influenced by emotions, poverty, children, conflict, and my own obsession with balance and equality.

Along with installation and photography, you also work in video.  Watching a selection from The Birth of Bardo helped inform the other parts of your work for me.  Can you tell us more about how you’ve incorporated film into your practice? 

The Birth of Bardo came about on the third day of silence at a meditation treat. I had never put any people in any of my work, let alone make film. One of the main things I realized when I left New York two and half years ago, was that its easy to trap yourself into making the same thing over and over again. I know a lot of artist who are stuck making a different version of the same painting. Though, it is important to have a distinct voice, we’re artists, not car manufactures.  And if a moving image can say something that a photo can’t, why not take advantage of it. In the case of video, unlike art, I don’t know the rules, so I don’t care if I’m breaking them.
 

Has being in Chicago within the community of threewalls influenced what you've made here? 

Yes. Threewalls provided me with access to SAIC’s facilities such as the wood, metal, and ceramics shops. I wouldn’t have been able to make any of the objects I made otherwise. Threewalls also introduced me to the amazing artists who posed for my photographs.


What's next for you?  Any upcoming exhibitions/projects/residencies? 

I will continue with this project, which I will show next Fall in New York at Mixedgreens and hopefully at Threewalls. I am working on a new series of cross-stitch pieces. And I am working on an on-going collaboration with Stephanie Diamond, a New York based artist.