learn
600state
Can you name five women artists? Since 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts has been asking this question on social media each March during Women's History Month using the hashtag…#5WomenArtists 2020: Adia Millett
Multidisciplinary artist Adia Millett. Photo by HRDWRKER
Can you name five women artists?
Since 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts has been asking this question on social media each March during Women's History Month using the hashtag #5WomenArtists. The campaign calls attention to the fact that women have historically not been treated equally in the art world, and remain dramatically underrepresented and undervalued in today's museums, galleries, and auction houses.
Black women are doubly underrepresented in this context, often absent from America's museums and erased from the art world's memory. To address these disparities, CAAM will be sharing biographies of five women artists who have shown at the museum.
Adia Millett
Adia Millett is a multidisciplinary artist originally from Los Angeles. She currently lives and works in Oakland.
She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and the Studio Museum in Harlem's residency program.
Millett's work has been featured in numerous notable group shows, such as 2001's groundbreaking Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. She has also been shown at the Barbican Gallery in London, The Craft and Folk Museum in LA, The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, The Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, and other national and international venues.
In 2019, CAAM hosted Adia Millett: Breaking Patterns, a wide-ranging solo survey of Millett's textiles, collages, assemblages, photographs, and paintings.
(image: 2019millettflying-coffee-table.jpg)
Adia Millett
<i>Flying Coffee Table</i>, 2015
Fabric/textiles, 70" x 74"
(image: 2019millettinterior-of-the-darkest-laughter-coffin-huse-2007.jpg)
Adia Millett
<i>The Darkest Laughter</i>, interior, 2007
Mixed media, 23 1/2" x 23" x 8"
(image: 2019millettmillett-capital-gain-2011-mixed-media-12.5-x-9.5-x-26.5.jpg)
Adia Millett
<i>Capital Gain</i>, 2011.
Mixed media assemblage, 12" x 9 1/2" x 6 1/2"
(image: adiamilletttransmogrify.jpg)
Adia Millett
<i>Transmogrify</i>, 2018
Acrylic on panel, 60" x 60"
A central concern of Millett's is the history of African Americans, and the history of African American women in particular. Quilts made from discarded clothing, sheets, other quilts, and curtains allude to themes of domesticity and craftwork, while constructions like Millett's miniature houses explore memory through mirrored interiors charged with psychological unrest. In one body of work, Millett photographs her tiny interiors for collages and mixed-media constructions that transform the already surreal spaces into self-contained vignettes suggesting dreamwork and the unnerving--yet comforting--profusion of human subjectivity.
"My process is informed by taking things apart, removing, replacing, cutting, pasting, sewing, and building," Millett has said, "in order to discover the space where transitions occur and where stories of impermanence unfold."
"While my work pays homage to the past through the use of repurposed fabrics and historical iconography, its bright atheistic imagery is informed by the future. The art reminds us of the importance of renewal and rebuilding, not only through the artistic process, but also through the possibility of transformative change."
In 2019, Millett discussed her work in “Adia Millett: Breaking Patterns" with CAAM.
Visit Adia Millett's website or follow her on Instagram
<strong>#5WomenArtists 2020</strong>