SEPTEMBER 9 – 11, 2022
Booth F23 | Javits Center

SOCO Gallery will present a solo booth of multimedia textile works by artist Jackie Milad in the Focus Section at the Armory Show in New York, NY from September 8 - 11, 2022 in booth F23. Curated by Carla Alcevedo-Yates, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Focus will examine the intersectionality of issues surrounding the environment, focusing on personal and political climates as they interact with race and gender. Encompassing artists that foreground South-South ecologies, the section will introduce a transcultural conversation around art production grounded on abstract, representational, and conceptual approaches.

A multi-ethnic first-generation Honduran-Egyptian-American, Milad utilizes her process-driven work to unpack the complexities of self. From a macro perspective, Milad’s work explores the layering of transcultural history in Central American and Middle Eastern architecture and iconography. Milad links a universal topic of cultural layering and documentation with her own multicultural identity by blending and packing in what appears to be disparate imagery, icons, and language (graffiti, rap lyrics, popular slang, etc). Her layered compositions mimic not only her own upbringing, but also symbolize the way cultures are recorded and monumentalized in remaining fragments over time. By obfuscating the meaning of her textiles, Milad prevents a single reading of the work and embraces the complexity of the piece and its analogy to global history.

Personally, Milad’s artistic practice is motivated by a need to record and tell her own story. She excavates her earlier artworks and splices them into new pieces, constantly questioning the puzzle pieces of her past into an account of her presence in Baltimore today. In a purposefully confusing and chaotic manner, artworks that were once static and stored away become repurposed and responsive in dynamic compositions.

Created specifically for the Armory Show, the booth will feature never-before-exhibited works installed over a wall painting featuring the artist’ iconography as an extension of her artistic practice. The artwork in the presentation foregrounds Milad’s recent influence by the online collections of Honduran and Egyptian artifacts at the British Museum, The MET Museum, and art history textbooks. The work symbolically “takes the images back”, repurposing and incorporating them into the artist’s own history and narrative, seen especially in Pa Yaso. Here, the artist purposefully cut an old drawing of hers in half to incorporate into the work, similar to how she split “payaso (clown)” into two words. 

In A Planet Breaks Open 1 & 2 (Dedicated to Clementina Saurez), the richly pink, round textiles pay homage to the feminist poet, Clementina Saurez. Known for her bohemian lifestyle and saucy language, the title is drawn from Suarez’s line: “a planet breaks open between my fingers,” from “Growing with the Grass / Creciendo con la Hierba”, indicating her feminine power. “Certain lines of her work really resonated with me” said Milad and inspired work that is her overt take away from Suarez rather than an illustration of her prose. “I really wanted them [the work] to feel like birthing”--a recent theme in the artist’s practice.

Jackie Milad (B. 1975)

Jackie Milad, an Egyptian-Honduan-American, is a Baltimore City-based artist featured in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Select exhibitions include: SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC; C.Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, MD; Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC; Grizzly Grizzly,  Philadelphia, PA; Langer Over Dickie, Chicago, IL; Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD; Arthur Ross Gallery University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Luis De Juis, Los Angeles, CA, Museo de Arte de Mazatlan, Mazatlan, MX; and DiFOCUR de Sinaloa Sala de Arte Joven Galleria, Culiacan, MX. 

Milad is a multi-year recipient of the Individual Artist Grant from Maryland State Arts Council. In 2019, she was named a Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalist and a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Ruby Grantee. Her work is in the following private collections: GLB Memorial Foundation Collection, The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and Facebook, Inc.  Milad received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, MA, and her MFA from Towson University, MD. Besides her active studio practice, Jackie Milad also has an extensive career as a curator and educator. The artist was an artist-in-residence at the McColl Center in Charlotte, NC in 2021 and is the 2022 artist-in-residence at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD, where her solo exhibition, Vestige opened on August 2, 2022.