AVIANNA MILLER

 
 
 
 

Untitled, Avianna Miller, Photography, 2D Print, 24 x 18 in.

A woman holds a glass pitcher of water over her hand, which is held open above a glass bowl on a beige table. Her face and shoulders are obscured by a diagonal shadow across the image. There are lit red and blue shabbat candles to the left on the table, a wine glass in the bottom left, and a smaller glass bowl with water in it to the right. Shadows from the objects are projected across the table, pointing toward the right.

 
 
 

I work within my home space to make photographs and videos; this is a meeting place for spiritual connections to my Judaism and a shifting relationship to the body. I explore pockets of natural light that appear in the spaces of my home, investigating abstracted segments of the body, namely hands, as they interact with objects and surfaces.

Sunlight is a guiding force in my work. Sunrise and sunset operate as markers of Jewish practice, and sunlight is also considered a source of healing within the Jewish tradition. I maintain a mental record of intriguing moments of sunlight in the home that I track throughout the cycle of each day. I make my work in the early morning and the evening, observing the shifting light source of these points of the day. I am interested in interactions between these moments of light and objects that invoke ritualistic ideas for me. These ideas embody my Jewish identity through the material form of traditional Judaica and objects that hold an implicit Jewishness.

My subject matter concerns intersections of my identity as I work to interpret them through studies of the material that give visual form to notions of spiritual clearing and renewal. Elements of the body, especially limbs, have become important to my work as I seek to understand a shifting body as a chronically ill person. I aim to investigate ideas of a spiritual relationship to the body; hands in gesture, interacting with objects found in my home, reinforce connections to person, place, and action. At other times in my work, a human presence is suggested, leaving behind a trace of a body in space.

I work collaboratively with my mother to imagine ritual spaces built upon generations of tradition. These staged spaces explore ritual as a grounded yet abstract personal practice that can be made material through reinterpretations of objects and acts. In what is revealed and what is hidden in my work, I consider that which can become visible within the ritual of making.

Avianna Miller is a New Jersey-based artist working primarily in photography and video. In 2023, she will receive her B.A. in Studio Art and Media & Communications with minors in Photography, Film Studies, Art History, Humanities, and Literature from Drew University. Her work has been included in shows at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey and published in the Guggenheim Museum’s Summer College Workshop e-book Volume III: Reimagining and Reinventing Rituals.