Michael McMillan
Born in High Wycombe, UK in 1962
As a writer, playwright, curator/installation artist and scholar of Vincentian migrant heritage, my practice is hybrid and cross-disciplinary. Hence, I have included (image.1) Brother to Brother, which was a devised performance piece/play with (left to right) Ekundayo, Benji Reid & Michael Mannash-Daniels and explored black masculinites – touring the UK nationally in October 1996. Extending my interest in how inter-generational identities have been shaped by diasporic migration and gendered practices in the domestic interior, my installation/exhibition (image.2) The West Indian Front Room: Memories and Impressions of Black British Homes (Geffrye Museum, London 2005-06). This inspired the BBC4 documentary Tales from the Front Room (March 2007 Dir./Prod. – Zimena Percival) and led to (image.3) Van Huis Uit: The Living Room of Migrants in the Netherlands (Imagine IC, Amsterdam & OBT: Bibliotheek Midden-Brabant, Tilburg 2007 & Stefanus Church/Kosmopolis Utrecht, 2008), featuring Moroccan, Indonesian, Surinamese and Antillean migrant domestic material culture. The Front Room website produced with inIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts) – www.thefrontroom.org and (image.4) A Living Room Surrounded by Salt as a public art installation in Buena Vista, emerged from an artist residency (Instituto Buena Bista - IBB, Curacao 2008). Finally, there is my new book The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home (Black Dog Publishing 2009). My most recent installation/exhibition, (image.5) The Beauty Shop explored the cultural, social, gendered and consumer practices in relation to the black body of African descent (198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, London 2008). Part of installation included sound bites based on anonymous interviews with black men and women, barbers and hairdressers that visitors could listen to while looking at themselves in a mirror (image.6).
Contact: aica-sc@orange.fr
Graphisme: dinographx - dinographx@gmail.com Création du Site: Detlev Schüller