Kirby Miles is a queer painter living and working in Chattanooga, TN. She received her BFA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2019. She has also attended Chautauqua School of Art. She co-curates exhibits at VERSA Gallery in Chattanooga, TN.

I excavate artifacts from spaces that require proof of their existence. The world in which I procure these glinting fragments is exclusively feminine; a sharp but soft space that is a distorted reality of natural processes. It is a magical real. Bright and ghostly, this expanse opens up like a moth-born orchid, where you can always dip your toes, but rarely ever submerge.

Fragments brought from this place are celebratory wayfinders and harbingers of pain. Often too bright, too lustrous-confections that make your lungs ache; air from a different place. These morsels are often concerned with camouflaging themselves in what seems familiar to them. This concealment fails in that their recognizability is alien to their actual surroundings.

Surface application and exploration is a constant thread throughout the work. Degradation-Demolition-Restoration-Amplification. This work is not afraid to speak up. An effeminate glimpse into a glittering, dangerous place that offers itself up like a steamed mirror, hiding only to swiftly return-bleeding through-pervasive and sharp-tongued.