Exhibitions
LAJUNÉ MCMILLIAN: THE PORTAL’S KEEPER—ORIGINS
Frist Art Museum / 919 Broadway September 27, 2024 - January 5, 2025
LaJuné McMillian
The Frist Art Museum presents LaJuné McMillian: The Portal’s Keeper—Origins, an exhibition of multimedia projections, sculptural installations, and holographic self-portraits by the New York–based artist LaJuné McMillian. Organized by the Frist Art Museum, the exhibition will be on view in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Gallery from September 27, 2024 through January 5, 2025.
LaJuné McMillian uses 3D-modeling technology, motion-captured performances, and multisensory elements to create immersive, dynamic environments where they explore and celebrate Black bodily movement as an expression of liberation. With their use of motion-capture software, McMillian depicts Black dancers, performers, and the artist themself as avatars whose intense colors and exuberant bodies move within fantastic environments in response to poems, incantations, and an array of musical and extra-musical sounds.
“Throughout the works in this exhibition, the body—sinuous and vital, uninhibited and unencumbered—moves from a place of pain into one of new possibility,” writes Frist Art Museum chief curator Mark Scala. “In suggesting that technology can help Black people imagine a more empowered future for themselves, McMillian’s marvelous works explode the legacy of centuries in which the Black body was bound, constrained, abused, and exploited.”
Image: LaJuné McMillian. Still from Spirit & Child, 2024. Video installation. Courtesy of the artist
