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Helen Mirra

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Helen Mirra
File:Mirra Berlin studio.jpg
Born(1970-12-31)December 31, 1970
Rochester New York
EducationBennington College, University of Illinois at Chicago

Helen Mirra is an American conceptual artist. She is a "maximalist in a minimalist robe", with an idiosyncratic practice.[1] She is engaged with ideas common to buddhist[2][3], particularly zen,[4] and pragmatist[5][6] philosophy, and since 2008 her art practice has been integrated with walking.[7] She has said of walking: "It is an unskilled activity, and a modest activity, and a free activity, and an always-available activity, and an equipment-free activity, and an active activity."[8] In an essay on Mirra's work, Yukio Lippit described her engagement thus: "Mirra’s practice champions walking as a specific form of thinking that bypasses language. Indeed, one senses that she shares with Zen Buddhists in particular a deep skepticism towards language as an authentic mechanism of discovery. Zen practice is centered upon the overcoming of dualistic thinking and the logic and worldview associated with it; this dualism—in which words substitute for the essence of the world—is difficult to overcome, however, precisely because it is a function of language, something into which one is born, in which one achieves consciousness."[9]

Career

Helen Mirra has worked in diverse media including writing - particularly indexes[10][11][12], experimental music[13][14], sculpture, 16mm film, and video[15]. Travel and the landscape have been reoccurring themes, as well as childhood and labor[16], while keeping within a restricted palette.[17] Her first solo gallery exhibition was in Chicago in 1999 and included a 16mm silent film, textile works, and the vinyl record Along, Below, all relating to geography, and her first one-person institutional exhibition, Sky-wreck, at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 2001, was a indigo-dyed textile sculpture of a section of the sky, imagined as part of a geodesic structure[18][19]. In addition to John Cage,[20] Stanley Brouwn, André Cadere, and Douglas Huebler are key influences.[8]

She has an extensive exhibition history in North and South America, Europe, and Japan,[21][22] and participated in broad international exhibitions such as the 11th Havana Bienal, the 30th São Paulo Art Biennial and the 50th Venice Biennial. A fifteen-year (1995-2009) survey of her work, Edge Habitat, was presented in 2014 at Culturgest in Lisbon, Portugal, and the corresponding publication Edge Habitat Materials was published by WhiteWalls.[23]

She was a Senior Lecturer in Visual Art and Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Chicago (2001-2005)[24] and a Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities in the department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University until 2013.[25] She has been an artist-in-residence at University of California at Berkeley,[26] and a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.[27] She lives in Northern California[28].

Selected solo exhibitions

References

  1. ^ Eleey, Peter (January 2006). "Reference Material". Frieze Magazine.
  2. ^ "HIGH LINE ART COMMISSION: Helen Mirra, Half-smiler | Friends of the High Line". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  3. ^ "Stephen Batchelor Talk". www.largeglass.co.uk. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  4. ^ ""Not-knowing is most intimate": Helen Mirra in Conversation with Emmalea Russo". artcritical. 2015-09-13.
  5. ^ "BAMPFA - Helen Mirra / MATRIX 209 - 65 Instants". archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  6. ^ "Collection FRAC Lorraine | Helen Mirra:Human Ken, 24". collection.fraclorraine.org. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  7. ^ "Conscience de pierre press release". Galerie Nelson Freeman. 2010. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  8. ^ a b ""This is my interest anyway - to not-demand" - Interview with Helen Mirra - Features - Metropolis M".
  9. ^ Lippit, Yukio. ""Ambulations", gehend (Berlin: argobooks, 2013)" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  10. ^ "Helen Mirra: Cloud, the, 3 | Events: Reading | The Renaissance Society". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  11. ^ "CABINET // Inventory / Index for Der Räuber". www.cabinetmagazine.org. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  12. ^ "Public art by Helen Mirra appearing across the University of Chicago campus". March 31, 2006.
  13. ^ "Paris Transatlantic recommendations". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  14. ^ "sonambiente berlin 2006 | festival für hören und sehen | klang kunst sound art | 1.6.-16.7". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  15. ^ "Helen Mirra, Hourly Directional - Art & Education". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  16. ^ "Helen Mirra | Video Data Bank". www.vdb.org. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  17. ^ "About This Artwork: Map of Parallel 52 North at a Scale of One Foot to One Degree". Art Institute of Chicago. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  18. ^ "Helen Mirra: Skywreck". Renaissance Society. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  19. ^ Walker, Hamza (2001). "Thread-skies" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  20. ^ Camper, Fred (July 8, 2005). "Chicago Reader: Rethinking Thought: Helen Mirra" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  21. ^ "Bienal de Cuenca". e-flux.
  22. ^ "Helen Mirra at Taka Ishii Gallery".
  23. ^ "Edge Habitat Materials, Helen Mirra, survey 1995-2009". University of Chicago Press.
  24. ^ Stewart (2003). "Muse and medium" (PDF). {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  25. ^ "Visual and Environmental Studies faculty: Helen Mirra". 2013. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  26. ^ "ARC Visiting Artists".
  27. ^ "Berliner Künstlerprogramm".
  28. ^ Lerda, Andrea. "125. PART 1 / HELEN MIRRA". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  29. ^ Richard, Frances (2002). "From Land and Sound to Thought" (PDF). Whitney Museum brochure.
  30. ^ Farzin, Media (October 13, 2014). "Helen Mirra's "Waulked"". Art Agenda.
  31. ^ Andersson, Axel (September 1, 2015). "Tid omvandlad till konkret rumslighet". Kunstkritikk.
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