Nicole Miller

Nicole Miller was born in 1982 in Tucson, Arizona, and lives and works in Los Angeles. She moved to Los Angeles in 2001 to study at the California Institute of the Arts and subsequently completed graduate studies at the USC Roski School of Fine Arts. Working primarily with video, sound, installation, and documentary strategies, Miller investigates questions of identity, representation, self-determination, and the experience of looking. Her practice frequently creates situations in which individual voices and lived experiences become the starting point for broader reflections on visibility and social representation. Video occupies a central position in Miller’s practice. Rather than treating documentary as a neutral form of observation, she uses interviews, conversations, performances, and recorded encounters to construct works in which the camera becomes a space for exchange. Her projects often foreground the experiences of Black subjects and communities, examining how identity is constructed through voice, image, memory, and acts of self-representation. This approach allows her to move between documentary, portraiture, performance, and installation while questioning the conventions through which people are seen and heard. A significant example is *To the Stars* (2019), commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The immersive work combines video, sound, and laser light and brings together interviews, performance rehearsals, and behind-the-scenes footage featuring figures from the arts and sciences, including choreographer Alonzo King, opera singer J’Nai Bridges, violinist Jessica McJunkins, NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle, and young people from local schools. The project explores identity, voice, pain, and possibility while creating a space in which different forms of knowledge and experience can coexist. Miller’s work has been presented internationally in solo and group exhibitions at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the High Line in New York, Kunst-Werke in Berlin, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City. Earlier presentations also include LAXART in Los Angeles, while her work has appeared in major exhibitions such as *Made in L.A.* at the Hammer Museum, *Fore* at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Dallas Biennial. Her work is held in institutional collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, and SFMOMA. In 2019, SFMOMA included her work in *SOFT POWER*, an international exhibition examining the ways artists engage with their roles as citizens and social actors. Miller has also received major recognition through awards and grants, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the Rome Prize. Alongside her artistic practice, Miller teaches in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where she is an Associate Professor. Across video, sound, and installation, her work continues to explore the relationship between image and identity, documentary and lived experience, and the individual act of speaking and being seen within larger social structures.