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Helen Mirra

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Helen Mirra
Born(1970-12-31)December 31, 1970
Rochester New York
EducationBennington College, University of Illinois at Chicago

Helen Mirra is an American conceptual artist. "[Like Henry David Thoreau, she is a] maximalist in a minimalist robe", with an idiosyncratic practice.[1] She is engaged with ideas common to buddhist[2][3][4] and pragmatist[5][6] philosophies, 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."[9] At the same time, she has often worked with language as a primary material.[10][11]

Career

Helen Mirra has worked in diverse media including weaving,[12] writing - particularly indexes,[13][14][15] experimental music,[16][17] sculpture, 16mm film, and video. Travel and the landscape have been reoccurring themes,[18] as well as childhood and labor,[19] while keeping within a restricted palette.[20] 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.[21][22] In addition to John Cage,[23] 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,[24][25] 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.[26]

She was a Senior Lecturer in Visual Art and Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Chicago (2001-2005)[27] and a Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities in the department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University until 2013.[28] She has been an artist-in-residence at University of California at Berkeley,[29] and a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.[30] She lives in Northern California.[31]

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".
  3. ^ "Stephen Batchelor Talk". www.largeglass.co.uk.
  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.
  6. ^ "Collection FRAC Lorraine | Helen Mirra:Human Ken, 24". collection.fraclorraine.org.
  7. ^ "Conscience de pierre press release". Galerie Nelson Freeman. 2010.
  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).
  10. ^ "reference to book coinciding with exhibition: Nueve años caminando en las laderas". nordenhake.com.
  11. ^ Mirra, Helen (2007). "Cloud, the, 3". JRP Ringier.
  12. ^ Smith, Roberta. "Helen Mirra". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
  13. ^ "Helen Mirra: Cloud, the, 3 | Events: Reading | The Renaissance Society".
  14. ^ "CABINET // Inventory / Index for Der Räuber". www.cabinetmagazine.org.
  15. ^ "Public art by Helen Mirra appearing across the University of Chicago campus". March 31, 2006.
  16. ^ "Paris Transatlantic recommendations".
  17. ^ "sonambiente berlin 2006 | festival für hören und sehen | klang kunst sound art | 1.6.-16.7".
  18. ^ "Helen Mirra, Hourly Directional - Art & Education".
  19. ^ "Helen Mirra | Video Data Bank". www.vdb.org.
  20. ^ "About This Artwork: Map of Parallel 52 North at a Scale of One Foot to One Degree". Art Institute of Chicago.
  21. ^ "Helen Mirra: Skywreck". Renaissance Society.
  22. ^ Walker, Hamza (2001). "Thread-skies" (PDF).
  23. ^ Camper, Fred (July 8, 2005). "Chicago Reader: Rethinking Thought: Helen Mirra" (PDF).
  24. ^ "Bienal de Cuenca". e-flux.
  25. ^ "Helen Mirra at Taka Ishii Gallery".
  26. ^ "Edge Habitat Materials, Helen Mirra, survey 1995-2009". University of Chicago Press.
  27. ^ Stewart (2003). "Muse and medium" (PDF).
  28. ^ "Visual and Environmental Studies faculty: Helen Mirra". 2013. Archived from the original on 2013-04-11.
  29. ^ "ARC Visiting Artists".
  30. ^ "Berliner Künstlerprogramm".
  31. ^ Lerda, Andrea. "125. PART 1 / HELEN MIRRA".
  32. ^ Richard, Frances (2002). "From Land and Sound to Thought" (PDF). Whitney Museum brochure.
  33. ^ Farzin, Media (October 13, 2014). "Helen Mirra's "Waulked"". Art Agenda.
  34. ^ Andersson, Axel (September 1, 2015). "Tid omvandlad till konkret rumslighet". Kunstkritikk.
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