My work begins with discrepancies, mistakes or even lies. I’ve dug into our self-deceptions about warfare and sexual violence; unpacked cultural delusions about femininity and explored our narcissism in relating to animals and nature. Lately, I’ve pared down to ink on paper and the exquisite moment of making a mark… combining it with things older or bigger than my moment by restraining the ink in gilding, or by combining it with astronomical diagrams or 19th century photographs. I continue to explore human violence and delusion, but after working with that darkness for 25 years, it feels better when contained in book forms. I work in series, components or other repetitions. For me it is not possible to make one thing that expresses my thoughts and feelings around an idea: I consider my series as single projects; I create installations of 10, 100 or 1000 components; In my recent ink work, making marks on many pages is a way of understanding consciousness and awareness and a moment in time… of the passage of time.
About Miranda Maher
Over the last 25 years, I have exhibited in university, non-profit and commercial gallery spaces here in New York and throughout the US and internationally. Some venues that have shown my work: Wave Hill (Bronx), The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, White Columns, The Drawing Center, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery and Pierogi’s Flat Files. I have also shown work at Kunstbunker (Nuremberg), Spaces (Cleveland), CEPA (Buffalo), Artetica (Rome), Yatoo (S. Korea), Staub (g*fzk!)(Zurich), the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Bronx Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Along with my exhibition work, I have editioned more than 10 artist’s books and was the Art Editor for the poetry journal Long News in the Short Century. My artists books are distributed by Printed Matter in New York.
My work is represented in the Robert Schiffler Collection, as well as many university and museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art (Special Collections), Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Boston Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.
I moved from Detroit to Brooklyn shortly after receiving my MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1990. Before that I lived in Providence while working on my BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. And before that I lived in Kansas, Indiana, New York, Florida, North Carolina, back to Kansas, Virginia, Washington DC, Heidelberg, Munich, California and back to Washington DC. Nomad? Nomad.
For the last 20 years, I have pursued Japanese martial methods and Chinese meditative and healing arts along side my visual art practice. In 2012, I retired from training Amagakure no Sato Ryu holding a rank of Okuden Kaiden. I currently teach Universal Tao and TaoZen Qigong, Taijii and Tao meditation in Brooklyn and am studying Healing Qigong, hoping to complete my Masters of Medical Qigong in 2017… And I travel regularly to Asia and Europe to continue my studies of Taiji and Neigong with my main teacher and friends.
