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<< Call & Response Artists

Elizabeth Miller

Dev’nay

Film still of wire and hair headdress

This film is a collection of 6 performers transforming spaces with significant ties to slavery or present-day racism in the city of Baltimore, MD. While they perform the movement in these spaces, their black bodies are adorned with wearable hair art sculptures which function as sacred objects. The use of smoke is meant to tap into the energy of the ancestors who walked there while simultaneously attempting to push forward to an emancipated future. Emancipation comes from unlocking what’s embedded with versus the traditional pathway of seeking freedom from the colonizer.

Each performer is adorned with a handmade hair sculpture that adorns their body and allows them to transcend, cleanse and heal. These headdresses transform from sculpture to artifact through the act of the ritual. This bond is sealed with the DNA of the wearer being deposited upon the pieces themselves, while the act of healing and releasing happens in the historical, specially chosen spaces of trauma.

Elizabeth Miller, Dev’nay, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist

PHOTO GALLERY

  • A headdress made of hair, wire, and beads.
  • A headdress made of hair, wire, and beads.
  • A headdress made of hair, wire, and beads.
  • A headdress made of hair, wire, and beads.
  • A headdress made of hair, wire, and beads.

Click on the images to expand.

Elizabeth Miller, Dev’nay, 2020; Karma, 2020; Dev’nay, 2020; Kay, 2020. Images courtesy of the artist

Purchase this artwork and others from the Call & Response exhibition online at MCD’s Artists Marketplace.

ARTIST MARKETPLACE

ARTIST BIO

Liz Miller is a second-generation international fine artist and filmmaker. Dance/Performance art is a primary part of her social art practice; she performs locally and internationally. Her fine art has been shown nationwide but also internationally in Japan, Indonesia, and England. She has a B. A. in Art and Design from Towson University and an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Though currently working as an art teacher in public schools, she has been a teaching artist for the last sixteen years for many non-profits in Baltimore. She owns two businesses; Mural Art Tours Baltimore and Dinner Conversations. Both of these allow her to have much broader conversations about race with the general public.

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