Mareiwa miller

San Francisco Art Institute

MAREIWA MILLER was born in Colombia and grew up in Paris. She studied sculpture and installation art in London before coming to SFAI to earn her MFA. Miller lives in San Francisco and recently moved her studio to Oakland.

Miller works with a variety of materials from fabric to steel in sculpture, wall works, and installation. She is interested in the spaces between things, exploring a veiling process of covering and revealing, and considering what happens in the space that separates. Her playful investigations, actively exploring what to say, how to say it, and what materials and processes to use is a constant theme in her work. 

In the piece All the butterflies cried a thousand times (2020), Miller starts with conceptual anchors that map out the world around her. She uses soft textiles and heavy, cold metal as opposites but complementary materials in her work. At times, the materials are brought together through a weaving process that is important to Miller. The work presents itself almost as a frame or portal with the fabric seeming to reference theater curtains, further reinforcing the idea of a window to another place. 

In her 2019 sculpture, HOP, I’ve never been on both sides at the same time, once again we see the material has been painted, includes photographic collage, and is sewn and hangs on a steel frame, ultimately as a floor piece. The canvas-like material presents like a curtain and is in conversation with another tube shaped, stuffed canvas piece that resembles a punching bag, resting against its own steel support. Miller is also interested in the physical position of her audience in relation to her sculptures, and in this piece, she invites the viewer to access all with the ability to walk around the sculpture in its entirety.

Currently Miller is exploring ceramic sculpture in her Oakland studio. She is drawn to this medium because it feels both tangible and uncertain, and for Miller, it is unpredictable in its nature. In the new mixed media work Untitled (Intimacy), Miller adorns fired ceramic pieces with various craft notions such as metal bells, small mirror squares, fake fur, and costume chain jewelry, which she hopes will generate more questions in her audience. She loves magic and likes to think that artists share much with magicians. In her work Miller is seeking to create an intimate experience that involves illusion and mystery, with an element of enchantment.

Q & A

BAC: You were born in Colombia, grew up in Paris, and studied in London. Can you talk about how each of these places has shaped you and inspired you as an artist?

Miller: I feel incredibly grateful to have the background that I have. Those are very different places with different cultures and mindsets. It’s interesting when I think about it because each of those places became important in my life at different moments. What I mean by that is that, for instance, Colombia and Paris, although I grew up in both, became relevant in my practice once I was not living there. It was the trips back, the new perceptions, and the new understanding that I had of these places that started to inform my practice. Although I believe it to be subtle. It usually becomes this entity, these questions, and ideas almost ghost-like that linger somewhere in my brain. It takes time for me to grasp them and incorporate them into my work — honestly most of the time I don’t even realize that they have taken part in a project until I have enough distance from the objects. I think it is mostly the different ways of living and approaches to life is where I drew my ideas from. It’s just observing the social interactions of these different cultures. It is fascinating, amusing, and weird to explain those differences. Sometimes when I try to tell stories about Colombia it seems unreal, and vice versa. The richness of it is limitless. 

BAC: In addition to your mixed media sculptures, you also have done performance works. Can you describe your performance work and how it relates to the sculptures?

Miller: The performance work that I have done was very experimental for me, I had never done it before. I wanted to explore that realm of the arts. The few performances that I did were powerful and hypnotizing. There is something about performances that I cannot really explain. I find it to be a vulnerable practice. Unlike sculpture or drawing, you are there, your body is there, out in the world being observed. That is extremely powerful and vulnerable. Maybe that’s why I have not totally given in. It’s intimidating. I have always looked at the body as this vehicle of history, your own, and that of your family, there is nothing more political than a body. And it’s something that we can all relate to, the flesh, the bones, and the blood. There is so much to talk about bodies and performance, and the body in the performances. 

BAC: Recently you have moved from creating larger-scale mixed media works to smaller, intimate ceramics. Can you talk about why you made this change and where you think it might take you?

Miller: I did! Mostly because of the space that is available to me now and the lack of access to certain tools. I miss working with metal. I started learning how to work with it a year ago, I started welding and I loved it. But right now I don’t have access to it. I do keep a sketchbook where I draw all my ideas so that when I can get in a shop I could start working on them. But going back to ceramics has been a blessing — ceramics have always been meditative, almost therapy-like for me. There is something calming about working with clay. To work so closely with this material, it’s a slow process, you have to be patient and that is very grounding within the current global situation. There is something gratifying to see an object take shape, work it, see it grow. There are so many steps to a final product: firing, glazing it, firing it again, what if it explodes, breaks, what if the glazes come out wrong, etc. It feels good to work on a small scale, the intimacy that you can have with the object is so different and heart-warming. I would like in the future to do bigger works, however, I don’t feel the necessity at the moment to go too big. My last piece during my grad program was 6–7feet tall and 7–8 feet wide. That’s really big! I am enjoying it to scale down. We shall see. 

BAC:  We talked a little about your time at San Francisco Art Institute.  Looking back now, was there a particular instructor at SFAI that was very influential?

Miller: This is a very hard question — I had so many great teachers, and each of them brought something different. I worked closely with Maria Elena Gonzalez, what an incredible person. So passionate. The conversations that we had always taught me something new. But I could also say that about all the other teachers who I had the opportunity to work with. Jennifer Lock was another teacher that changed my perspective, quite often to be honest! As a performance artist, I got to learn a lot about the subject but also about the body and its movement. Robert Minervini. Lindsey White, oh I miss her laugh! Orit Ben-Shitrit was also a teacher I had the pleasure to work with — she is amazing! Each of them turned my world upside down in their own way. I mean, it was just great to have all of these incredible humans as mentors but also as peers, work with them, solve problems, and talk about ideas and concepts, or even sharing about our lives. I created a great bond with each of them, and hopefully, that bond will keep on growing. I am definitely staying in contact with each of them, they might not want to but they don’t really have a choice!

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