Adia Millett
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Overview

In Records of self-perception, Adia Millet uses the process of miniaturization to lead her investigation of memory and awareness. The work consists of two miniature houses built on a one-inch to one-foot scale. As one peers into these small domestic spaces, one becomes intrigued by the exquisite detail of these rooms, including a lit chandelier. The emptiness of the spaces, however, suggests the presence of absence: in both rooms, a human presence (even a miniature one) is missing. This is not to say that the rooms are devoid of meaning. On the contrary, these rooms very much suggest that they are lived spaces, or at least have been recently occupied. What is left are objects that reveal physical and symbolic traces.

Millet invites the viewer to re-create a history, a narrative, a memory of the “lost” or “missing” individuals. The artist tacitly asks whether it is possible to extract the identity of an individual from wallpaper, or establish a memory from an inanimate object. Perhaps Millet’s title —Records of self-perception-—best resolves these questions. Instead of recalling a specific person at a specific time and place, these small rooms serve as a space to register one’s own collected memories and awareness. Each object may be seen as a point of departure to unravel associations built around specific motifs, genres, patterns, styles, designs or forms. Perhaps they may even serve to reveal gross generalizations, or stereotypes imposed onto objects.

By juxtaposing an eclectic mix of objects, Millet complicates the identities of her inhabitants; one is forced to juggle these identities in an irresolvable manner. It is precisely this point of ambiguity that Millet is calling attention to: the multifaceted nature of identity that extends beyond the confines of broad and clichéd categorization.

E.S.