We kick off the week's A Portfolio with a series of new works by Erin Milez that is on view at Monya Rowe, as well as some works from the past few years.
From the claustrophobic discord of quarantine to overwhelming joy of creating new life, the couples in Milez’s work are living through experiences from her own life and filtered through a language of dance and compression. They are duet partners and day laborers, wrapping around each other with thick limbs and rubberized joints, contorting into and away from each other.
The couple’s compressed domestic space brings both clumsiness and humor to the realities of daily life in sharing and creating a home. At times they illustrate the synchronous unity that might be expected from a long term relationship, and at times tripping over the other in a moment of broken empathy. Their intimacy is joyful and awkward. It is a battle through the difficult moments to create a home.
Milez’s work argues for the significance of everyday life and that the menial tasks required by it are not mundane but a tether to creation.
