Miriam Austin

Miriam’s current research explores the relationship between ritual, myth, ecological fragility, and the politics of the body. Working between sculpture, video, installation and performance, her recent work has focused on encounters between the complex ecologies connecting cycles of birth and death, desire and becoming, the mythological imagination, and the gendered marking of human and nonhuman bodies. She is currently working on a project that explores the complex issues surrounding the use, appropriation or co-option of myths from non-Western cultures, working to develop a series of videos, texts and sculptural objects that address the entanglement of privilege, oppression and representation that always already accompanies Western interest in “native” or “folk” religions and cultures. In doing so, her work will emerge from an exploration of the complex links between local mythology, global inequality, and ecological disaster.

Miriam shows regularly, both nationally and internationally. Selected recent exhibitions and projects include:  Lupercalia (solo show), Bosse and Baum, London (2016); Domusdei, (Performance for Art Night Festival), ICA, London (2016); Ritual>>>Enhancement, Chisenhale Project Space, London (2016); Sculptors Drawings, Alma Zevi Gallery, Venice (2016); Feminist Practices in Dialogue, ICA, London (2015); A Sense of Things, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2014); Elements of Religion, Bold Tendencies, London (2013), Heart of Darkness, Villa Arson, Nice, France (2012); She is currently working on a collaborative project as part of the collective UA, who recently organized a conference at the University of Cambridge (Total Archive: Dreams of Universal Knowledge from the Encyclopedia to Big Data, March 2015).