Hendl Helen Mirra[1] is an American conceptual artist. "[Like Henry David Thoreau, she is a] maximalist in a minimalist robe", with an idiosyncratic practice.[2] She is engaged with ideas common to buddhist[3][4][5] and pragmatist[6][7] philosophies, and since 2008 her art practice has been integrated with walking.[8] She has said of walking: "It is an unskilled activity, and a modest activity, and a free activity, and an always-available activity, and an equipment-free activity, and an active activity."[9] In an essay on Mirra's work, Yukio Lippit described her engagement thus: "Mirra’s practice champions walking as a specific form of thinking that bypasses language. Indeed, one senses that she shares with Zen Buddhists in particular a deep skepticism towards language as an authentic mechanism of discovery."[10] At the same time, she has often worked with language as a primary material.[11][12]
Hendl Helen Mirra | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | December 31, 1970 |
| Education | Bennington College, University of Illinois at Chicago |
Career
editHendl Mirra has worked in diverse media including weaving,[13] writing - particularly indexes,[14][15][16] experimental music,[17][18] sculpture, 16mm film, and video.[19] "Environmental belonging" has been a persistent theme,[20] while keeping within a restricted palette.[21] Her first one-person institutional exhibition, Sky-wreck, at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 2001, was an indigo-dyed textile sculpture of a section of the sky, imagined as part of a geodesic structure.[22][23] In addition to John Cage,[24] Stanley Brouwn, André Cadere, and Douglas Huebler are key influences.[9]
She has an exhibition history in North and South America, Europe, and Japan,[25][26] and participated in broad international exhibitions such as the 11th Havana Bienal, the 30th São Paulo Art Biennial and the 50th Venice Biennial. A fifteen-year (1995-2009) survey of her work, Edge Habitat, was presented in 2014 at Culturgest in Lisbon, Portugal, and the corresponding publication Edge Habitat Materials was published by Whitewalls.[27]
She was a Senior Lecturer in Visual Art and Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Chicago (2001-2005)[28] and a Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities in the department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University until 2013.[29] She has been an artist-in-residence at University of California at Berkeley,[30] and a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.[31] She lives in Northern California.[32]
Selected solo exhibitions
edit- Sky-wreck, Renaissance Society, 2001
- Declining Interval Lands[33], Whitney Museum of American Art, 2002
- 65 Instants, MATRIX 209, Berkeley Art Museum, 2003
- Gehend, Bonner Kunstverein, KW Institute of Contemporary Art Berlin, and Haus Kontruktiv, Zurich, 2011-2012
- Hourly Directional with Ernst Karel, MIT List Center, 2014
- Hourly Directional, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 2014
- Edge Habitat, Culturgest, Lisbon Portugal, 2014
- Waulked, [34] Peter Freeman Inc., New York, 2014
- Helen Mirra, Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, 2015[35]
- *, Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, 2018
- la malplena ĉambro estas bela, Large Glass, London, 2020
References
edit- ^ "Hendl Helen Mirra". www.hmirra.net. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
- ^ Eleey, Peter (January 2006). "Reference Material". Frieze Magazine.
- ^ "HIGH LINE ART COMMISSION: Helen Mirra, Half-smiler | Friends of the High Line". Archived from the original on 2018-05-10. Retrieved 2018-05-09.
- ^ "Stephen Batchelor Talk". www.largeglass.co.uk.
- ^ ""Not-knowing is most intimate": Helen Mirra in Conversation with Emmalea Russo". artcritical. 2015-09-13. Retrieved 2015-09-25.
- ^ "BAMPFA - Helen Mirra / MATRIX 209 - 65 Instants". Retrieved 2016-07-05.
- ^ "Collection FRAC Lorraine | Helen Mirra:Human Ken, 24". collection.fraclorraine.org.
- ^ "Conscience de pierre press release". Galerie Nelson Freeman. 2010.
- ^ a b ""This is my interest anyway - to not-demand" - Interview with Helen Mirra - Features - Metropolis M".
- ^ Lippit, Yukio. ""Ambulations", gehend (Berlin: argobooks, 2013)" (PDF).
- ^ "reference to book coinciding with exhibition: Nueve años caminando en las laderas". nordenhake.com.
- ^ Mirra, Helen (2007). "Cloud, the, 3". JRP Ringier.
- ^ Smith, Roberta (3 January 2019). "Helen Mirra". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
- ^ "Helen Mirra: Cloud, the, 3 | Events: Reading | The Renaissance Society".
- ^ "CABINET // Inventory / Index for Der Räuber". www.cabinetmagazine.org.
- ^ "Public art by Helen Mirra appearing across the University of Chicago campus". March 31, 2006.
- ^ "Paris Transatlantic recommendations".
- ^ "sonambiente berlin 2006 | festival für hören und sehen | klang kunst sound art | 1.6.-16.7".
- ^ "Helen Mirra | Video Data Bank". www.vdb.org.
- ^ "Helen Mirra, Hourly Directional - Art & Education".
- ^ "About This Artwork: Map of Parallel 52 North at a Scale of One Foot to One Degree". Art Institute of Chicago. 1999.
- ^ "Helen Mirra: Skywreck". Renaissance Society.
- ^ Walker, Hamza (2001). "Thread-skies" (PDF).
- ^ Camper, Fred (July 8, 2005). "Chicago Reader: Rethinking Thought: Helen Mirra" (PDF).
- ^ "Bienal de Cuenca". e-flux.
- ^ "Helen Mirra at Taka Ishii Gallery".
- ^ Edge Habitat Materials, Helen Mirra, survey 1995-2009. University of Chicago Press.
- ^ Stewart (2003). "Muse and medium" (PDF).
- ^ "Visual and Environmental Studies faculty: Helen Mirra". 2013. Archived from the original on 2013-04-11.
- ^ "ARC Visiting Artists".
- ^ "Berliner Künstlerprogramm".
- ^ lottozero. "HELEN MIRRA".
- ^ Richard, Frances (2002). "From Land and Sound to Thought" (PDF). Whitney Museum brochure.
- ^ Farzin, Media (October 13, 2014). "Helen Mirra's "Waulked"". Art Agenda.
- ^ Andersson, Axel (September 1, 2015). "Tid omvandlad till konkret rumslighet". Kunstkritikk.