Zoë Miller

Economy of Borders
Economy of Borders

Zoë Claire Miller is an artist and organizer who lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Miller co-founded the Berlin Art Prize in 2013 and the Society for Matriarchal World Domination in 2019. Much of her political work takes place within the framework of bbk berlin (the professional association for visual artists in Berlin), for which she is a spokesperson. bbk berlin focuses primarily on political issues pertaining to artists’ rights, working conditions and infrastructure on both local and national levels, but is also engaged in related issues and struggles, such as those of gender equality, antigentrification and antifascism.

Emmenagogue Garden 2018
Emmenagogue Garden 2018

Miller’s art in the media of sculpture, installation and performative drawing is primarily collaborative and engages with the female body, sensuality, tactility, feminist /queer theory, and the combined use of negative and positive space. In past exhibitions she has explored themes such as female masturbation as a metaphor for creative production, the emancipatory potential of lost knowledge about contraceptive and abortive herbs, the disintegration of the body as a pleasurable experience, and the water cooler as a site of resistance via gossip.

Economy of Borders
Economy of Borders

In terms of form, she aspires to produce new shapes or images that better reflect how entities, bodies, and materials can be activated in a non-patriarchal manner: allowing things to drip, dribble, spread, pool, be a mist, or an odour, and showing bodies as sites of pleasure.

Bergen Assembly - Sick and Desiring
Bergen Assembly – Sick and Desiring

She is interested in interspecies relationships and dissolving the boundaries of proprietary modes of production to negate the historical cliché of the lone creative genius / the contemporary spectre of neoliberal, competitive modes of production. Her collaborative work, most often with Brazilian sculptor Juliana Cerqueira Leite, is an experiment in reinterpreting autocoscienza femminista (cf. Carla Lonzi), as an act of co-creating artistic objects, situations, and experiences with an eye towards developing a truly feminist subjectivity.

Du kannst gar nicht so viel weinen wie
ich kotzen möchte [You can‘t possibly
cry as much as I want to vomit] 
Glazed and unglazed stoneware,
chrome pipes, pump, preformed pond,
water, concrete, “Learn Better” room
scent, 2,20×2,40×1,70m
Ansbach Contemporary Biennale, 2018
Du kannst gar nicht so viel weinen wie
ich kotzen möchte [You can‘t possibly
cry as much as I want to vomit]
Glazed and unglazed stoneware,
chrome pipes, pump, preformed pond,
water, concrete, “Learn Better” room
scent, 2,20×2,40×1,70m
Ansbach Contemporary Biennale, 2018

Selected exhibitions include: 2019: Bergen Assembly; Ainex 02: Transaction, Wiener Art Foundation, Vienna, 2018: 5×5×5, Manifesta, Palermo 2018, Emmenagogue Garden, Beverly‘s, NYC, The Female Gaze, Kunsthaus Erfurt, Mess with Your Values, nbk, Berlin; 2017 Pool, Tropez, Berlin, 2016: Moscow Biennale for Young Art, The Health Benefits of Eating Silica, Glasgow International, he was there when I first smelled the smell and now he is the smell, Rinomina, Paris.

Emmenagogue Garden. This exhibition addresses the lost
female knowledge of contraceptive and
abortive herbs. At a critical time when
women’s rights are under attack we
revisit the history and actuality of
natural information sharing and female
reproductive autonomy. A collaboration
with Juliana Cerqueira Leite. Beverly’s NYC, 2018
Emmenagogue Garden. This exhibition addresses the lost
female knowledge of contraceptive and
abortive herbs. At a critical time when
women’s rights are under attack we
revisit the history and actuality of
natural information sharing and female
reproductive autonomy. A collaboration
with Juliana Cerqueira Leite.
Beverly’s NYC, 2018

www.zoemiller.eu
www.matriarchalworlddomination.today
Instagram @zoe.c.miller