La Isla Del Tigre
JACKIE MILAD
LA ISLA DEL TIGRE
MARCH 1 – APRIL 26, 2023
Opening Reception with the Artist
Wednesday, March 1, 5:30–7:30PM
SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of La Isla Del Tigre, a solo exhibition by artist Jackie Milad. The gallery will host a public reception with the artist on March 8th from 5:30 – 7:30 PM. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery.
La Isla Del Tigre, presents twelve new multimedia works exploring the layering of transcultural history in Central American and Middle Eastern architecture and iconography. Milad links a universal topic of cultural layering and documentation with her own multicultural identity by blending what appears to be disparate imagery, icons, and language (graffiti, rap lyrics, popular slang, etc). These layered compositions mimic not only her own mixed Honduran-Egyptian-American upbringing, but also symbolize the way cultures are recorded and monumentalized in remaining fragments over time. By obfuscating the meaning of her textiles, Milad prevents a single reading of the work and embraces the complexity of the piece and its analogy to global history.
The title of the exhibition, La Isla Del Tigre, references El Tigre (Tiger Island), the Honduran volcanic island where Milad’s mother is from. The artist has been making a series of work dedicated to this location as it relates to her heritage. The two large-scale paintings in the exhibition include circular forms and the idea of an explosion, much like her last body of work “A Planet Breaks Open.”
The artist explores a vibrant palette in these new works - bright blues, pinks and yellow - which are in reference to her maternal grandmother’s kitchen. Milad’s artistic practice is motivated by a need to record and tell parts of her own story. She excavates her own earlier artworks and splices them into new pieces, constantly questioning the puzzle pieces of her past into an account of her presence in Baltimore today. In a purposefully confusing and chaotic manner, artworks that were once static and stored away become repurposed and responsive in dynamic compositions.