Bio

Nicole Miller (b. 1982 Tucson) explores film and installation as mechanisms to create active viewing experiences that transform the meaning of moving images. Her untitled installation of 2012, encompassing a single-channel video projection and a two-channel video, poetically articulates her cinematic logic. In the single-channel video, a man recounts the gruesome event that led to the loss of his left arm. As he speaks, the balletic gestures of his right arm are reflected in a mirror, creating the illusion that his lost limb is present and thus creating a new corporeality through the interaction with a moving image. The adjacent two-channel video appropriates footage from films in which Darby Jones (1910–1986), one of the first African American actors to work in Hollywood, appeared. Jones generally portrayed stereotypical characters in these films, which have become the main site of interaction between him and his son, who has attempted to build a relationship with his father posthumously through his work. Miller has edited the films to present a new story of Darby Jones that reflects what she has learned about him through his son and through archival research. Here film becomes a powerful storytelling tool, one capable of reconstituting bodies and reinscribing personal histories.