Rodney McMillian

Rodney McMilian (born 1969 in South Carolina) is an American multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses painting, sculpture, installation, video, performance, sound, text, and theater. Using discarded domestic objects, thrifted textiles, bedsheets, blankets, carpets, furniture, architectural fragments, house paint, vinyl, and found political language, he examines how histories of race, class, violence, labor, and government policy remain embedded within the material and psychological structures of contemporary American life.  McMillian’s work frequently connects the domestic sphere to larger civic and governmental systems. Stained mattresses, worn carpets, chairs, quilts, and other cast-off household materials become witnesses to social history, carrying traces of use, aspiration, neglect, and economic inequality. His large-scale paintings and installations move between abstraction, landscape, architecture, and the body, questioning the idea that American modernism—or the American landscape itself—can ever be politically or historically neutral.  McMillian earned a BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia, completed post-baccalaureate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, SFMOMA, Contemporary Austin, Aspen Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Columbia Museum of Art, Sharjah Biennial, and Prospect New Orleans. He lives and works in Los Angeles and is a professor in the UCLA Department of Art.