Imagination of Salvation: Q&A with Bryanna Millis

Bryanna Millis is a conceptual environmental mixed-media artist focusing on the linkages between heart and mind, feeling and intellect. Her work is situated within broader themes of place and time in the Middle East, and she uses cut paper, paint, thread, objects, and found materials to root esoteric concepts in concrete experiences of specific histories, present moments, and imagined futures. Bryanna has a Master’s degree in Development Economics from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019 she will attend the Athena Standards Residency in Athens, Greece. Bryanna lives and works in Washington, DC and Amman, Jordan.

Imagination of Salvation: Actions on the Land was on view at Hillyer on April 5 – 28, 2019.

When you first started working with local partners from Al Azraq, did you anticipate wanting to create art from your experiences there? If so, what was the original inspiration behind the conception of this exhibition?

The very first concept for the project was for a sculpture park to commemorate the past and present of Al Azraq, as a former Oasis that has been drained, and as the current host to a refugee camp housing 35,000 Syrian refugees. The idea was that this park could be a catalyst for a range of environmental, economic, and social rehabilitation activities. Then the environmental and economic aspect took off first, and the team has been focused on that. Around that time I turned my personal art practice into an investigation of the place and my experiences.

As an environmental mixed-media artist whose focus on “the linkages between heart and mind, feeling and intellect,” how did your background and passion inform the way you approached this work?

My idea to examine work from these vantage points emerged through the work I was making, but it ultimately brings together everything I have done and been in my life. It’s like a homecoming to my whole self. As an international economist working with data and evidence, I can easily bring the “mind” to my work. But the body and heart have been more challenging to incorporate for me, although as an artist and spiritualist they are becoming more front and center in my life. So that is the real challenge of this project—to communicate from these different places. It’s a process I’m still exploring.

What were some of the audience responses to Imagination of Salvation: Actions on the Land? Did you find that engaging with viewers during the opening reception or your artist talks brought up new connections or perspectives?

I loved hearing about which works made people feel something deeply, at both the opening and artist talk. The highest praise I can receive is to know my work made people feel something. There was also a lot of curiosity about my actions on the land pieces…I’d love the opportunity to show excerpts from the videos and the process of making that work sometime—the very hot and muddy back story in essence. I was focused on the end pieces to some extent, but it always seems that the human exploration, the process, really engages people and is something I want to share more of. Also, I loved how drawn people were to the blue I used in a few pieces. I had a real emotional resonance with that color and it was shared by almost everyone who spoke to me.

During your artist talk, you discussed past plans for sculptural installations or different forms of community engagement– what do you envision for the future of this project in Al Azraq, and for your personal practice?

The very next thing that I’m doing with my personal practice is to spend the month of June doing an artist residency in Athens. I want to use that time to really dig deeply into the heart-centered aspect of the work, to figure out how to communicate from that place. I also have another show of these pieces and a few newly finished ones in the Adirondacks in August.

Over the next year my vision is to expand into the next phase of this story, to bring the works and the process home to Azraq. In the context of beginning the aquifer recharge and salt harvesting projects we want to do community engagement initiatives that have imagination of salvation at their center. We want to spark a movement of imagining the future, of caring differently about the land and its resources, and of creating space for people to follow their hearts and dreams.