Adia Millett: Breaking Patterns

^{Adia Millett, Snow, 2018. Acrylic paint and glitter on panel, 36” x 48".}

In Breaking Patterns, Oakland-based artist Adia Millett delves into issues of identity, personal memory, and collective history. She cycles her evocative imagery through a variety of media, including collage, assemblage, photography, textiles, and painting, creating multilayered representations of deconstructed structures and imaginary interiors that stand in for the human experience and provide a dwelling place for a black aesthetic. A central concern of Millett’s is the history of African Americans, and the history of African American women in particular. Her quilts—made from discarded clothing, sheets, other quilts, and curtains—allude to domesticity and craftwork. Flying Coffee Table (2015), for example, is an elaborate, process-oriented quilt that reveals Millett’s use of improvisation and intuition; the artist disassembled an existing quilt and rearranged it into an irregular, unexpected form.

_{(Image courtesy the artist.)}