Miranda Maher: Infestations
“Infestations—Vertical 1” from “Infestations” Series
“Infestations — Horizontal” from “Infestations” Series
“Infestations — Vertical 2” from “Infestations Series”
INFESTATIONS SERIES:
We don’t have infestations of wildflowers or flamingos. Infestation implies vermin… but it’s a human value judgment that a species is vermin or a weed. They are in the way or un-beautiful… or destructive to what we’ve decided to value. But from outside a human view, they’re simply living, even thriving. Oblivious to our preferences.
In this series I have combined my meditative ink line-shapes with edited prints of (mostly) birds of prey from Audubon’s nineteenth century catalog of American birds. The birds squabble or devour their prey sitting on or between the black ink elements, oblivious to them. You could take the view that either element could be an infestation of the other, but given human tendencies, the birds are the more likely culprits. The ink is painted on Arturo paper and cut leaving a narrow border of pale blue. The birds are printed on lightweight Red River paper, all mounted on Rives BFK. (All papers are archival and compatible). The full sheet collages are 19×22” and the narrow vertical format is 13×22”
Over the last 25 years, Miranda Maher has exhibited in university, non-profit and commercial gallery spaces in New York and throughout the US and internationally. Some venues that have shown her work: Wave Hill (Bronx), The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, White Columns, The Drawing Center, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery and Pierogi’s Flat Files. She has also shown work at Kunstbunker (Nuremberg), Spaces (Cleveland), CEPA (Buffalo), Artetica (Rome), Yatoo (S. Korea), Staub (g*fzk!)(Zurich), the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Bronx Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Along with her exhibition work, she has editioned more than 10 artist’s books and was the Art Editor for the poetry journal Long News in the Short Century. Her artists books are distributed by Printed Matter in New York. Her work is represented in the Robert Schiffler Collection, as well as many university and museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art (Special Collections), Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Boston Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.
