CV

Ayûkíi,

I acknowledge that I live and work on the ancestral homelands of the Tongva/Gabrielino people of the Greater Los Angeles Basin, "from the Santa Susanna Mountains to the North, Aliso Creek to the South, the San Bernardino Mountains to the East, and the Pacific Ocean to the West, including the four channel islands of Santa Catalina, San Clemente, Santa Barbara, and San Nicolas." With traditional migrations through the Santa Ana Basin to the Salton Sea, I am in deep gratitude and debt to the waters and to their protectors and stewards, the Tongva and all of the tribes from North to South, East and West of these place(s): the Los Angeles River, The Santa Ana River, the Owens River that provides 59% (2024 Report) of LA's drinking water with the Colorado River which created the Salton Sea and contributes to 36% of our water along with the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the Mokelumne River, the Russian River, and the Klamath River. Brought together, these tribal relatives, from across the entire state of California sustain my life and practice. I come as a guest on these lands to support indigenous sovereignty, globally, but with a focus on all California and its waterways, as I work with local plants and materials of this region to make medicine and art toward liberation and healing. This deep commitment will ground me and my work through my elder years. I would love to hear from anyone who has a need that I can possibly accommodate. Please take care.

Yôotva, Thank you, Millie, Miller Robinson

Tethered by sensibilities that prioritize sensitive notions of collaboration, storytelling and the evolution of omni-directional timelines of self/land, themes of animacy, transmutation, temporality, and deep processes of care are routine to the practice. It works in constant dialogue with the state of materials and experiences, informed by more-than-human relations, basket weaving and ararahih, karuk linguistics. Through medicine, performance, sculpture, and books, it incorporates garment-making, poetry, tattooing, and site-specific installation to create detailed ecosystems within exhibitions that seek out horizons in queer, trans and indigenous potentialities.

Rooted in a, sometimes erratic, ecofeminist struggle toward rematriation, Miller's focus finds clarity in the eco-erotics of Indigenous positionalities. Putting a magnifying glass on the harms, magic, and intrinsic medicine, of the every day, the work spans distances and meaning between the micro-chemistry on a cellular level to the accumulation of the esoteric, through studies of paralleling cultural paradigm shifts. Miller uses assemblage as a base for historical conversation and poignant, often literal descriptive messaging of material poetics. Using material to draw parallel meanings  Miller goes far beyond acknowledging animacy but directly works with objects and materials, to quite literally, evolve the intersection(s) of a gender-expansive perspective of every thing — something felt, something resonate, something relational. Through ecological interventions and the sovereign practice of immemorial medicine practitioners, Miller's work posits between making tools and relational objects for prayer and acts of ceremony that heal through attuning to body/land regulation cycles, past, present and future. Central to the work, Miller works through a practice of tonality, lived, but felt through the complexities of the sculptural compositions. 

Deepening into the ancestral, omni-directional occurrence of the world, its current direction traces early California paradigm shifts from traditional to contemporary. Miller's work sits at the intersects of genocidal policy and preserving familial histories as the "last-first" in their direct line. Exposing the innate trans-embodied properties of all materials of life, the practice moves directionally backwards while incorporating western interventions when necessary, a module for curiosity and expansion of grounding through a quickened pace of the world. As a process of survivance of ancient-adapted gender-diverse mentalities, two-spirited is used as a basket term to delineate a "single" entity that presents itself as one-body in a reality that is blinded by the 1-way mirror of anti-indigenous systemic methodologies.

To put it simply, my work is rooted in sovereignty and allows me to live. It is the essential medicine needed to unravel the immense violent upside-down of the colonial projects of the US. Through the abundance of materials of life offering ecosystems of radical peace and personal change— witnessed by the masses as a prayer for liberating ourselves alongside one another. I am a student of traditional CA sucking medicine and herbalism. To support my work directly, please Venmo: @millerrobinson

I want to finish with immense gratitude to the Tongva Gabrileno lands, again. I have been a guest and a friend to the land here since 2010.

Please do not use images from my website without my permission.

Photo credits: Image 1: Miggs Perez, Image 2: Miller Robinson+google search+photoshop, Image 3: Catching on Theives