Adia Millett Los Angeles, United States, b. 1975

Adia Millett (b. 1975, United States) is acclaimed for her deep exploration of basic configurations, diverse expressive practices, and experimentation with mediums. Trained in the fine arts, art history, and the postmodernist theories of cultural studies, Millett conveys her felt concerns in the discourses of the domestic, the public sphere, gender positions, and spirituality through the interdependent form and content of the abstract compositions of her works.

Millett received a BFA from the University of California at Berkeley, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2001, she moved to New York for the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, followed by a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem. She lived and worked in New York for a decade, exhibiting in high-profile group shows among them “Freestyle” (Studio Museum in Harlem, 2001), “Living Units” (Triple Candie, 2003), “Black President” (The New Museum, 2003), and “Greater New York” (Museum of Modern Art PS1, 2005), and recently in “Where is Here” (Museum of African Diaspora, 2017), and “Black Refractions” (Studio Museum in Harlem, 2019).

Recent solo exhibitions include “A Matter of Time” (Galerie du Monde, 2020); “Breaking Patterns” (California African American Museum, United States, 2019); and “The Privilege to Breathe” (San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, United States, 2019). Millett has taught as an artist in residence at Columbia College in Chicago, University of California Santa Cruz, Cooper Union, and California College of the Arts. She currently lives and works in Oakland, California.

She has two forthcoming solo exhibitions in 2022, an exhibition exploring African-American textile art at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in the United States, and her second exhibition at Galerie du Monde in Hong Kong.