Artist Statement & Bio – miranda maher

Statement~

My work begins with discrepancies, mistakes or even lies. I’ve dug into our self-deceptions about warfare and sexual violence; unpacked cultural delusions about femininity and explored our narcissism in relating to animals and nature. Lately, I’ve pared down to ink on paper and the exquisite moment of making a mark… combining it with things older or bigger than my moment by restraining the ink in gilding, or by combining it with astronomical diagrams or 19th century photographs. I continue to explore human violence and delusion, but after working with that darkness for 25 years, it feels better when contained in book forms.

I work in series, components or other repetitions. For me it is not possible to make one thing that expresses my thoughts and feelings around an idea: I consider my series as single projects; I create installations of 10, 100 or 1000 components; In my recent ink work, making marks on many pages is a way of understanding consciousness and awareness and a moment in time… of the passage of time.

Bio~

Work

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.

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Life

Maher moved from Detroit to Brooklyn shortly after receiving her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1990. Before that she lived in Providence while working on her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. And before that she lived in Kansas, Indiana, New York, Florida, North Carolina, back to Kansas, Virginia, Washington DC, Heidelberg, Munich, California and back to Washington DC. Nomad? Nomad.

For the last 20 years, she has pursued Japanese martial methods and Chinese meditative and healing arts along side herher visual art practice. In 2013, she retired from training Amagakure no Sato Ryu, holding the rank of Okuden Kaiden. She is a senior instructor of Universal Healing Tao and TaoZen and teaches Qigong, Taijii and Tao meditation in Brooklyn. She is also a Medical Qigong Therapist and a Master Teacher of Usui Reiki and travels regularly to Asia and Europe to continue her studies of Taiji and Neigong with her main teacher and Qigong friends.