NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Frist Art Museum is set to host an exhibition titled LaJuné McMillian: The Portal’s Keeper—Origins, featuring multimedia projections, sculptural installations, and holographic self-portraits by New York-based artist LaJuné McMillian. This exhibition, organized by the Frist Art Museum, will be available for viewing from September 27, 2024, through January 5, 2025, in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Gallery.
LaJuné McMillian employs 3D-modeling technology, motion-captured performances, and multisensory elements to create immersive environments that celebrate Black bodily movement as a form of liberation. The artist uses motion-capture software to depict Black dancers, performers, and themself as avatars in vibrant settings that respond to poems, incantations, and various musical and extra-musical sounds.
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Chief curator Mark Scala of the Frist Art Museum notes, “Throughout the works in this exhibition, the body—sinuous and vital, uninhibited and unencumbered—moves from a place of pain into one of new possibility. McMillian’s marvelous works explore the potential of technology to empower Black individuals, countering a history of constraint and exploitation of the Black body.”
McMillian’s focus on kinetic movement originates from a lifelong interest in figure skating. As the director of Figure Skating in Harlem, McMillian integrated skating with a STEAM curriculum for young Black girls. In 2018, they founded the Black Movement Library, an online archive of motion capture and video recordings of Black performers, aimed at preserving and celebrating Black bodily motion as an essential aspect of culture.
The centerpiece of the exhibition, Spirit and Child, is an extended-reality installation featuring three-channel projections of motion-captured avatars dancing amid psychedelic shapes. A physical arch forms the titular portal, with an abstract figure appearing to run through the mystical space, accompanied by orchestrated sounds and spoken word. Scala describes Spirit and Child as “a prayer of pain and recovery that explores the limits of the body and the expansiveness of the soul.”
Another significant work, Mother and Child, is a sculptural self-portrait featuring a black cast of McMillian’s face surrounded by artificial yak hair, a material with cultural significance tied to Tibetan Buddhism and Black hair traditions. A film of the artist’s mother styling their hair is projected onto the sculpture, representing a more personal narrative about pain and sacrifice associated with beauty.
The exhibition also includes a series of holographic self-portraits, where motion-captured figures loop in cycles of formation and reformation, highlighting the adaptability and mobility of identity through liberated movement. Scala comments, “This self-portrait series shows how figures can be depicted in ways that stress their humanity even within the nonphysical spaces of technology.”
An interactive component titled Prayer Consciousness invites gallery guests to engage by writing and sharing their own prayers through a series of prompts on a computer.
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