We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Milo Davis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Milo below.
Milo, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
The most meaningful project I’ve had the pleasure of undertaking is the series that I’m currently building. It is a seamless culmination of the experiences and lessons I’ve collected to date and the previous work which reflected those experiences. This body of work also totally aligns with the healing work I’m presently involved in. This endeavor is meaningful to myself and those whom I’ve shared it with because It transmutes a history of trauma and displacement with yearning and unadulterated hope.
Prior to COVID-19, my work discretely discussed Black pain and trauma with the overlap of queer identity. A part of me felt it was expected of me to produce work that presented painful collective experiences during my time in university.
My work took a turn in trajectory when I realized the traumatic history I was exploring conceptually felt disingenuous to my background.
It was through processing intense generational trauma in the summer of 2020 when protests erupted, that I came to realize that I didn’t want to contribute to re-traumatization with my work. I wanted to imagine and create utopic spaces where Black girlhood existed uninterrupted and children of the diaspora lived peaceful and divinely protected lives, spreading roots on ancestral land.
In this body of work, I also begin to process early childhood trauma. It has provided a space for me to reconcile with my past and engage with former and present versions of myself.
Milo, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My grandma loves to share an anecdote wherein I tell her my first career choice at age 4, a “pancake flipper”; but second to working at a diner, as far as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an artist. I had the privilege of traveling to Europe and visiting the Musée du Louvre when I was 5. I remember how small I felt in those museum halls. I was enchanted by the scale of the work and the painstaking detail. It felt as if those paintings could’ve swallowed me whole. It was at that time, I knew I wanted to create something impressive and monumental from my hands. Against discouragement from concerned family, I chose to honor the wish of my younger self with persistence and I pursued a career in art.
I attended Broward college in 2014, during my senior year of high school. During my time there, I studied under Tom De Vita, a figurative painter from South Florida and my former professor. I was introduced to traditional oil painting techniques that continue to inform my practice today. At the time I intended to study illustration. I wanted to write stories and work collaboratively on pre-existing ones as a storyboard artist. But I’ve found that painting can be a prime vehicle for story-telling.
I now create large-scale auto-biographical work with life-size figures. I refer to these works as portals in which I re-engage with remembered versions of myself and personal history. In my current practice, informed by artists like Deanna Lawson and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, I reference vernacular imagery from family photo albums. Similar to Crosby, I weld together disparate spaces, people, and objects to represent a liminal space where the multiple realms I inhabit can co-exist. I hope to re-ignite referenced imagery with new energy and purpose.
My work provides me with a channel to process and explore my experiences and personhood. I exist at a lot of intersecting identities; I’m mixed race, nonbinary, and a lesbian. I have always had to compartmentalize myself and facets of my identity depending on the spaces I am occupying, for survival and preservation of comfort. This has resulted in a lot of emotional and physical displacement. It is my earnest wish, that the work I am taking on can provide collective reflection and healing.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In March of 2020 I was uprooted following the beginning spread of COVID-19 in Florida. There was a lot of uncertainty brewing. I returned to my childhood home and continued classes virtually. Prior to shutdown, the scale I was working at expanded and my practice grew more ambitious. And then suddenly I didn’t have the resources and facilities necessary to complete the body of work I had intended. I had to recalibrate in a lot of ways. I didn’t fare the best in isolation and eventually sought out some low-contact jobs. In the fall I was presented with an opportunity to work as a nanny for a family in Parkland, FL. I attribute this experience to my decision to re-connect with my younger self through referencing photos taken in my childhood. I never intended to work in childcare, but I received so much fulfillment from that opportunity. And my work blossomed conceptually following that arrangement. I spent hours of my day alongside a preschooler and a elementary school child. We played outside and we drew silly, nonsensical things; we played with dirt and smashed rocks on the pavement. As a caretaker, I learned so much about curiosity and play and the stubborn grip I had over my work and process loosened. It is so special when the other roles we often have to shoulder as artists have meaningful impacts on our studio practice(s).
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The act of creating, in and of itself, is so rewarding; It is symbiotic, a mutual exchange. I haven’t yet discovered a better tool for examining self, transmuting experiences, and communicating complex states of being. My studio practice provides me with endless catharsis.
To work as an artist is an immense privilege, one that I don’t take for granted. I am living my ancestors’ dreams- making decisions in pursuit of personal pleasure and fulfillment. The matriarchs that preceded me could not indulge in their dreams. They only had to survive and with what was left, they built something for us. I’m often reminded of Audre Lorde’s poem, “A Litany for Survival”. One excerpt reads, “for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice, who love in doorways coming and going, in the hours between dawns, looking inward and outward, at once before and after, seeking a now that can breed futures, like bread in our children’s mouths, so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours”. From their sacrifice I have the capacity to create work born from pleasure; work intended to memorialize them and envision healing for generations traumatized and displaced by colonialism.
Contact Info:
- Website: miloadavis.com
- Instagram: @miloadavis
Image Credits
Bella Miranda