Solo Show: Millee Tibbs

Statement
This is a Picture of Me

Despite our awareness of the mutability of photographic images, we approach them thinking we know what to expect: something that-has-been, a fixed subject inside a frame. I am drawn to photography because of its ubiquitous presence in our culture and because of the tension between the truth-value photographs infer and their inherent manipulation of reality. I develop my work out of my desire to scratch off the surface of the image and expose its construction.

The series This is a Picture of Me uses self-portraiture to investigate our relationship to mediated images, specifically those of women. This is a picture of me examines the relationship between photographer and subject, and is an attempt to locate the self in an image. This series both evokes the impossibility of going back to childhood and questions the desire to do so. The reenactment of these gestures by an adult body transforms the seemingly innocuous childhood poses into suggestive and sexualized performances, which emphasize the unconscious influence of mediated images in vernacular photography.

Bio
Millee Tibbs was born in Huntsville, Alabama and lived in Spain and the Dominican Republic before moving to Providence, Rhode Island where she currently resides. She holds an MFA in photography from RISD and a BA in studio art and Hispanic studies from Vassar College. Her work is conceptually driven and is concerned with the nature and use of photographs in contemporary culture. Her work has been exhibited domestically and internationally at places such as the Maine Center for Contemporary Art, Rockport; 55 Mercer Gallery and Winkeman/Plus Ultra Gallery, both in NY; the Hera Gallery, Wakefield; David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Rhode Island; Paul Robeson Gallery at Rutgers University, New Jersey; University of Massachusetts, Lowell; and at both the Museum of Modern Art and Spanish Cultural Center in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Her work is currently held in the Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn flat file and is a part of the online data base at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Millee teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.