Written by Elisabeth Sherman
In March of 2014, a video popped up online—and then quickly went viral—capturing a Lady Gaga concert, in which the singer invites the performance artist Millie Brown to join her on the stage. Gaga bangs wildly on her drum set, and screams “I don’t play by your fucking rules! This is our world!” as Brown pulls her hair away from her face, sticks two fingers down her throat, and vomits green milk onto the singers chest. She heaves a few more streams of the gloopy liquid out of her mouth, Gaga taps her a couple times with her drum sticks, and then Brown flips her hair and struts off stage.
The responses to their performance ranged from merely grossed out to deeply insulted—pop star Demi Lovato condemned the pair for glamorizing bulimia (an accusation that Brown firmly rejects)—but Brown is aware that some people will hate work her, and others will love it. There isn’t much in between.
“I don’t believe it to be vulgar. I believe it’s human,” says Brown. “Creating work that brings us closer to raw human emotion and explores the limits of the human mind is what interests me,” she says.
Preparing one of her pieces consists of what Brown refers to as “solitude performance,” during which she fasts for several days to achieve mental and physical clarity. She has fasted before, for a project called Wilting Point in which she laid in a bed of dying flowers in the window of the Hatbox gallery in New York, subsisting on nothing but water for seven days. “This climax of the performance I believe to be a projection of my soul, thoughts, emotions, and DNA made visible to the outside world,” Brown explains.
All of Brown’s projects have explored the idea of physical and mental transcendence: From Suspended by Optimism, in which she hung from helium balloons in the entrance of a Miami hotel, to Rainbow Body, a series of dreamy pastel paintings meant to recreate the Los Angeles sky that resemble watercolors but were actually created using food coloring and almond milk, which she vomited onto canvas—a process she characterizes as “painting from the inside-out.” Tibetan Buddhism informed the creation of Rainbow Body, a theology which advocates for spiritual transcendence. By altering her state of mind, achieved either through fasting or positioning her body in spaces that allow her to eclipse the ties that bind her to the Earth, Brown can access previously undiscovered regions of her consciousness.
Brown notes that fans as young as seven years old have reached out to her expressing their interest in becoming performance artists themselves, and sending her work of their own, after experiencing one of her performances. Those who have suffered from illnesses, trauma, and heartbreak, feel especially connected to Brown’s artwork: these are people that most commonly come forward to tell her how her work has helped them overcome their ailments, which makes sense. An audience haunted by bodily harm should readily connect with artwork that uses the body as the main tool of expression and communication.
So what is it about art that employs vomiting—an act usually associated with disgust, violence, nausea, ugliness (all negatives)—that attracts people? Brown has some theories.
“I think people are drawn to my work for many different reasons but I don’t think shock is one of them. A lot of people feel liberated when watching me perform,” she says. “So much of our emotion is held in our stomachs. I feel like when I vomit the paint up, it brings with it these emotions.”
Her performances enact the literal exorcism of frustration, pain, love—whatever those raw emotions the audience is feeling, that Brown is feeling during the performance—that she can then manifest physically through the act of vomiting. She’s tried many mediums of art throughout her life, but decided that the most effective and meaningful medium was the one she’s had all along: her body. Her work, she realized, was about much more than just getting color on canvas. Using conventional methods of artistry didn’t make sense for her. Art and the body, through which she channels “living energy,” are inexorably connected in Brown’s work. It should come as no surprise then that art is the means through which she lives and breathes. “The body is the first tool we are ever given in life. It’s our means of existence in this world, so using it to explore creative expression is profound to me,” she says. “The solitude performance, the act of vomiting, and the finished painting on the canvas are all one and cannot exist alone.”
So much of our emotion is held in our stomachs. I feel like when I vomit the paint up, it brings with it these emotions.
Brown feels that putting herself in a position of vulnerability during her performances opens her up to clearer communication with her audience. She can be uncensored and unrestrained by words. And what is it that she intends to communicate?Part of her mission is concerned with dissecting the beauty standards typically thrust upon women. “Although we’ve come so far, women are still faced with shallow aesthetics and unchallenging goals in life. It’s important to me to inspire women through my work,” she says. She hopes that her pieces will help women become more willing to question traditional concepts of beauty and femininity.
But Brown also isn’t interested in “pleasing the masses.” She values her artistic freedom, and says she was drawn to Lady Gaga because the singer has never allowed fear to dictate her vision. Instead of creating art that resembles what Brown calls “generic nothingness,” she wants to explore time and space, and through the power of the body, channel her thoughts, ideas, and emotions into the physical realm, even in environments that are marked by their stillness and silence.
This vision lines up perfectly with Brown’s next project, in which she will be collaborating with the Marina Abramovic Institute on a performance piece called Blinded by the Light. The performance art piece will last four days, during which Brown will submerge herself in light.
“I will absorb light’s energy in all its forms: physically, sonically, and symbolically,” she explains. “[The performance] explores elements of time, stillness, and meditation, with the aim to transcend to a state of pure light.”
Though it’s clear that Brown is an artist intent on excavating the depths of the human soul to find it’s rawest form; who rejects the idea of palpability in artwork and instead focuses her energy on creating art unrestricted by social norms or conventions, she still considers her art to align with some traditional aesthetic standards, although perhaps not in the way you might think. Because beauty, as Brown rightly points out, is subjective.
“I see beauty in what is human. I believe my paintings are beautiful,” she says.
Photos Louise Banks
Stylist Brett Bailey
