UCLA associate professor of sculpture Rodney McMillian has been awarded the inaugural Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize by the Contemporary Austin. The prize, which the museum created to support its mission to attract global talent to Texas, comes with an unrestricted award of $100,000 as well as a solo exhibition at the museum, an accompanying scholarly publication and related public programming. The exhibition is slated to open Feb. 3, 2018, at the Jones Center, the museum's downtown venue.
McMillian uses a wide range of mediums and materials to explore both personal and political issues on themes such as class, gender and race in his sculpture, painting, video, performance and installation art. He also creates self-described “post-consumer objects” using found and scavenged materials. An overarching concern in his work is the relationship between language, aesthetics and content.
"An award such as this can enable an artist to reimagine what is possible for one’s practice or one’s self,” said McMillian in a statement, adding that he is “very honored and thrilled to be a recipient.”
McMillian has had solo exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions worldwide, including the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates.
