The still life series was photographed in a studio, captured on film, and printed in a color darkroom. Owing to their careful arrangements, the images take a stab at the unnerving sides of consumerism. The work picks and pulls at the embodied anxieties from insatiable capitalism, chewing over desire, bodies, and fetish objects.
The pictures act as a sort of evidence of a logic distorted. They could be introduced in court as Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and so on, for a trial where no verdict is possible. The crime is indistinguishable from modern living and morality from consumer capitalism. There is a banality to evil, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Ashley Miller works with things, photographing intentionally contrived still lifes. Born in Syria and raised on Guam, she currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she is completing an MFA from the University of New Mexico. Her work has recently been shown at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon and at the Organ Vida Festival in Zagreb, Croatia and then summer 2019 in Savannah, Georgia at Laney Contemporary Fine Art.
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