LaJuné McMillian

Bitforms presents LaJuné McMillian’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Embodied Metadata can be described as the data about the data that bodies produce. Where some may previously see data as a reductive approach to appreciating the body, McMillian's work repositions metadata gathered through motion capture as a cultural asset that celebrates individuals' movements. Exhibited works depict bodily metadata as portraiture traced through animated movement. Additionally, McMillian's collaborative approach to collecting data creates opportunities for participatory exchanges that may be likened to communal rituals. In this way, the artist's work creates spaces for rendering Black bodies while suggesting mindful pathways to liberation.

After the erasure of Black dance moves in video game culture entered national conversations in 2018, the artist began to consider the power of cataloging movement. McMillian confronts the limitations of Western technology to explore how cataloged movement may be used to celebrate, network, liberate, and acknowledge the needs of Black people. Embodied Metadata questions how digital systems translate and account for bodies, and their potentials, in ways that humanize the self beyond the data it produces. What worlds must be built for the liberated body to exist? How are liberated bodies cared for in and outside digital means? In addition to cost and accessibility, technology’s extractive procedures often decide who is seen and recognized in space. While acknowledging these technological biases and the exploitation of Black people in the United States, the artist's work suggests a liberating ideology of “embodied metadata”.

LaJuné McMillian (b. 1992, New York) is a new media artist, and Creative Technologist creating art that integrates performance, extended reality, and physical computing to question our current forms of communication. McMillian has shown and spoken about their work at Pioneer Works, National Sawdust, Leaders in Software and Art, Creative Tech Week, and Art && Code’s Weird Reality. The artist was previously Director of Skating at Figure Skating in Harlem, where they integrated STEAM and Figure Skating to teach girls of color about movement and technology. They have continued their research on Blackness, Movement, and Technology during residencies at Eyebeam, Pioneer Works Barbarian Group, and Barnard College.