carlier | gebauer, Madrid, is pleased to announce For Turiya, Nicole Miller’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in Madrid.

In this exhibition Nicole Miller presents her newest commission, the eponymously titled single channel laser light installation For Turiya. Dedicated to virtuous jazz musician and sonic healer, Alice Coltrane, known among her family and spiritual community as Turiyasangitananda or Turiya for short, this work poses as a continuation of Miller’s interest in the notion of Black excellence and stardom, while also fundamentally raising the questions of what it means to create and exist as an artist.

A bright, “effulgent” light beam cuts through the darkness, creating ever changing shapes which morph into textual fragments. Like with every act of artistic creation or even creation in general, something comes into being out of nothing. And yet beyond its arcane magic and mystery, the act of artistic expression and art making is a profoundly human experience, which can be traced as far back as the ancient wall marks and paintings prehistoric caves across the globe. Alice Coltrane or Turiya, dedicated her life to music as well as to her community by founding an ashram near Los Angeles. As an artist, musician, spiritual healer she becomes herself a vessel for communication, transmuting experiences, becoming “a body made of words”. This phrase, as it appears in the work, stems from Miller’s encounter with Alice Coltrane’s personal archive, which she was able to access in her research for the work. Miller dived into the musicians vedic chart, coming up with the words written by the laser through the astrology of Coltrane’s chart. These references have flown into the work, but are intentionally kept oblique out of respect to Coltrane, while further shedding light on her engagement with the realm of spiritual. Miller’s work itself is a profound experience, dwelling on the magic of art and language, but also transforming us as we witness it.