This amalgamated world, titled Sunday, Sitting on the Bank of Butterfly Meadow, is one of many compositions that New York-based artist Wardell Milan devises in his studio by building table-top dioramas with found imagery and other props, which he then photographs. Milan excels in crafting these scenes of disarming beauty and strangeness that initially seduce us as viewers, but then induce deeper reflection as concerns of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity surface. As Milan states, I aim to “spawn new conversations in these collages that I’m making about identity and representation, and also about the photographic medium and my relationship to it.”
Sunday, Sitting on the Bank of Butterfly Meadow, first created in 2013, is adapted to a monumental scale and shown outdoors in deCordova’s Sculpture Park as part of our rotation of PLATFORM billboard commissions. This lush, oversized scene offers a heightened reality and a surreal mirroring of activities in the Park, as nearby visitors may also be picnicking, seated with friends and family members, and warming themselves in the mid-day sun. At top right, Milan has included a glittering gold trapezoidal monolith that recalls Constantin Brancusi’s Endless Column (1918), and which draws out further connections between his imagined terrain and deCordova’s nearby sculptures.
PLATFORM is a series of one-person commissioned projects by early- and mid-career artists from New England, national, and international art communities that engage with deCordova’s unique landscape. The PLATFORM series lets artists expand their practice and visitors experience new approaches to contemporary sculpture and public art.
