Troy Montes Michie talks to Christopher Y. Lew, Chief Artistic Director

Christopher Y. Lew

You work across mediums from painting to collage and also sculpture and installation. Do you relate to any one medium more than another? Does one aspect of your practice inform the other?

Troy Montes Michie

I don’t relate to any particular medium but see it as an expanded form of painting. Collage for me is a way of thinking that is not reliant on painting but expands to various ways of making. My practice is currently informed by collaging found materials, drawing, paper-weaving, sewing, and painting. These fragments eventually are brought together once I feel I have compiled enough materials to work with in the studio.

Lew

You often draw from historic fashion and fashion publications. What is your relationship to the archive?

Michie

My relationship to the archive is reliant on an interest in historical records and how the past informs our present. Much like a photograph as an object that represents a documented past, publications and other print media are visual cursors to specific moments in modern culture. In the archive, I mine through various materials, excavating the buried narratives within the narrow lens of mass culture.

Lew

And what about the human body in relation to your work? I see it as a literal presence often through found images but also as an absence through your garment-sculptures.

Michie

The body takes many forms in the work. I am interested in the representation of the body in a photograph and how that reflection can be complicated when considering the gaze of the photographer. Even in its absence, there is a presence of the hand whether it is traced from materials I have collected, drawn over, and merged to create tactile surfaces. Much of my work is reliant on touch and there is an awareness and learning in that process. The body takes many forms in the work. I am interested in the representation of the body in a photograph and how that reflection can be complicated when considering the gaze of the photographer. Even in its absence, there is a presence of the hand whether it is traced from materials I have collected, drawn over, and merged to create tactile surfaces. Much of my work is reliant on touch and there is an awareness and learning in that process.