Wardell Milan

New York, New York

Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.

About Wardell Milan

Wardell Milan is an artist based in New York City. Throughout his practice, he has sustained a thoughtful inquiry into the nature of beauty and the unconscious, touching on topics such as body modification and gender performance. Milan earned a BFA in photography and painting at the University of Tennessee (2001). He was an artist in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (2003) before he earned an MFA at Yale University (2004). His work can be found in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Denver Art Museum; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; UBS Art Collection; Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation, Paris; Hall Art Foundation; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Program Participation

Painters & Sculptors Grant, 2019

Website / Social Links

Within my examinations of the ideas of twoness, desire, mourning, and identity, idiosyncratic obsessions and love interact in an ambivalent way, but also in a way that registers the complexities of the individual, and the absurdity of life's banal situations and social doctrines.”