Security Guard is based on an email I received from my now deceased father while he was bored at work. He was employed as a security guard for a company that worked under government contracts. The piece is part of a larger series (Whatever Comes to Mind) which conveys a number of relatively common yet absurd and Kafkaesque situations in the United States for the working class. The precarity of the everyday is communicated through rambling, humor, and great detail about the mundane activities of working. A digital picture frame can display sentimental memories but in this instance it becomes the storyteller, the embodiment of my father, sitting around, slowly telling his story while killing time at work. The security guard will be ‘on duty’, working overtime, during the exhibition.
About the artist:
https://www.nicolemmiller.com/
From Baltimore (United States)
Currently lives and works in Småland.
My latest works explore my interest in archives and the concepts of work and play. I enjoy how both activities are entangled with absurdity and seriousness. This fascination, as a byproduct, often leads to investigations of systems of control and acts of rebellion. I like to look into subtle variations and nuanced meanings in mundane activities, ruminating on otherwise insignificant moments – moments that pass leaving materials, people, and memories that slowly change and/or disappear.
