MIRANDA JULY: NEW SOCIETY

Fondazione Prada presents “Miranda July: New Society” from 7 March to 14 October 2024 at the Osservatorio, located at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan.

Curated by Mia Locks, the exhibition spans three decades, from the early 1990s until today, including short film, performance, and installation works by American artist, filmmaker and writer Miranda July. The exhibition debuts a new work called F.A.M.I.L.Y. (Falling Apart Meanwhile I Love You), a multi-channel video installation featuring July’s yearlong collaboration with seven other performers via Instagram. The exhibition uses F.A.M.I.L.Y. as a jumping off point to consider related ideas from July’s other performative and collaborative works.

fig. 1

“July’s work examines a range of human relationships and forms of intimacy,” says Locks. “Her questioning of established hierarchies and normative power dynamics is a distinctly feminist position that spans across the various media she has used in her career.” The exhibition, accompanied by a retrospective of July’s film work at Cinema Godard in Fondazione Prada, offers a unique opportunity to experience the artist’s wide-ranging oeuvre.

“I’m so honored and excited to not only share my newest work at the Fondazione Prada, but that it will be contextualized by past work from the last three decades,” remarks July. “That the museum is exhibiting my artworks at the Osservatorio and my films at Cinema Godard demonstrates a rare and special commitment to multiplicity.”

The first level of Osservatorio presents documentation from July’s earliest performances in punk clubs to major performance pieces, such as Love Diamond (1998-2000), The Swan Tool (2000-2003), Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About (2006- 2007), and New Society (2015), alongside related props, costumes and archival documents.

fig. 2

The second level presents F.A.M.I.L.Y. , as well as two other collaborative projects— I’m the President, Baby (2018) and Services (2020). There will also be a reprisal of Learning to Love You More (2000-2007), a web-based project made in collaboration with Harrell Fletcher that included 70 assignments completed by the public and uploaded to the site. Assignment #43 (“Make an exhibition of the art in your parents’ home”) will appear as part of the exhibition, completed by a local Milanese woman specifically for the exhibition.

“Miranda July: New Society” is accompanied by the screening of July’s entire filmography, which will take place at Fondazione Prada’s Cinema Godard concurrently with the show. The program includes three feature films, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), The Future (2011), and Kajillionaire (2020), and will be complemented by a selection of her short films and previously unreleased works.

To mark the opening of the exhibition, Fondazione Prada presents a new illustrated publication of the Quaderni series, featuring a conversation between Miranda July and Cindy Sherman, and an essay by exhibition curator Mia Locks.

fig. 3

Biographical notes

Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist, and writer. Raised in Berkeley, California, she lives in Los Angeles. July wrote, directed, and starred in The Future and Me and You and Everyone We Know (winner of the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance; re-released by The Criterion Collection in 2020). Her most recent movie is Kajillionaire (2020). July’s artworks include the website Learning to Love You More (with Harrell Fletcher), Eleven Heavy Things (a sculpture garden created for the 2009 Venice Biennale), New Society (a performance), Somebody (a messaging app created with Miu Miu), and an interfaith second-hand shop located in a luxury department store (presented by Artangel). A limited edition of her most recent work, Services, was produced by MACK Books in 2022. A monograph of her work to date was published in April 2020. Her books include It Chooses You, The First Bad Man, and No One Belongs Here More Than You (winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award). July’s fiction has been published in twenty-three countries and has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. Her newest novel, All Fours, is forthcoming in May 2024 from Riverhead Books. Its Italian translation will be published in June 2024 by Feltrinelli under the title A quattro zampe.

//

IMAGE CREDITS

Cover: Miranda July, Audience participants in New Society, 2015. Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. Photo by JulietaCervantes.

fig. 1: Miranda July, July, @craigmontyjames (C.M. James), and @thongria (Zoë Ligon) in F.A.M.I.L.Y. Ceiling, 2024. Still from video. Courtesy of Miranda July Studio.

fig. 2: Miranda July in The Swan Tool, 2000. Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon. Photo by Harrell Fletcher. Courtesy of Miranda July Studio.

fig. 3: Miranda July, July in Love Diamond, 1998. Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon. Courtesy Miranda July Studio.