BIO
L.H.M. is an artist, filmmaker, and writer hailing from Bogota, Colombia. She has spent half of her life in Paris, France. Her moving image work circulates within art spaces and cinema events, infused with the influences of her experiences as a first-generation immigrant in Europe, her upbringing amid Colombia's 1990s violence, and her passion for storytelling. Her films blend various genres and topics, including ethnography, ecology, fiction, and history, creating immersive experiences where aesthetics and politics are intertwined.
She has held solo exhibitions at prestigious venues such as MASP Sao Paulo, Maison des Arts de Malakoff, and Medellin's Modern Art Museum. Her films have been screened in renowned art institutions, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, Jeu de Paume, Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Times Art Berlin. She has also participated in biennials like Sharjah, Liverpool, FRONT Triennial, BienalSur, Videobrasil, and Videonale. Her achievements include receiving the Emerging Artist Award from the Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO, 2018), the Salon de Montrouge-Hauts-de-Seine Prize, and the Biennale de la Jeune Création Grand Prix (2017), as well as being shortlisted for the Future Generation Artist Prize in 2019. In 2023, she became the inaugural laureate of the Ulrike Crespo After Nature Prize.
L.H.M. pursued her studies at Beaux-Arts de Paris and Le Fresnoy, earning a PhD from PSL University, a joint program with Beaux-Arts de Paris and ENS rue d'Ulm. Her practice-based PhD on "Ethnographic Fictions" was partially developed at Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab. Her films have been the focus of over twenty retrospectives and focused screenings in cinematheques, including notable venues like Toronto's TIFF Lightbox, Harvard's Film Archive, and Cinemateca de Bogota. Her work has also been showcased at prominent film festivals such as Mar del Plata and Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montreal (RIDM), in addition to art spaces. Furthermore, her films have been part of the official selections at festivals like the Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival (Wavelengths), Rotterdam, the New York Film Festival, and Cinéma du Réel, earning awards at events including the Locarno Film Festival (Best Direction Prize), FIDMarseille, Doclisboa, and Videobrasil, among others.
She has taught in various institutions, including the Escuela de Cine y Television de San Antonio de los Baños (Cuba), the Fine Arts of Cergy (ENSAPC), and the Piet Zwart Institute. Currently, she serves as the co-chair of the Film/Video department at Bard's MFA.
About the Work
“French-Colombian visual artist and filmmaker Laura Huertas Millán blends the cinematic with critical and alternative ethnographies, presenting viewers with a unique form of speculative fiction that explores subjectivity and history. Drawing from field work, relationships, autobiography, collaborations, and long-term research, her works reflect the complex realities and ecologies produced by colonialism. The artist traces alternate histories by hybridising archives, first-person accounts and myths with immersive and intuitive cinematography, taking viewers along composite narratives across foliage, time and space”.
Hoor Al Qasimi and Jiwon Lee, Sharjah Biennial 15, Thinking Historically in the Present.
”Huertas Millán’s work is varied and singular, a developing practice that has a basis in anthropology and documentary filmmaking but borrows freely from visual art (often rejecting the conventions of all three). Her films mix modes willfully, blending fictitious devices with more traditional documentary techniques, and all hold a strong regard for aesthetics, foregrounding formal concerns while emphasising the role of the camera, and indeed, the filmmaker too. They tend to involve the participants in the process, letting the (primarily female) subjects speak for themselves and allowing them to shape the direction of the story; or use quotation, found-footage, human or architectural actors to introduce extra-textual elements into the film that sit beside that which is being directly depicted”
Matt Turner, The fabric of freedom: Laura Huertas Millán’s ethnographic filmmaking, in Sight & Sound Magazine, 8 August 2019
“ To record others as they undertake this constitution of the self through speech, as Laura Huertas Millán does in works she terms “ethnographic fictions,” is to engage in a meta-discourse. Huertas Millán’s films speak about speech—about who can speak, of what, and how. She listens, creating scenarios in which her subjects relay thoughts and experiences. She asks how speech—whether linguistic or filmic—creates reality and subjectivity. The inquiry is fitting given the artist’s longstanding interest in ethnography: both ethnography and speech are, after all, forms of encounter between identity and alterity. In the works Huertas Millán has assembled for “the spring song,” the expressions of the films’ subjects and the expressions of the films themselves—each existing only by virtue of the other—mutually generate a space of fabulation and reflection. They create a forum of voicing while knowing that speech is not free; it may be more or less so, but never purely, always informed by convention, history, struggle”. (…)
Erika Balsom, Speaking into Being: The Ethnographic Fictions of Laura Huertas Millán, in The spring song. le chant du Printemps exhibition booklet (Maison des Arts, Centre d’art contemporain de Malakoff), 2018.
News
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
LACMA, Los Angeles, USA
Sep 17, 2023–Jan 21, 2024
Curator:
Artist:
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction foregrounds a robust if over-looked strand in art history’s modernist narratives by tracing how, when, and why abstract art intersected with woven textiles (and such pre-loom technologies as basketry, knotting, and netting) over the past century.
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
LACMA, Los Angeles, USA
Sep 17, 2023–Jan 21, 2024
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CV
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2017
Visual Arts Practice-based PhD, PSL University.
Dissertation: Eclats et Disparitions. Ethnographic Fictions
Committee: Alain Bonfand (Adviser), François-René Martin, Marie-José Burki, Philippe Bettinelli and Jacques Aumont.
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, École Nationale Supérieure Rue d’Ulm (SACRe program), Paris, France.2014
Visiting Fellow, Sensory Ethnography Lab and Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies Harvard University, Cambridge, USA.
2012
Master degree, summa cum laude, Le Fresnoy, studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing, France.
2009
MFA, summa cum laude, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, France. 2006 BA, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, France.
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2020
Best Film Prize, international competition, Festival Curtas Belo Horizonte,Brazil.
2018
Emerging Artist Award, Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami, USA.
Best Direction Prize, Pardo di domani competition, Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland.Best experimental film, Bogoshorts, Colombia.
Best Editing, National competition, Bogoshorts, Colombia.
Best Script, National competition, Bogoshorts, Colombia.
Shortlisted, Future Generation Art Prize, PinchuckArtCenter, Kiev, Ukraine.
2017Best Film, National Competition, MIDBO, Bogota, Colombia.
Grand Prix, Biennale de la Jeune Création Européenne (BJC), Montrouge, France.Conseil départemental des Hauts-de-Seine Prize, Salon de Montrouge, France.
2016
Grand Prix Jury’s mention, international competition, Doclisboa, Lisboa, Portugal. Grand Prix Jury’s mention, French competition, FIDMarseille, Marseille, France.
2014
Grand Prix Jury’s mention, Bienal de la Imagen en movimiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2013
Arquetopia Resartis Prize, Videobrasil Biennale, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
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2023
Sharjah Art Biennial, Works 2011-2023, Al Dhaid Old Clinic, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
2019
Video Room: Laura Huertas Millán, Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), Brazil.
2018
le chant du printemps. the spring song. Maison des Arts – Centre d’art de Malakoff, France.
2016
Ficción etnográfica. Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia.
Disappearing operations. Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, ENSBA, Paris, France.2013
Aequador, Ici, Là-bas et Lisboa (duo). Villa Arson, Nice, France.
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2023
Laura Huertas Millan: Ethnographic Fictions as Deconstruction and Reinvention, E-Flux screening room, New York, US.
2022
Laura Huertas Millan. Image Policies. Vienna Film Museum, Vienna, Austria.
2021
Ethnographic Fictions: Spotlight on Laura Huertas Millan, MUBI (online).
2019
Ethnofictions by Laura Huertas Millan. Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, USA.
Retrospective Laura Huertas Millán, Colombian Cinematheque, Bogota, Colombia.
2018
Retrospective Laura Huertas Millán. Festival de Mar del Plata, Argentina.
The ethno-fictions of Laura Huertas Millán. ICA, Londres, UK.
Ethnographic Fictions. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA.
Two films by Laura Huertas Millán. OCA, Oslo, Norway.2017
MDFF presents Laura Huertas Millán, TIFF Lightbox, Toronto, Canada. Flaherty Seminar, New York, USA.
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2023
Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Woven Histories, LACMA, Los Angeles, US.
LAC Museum, Lugano, Switzerland
Batalha Cinema Center, Porto, Portugal.
Proa Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
EMAF, Osnabrück, Germany
The Measure of the World, Radius, Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology, Delft, The Netherlands. Climate of Cinema: Isles and the Planet, Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, South Korea. Forecast Festival, Radial System, Berlin, Germany.
Seed Index, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK.2022
AnoZero, Coimbra Biennial, Coimbra, Portugal.
Belleza y devastación (Beauty and Devastation), Green Parrot, Barcelona, Spain.
Index Seminum, Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia.
Unravelling Stories: Women Artists in KADIST and Videobrasil Collections, online, Kadist.tv.2021
Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK.
One song is very much like another, and the boat is always from afar, Times Museum, Guangzhou, China.
A common breath, La Loge, Bruxelles, Belgium
Reclaiming Places, La Loge, Bruxelles, Belgium.
Ires y venires, Banco de la Republica, Bogota, Colombia.
Planted in the body, Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic.
Never spoke again, Telfair Museum, Savannah, USA.
Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany.
Crossing Currents, Galerie Nordenhake, Mexico D.C., Mexico.2020
Measures of Proximity, EKKM Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, Tallin, Estonia. Tiempos Inciertos III, Sostener las vidas, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Ethnographic Fictions, Republics Re-imagined, UnionDocs, Brooklyn, USA.
Esta Historia no es la Historia, Espacio Odeon, Bogota, Colombia.2019
The Life of Things, Momenta Biennale, Montreal, Canada.
Future Generation Art Prize. Palazzo Ca’Tron, Venice Biennale, Italy.
Future Generation Art Prize. PinchuckArtCenter, Kiev, Ukraine.
Neither Black/Red/Yellow nor Woman, Times Arts Center, Berlin, Germany.
Paroxysm of Sublime. LACE, Los Angeles, USA.
Videonale Biennial. Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany.
Here/Now, Current visions from Colombia. Framer Framed, Amsterdam, Netherlands.2018
CIFO 2018 Grants and commissions. Centro Cultural Metropolitano, Quito, Ecuador. Front Triennial. Transformer Station, Cleveland, USA.
A hole in Time. CAC La Traverse, Alfortville, France.
These hands. Western Front, Vancouver, Canada.
Nuevos Nombres. Banco de la Republica, Bogota, Colombia.
Prospectif cinéma. Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.
A la lisière du quotidien. Jeu de Paume, Paris, France.
The Flaherty Seminar. Washington Gallery of Art, USA.
Working from the future past. Seoul Art Museum (SEMA), Seoul, Korea.2015
A Decolonial Atlas. Off Biennale Cairo, Cairo, Egypt.
Unspeakable practices, unnatural acts. Ruangrupa, Jakarta, Indonesia.2014
Tropical Uncanny. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA.
Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento. Buenos Aires, Argentina.2013
Videobrasil Biennial. Sesc Sao Paulo, Brazil.
2012
Le Printemps de Septembre. ISDAT, Toulouse, France.
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2021
London Short Film Festival, UK.
2021
Rencontres Paris Berlin, 20221
2020
Berlinale - Forum Expanded, Germany.
2020
Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival, Pampelona, Spain. 2020 Mar del Plata Film Festival, Argentina
2019
Viennale, Austria.
Open City Documentary Festival, London, UK.
Festival de Nuevo cine de La Habana, Cuba.
Frames of Representation – ICA, London, UK.
RIDM - Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal, Canada.2018
Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland.
Cinéma du Réel, Paris, France.
New York Film Festival, USA.
TIFF - Toronto International Film festival, Canada.IFFR Rotterdam International Film Festival, Netherlands.
Zinebi International Film Festival, Bilbao, Spain.2017
FIDMarseille, France.
FICUNAM International Film Festival UNAM, Mexico.
DocLisboa, Portugal.
Cartagena International Film Festival, Colombia.
Torino Film Festival, Italy.