Nicole Miller (artist)

Nicole Miller's most noted work “The Conductor”[5] is a piece that speaks to a spectrum of emotion. The piece is silent, as an African-American man in a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt moves in a way such to act as if conducting a musical piece.[6] The silence of the piece however, gives "The Conductor" another life, beyond just how you feel when you watch a man conducting silence.[6] The silence creates a call back to silent movies, and even farther with the animation behind the man's movements it almost gives the piece a minstrel quality.[7] Miller has said about the piece herself that "[she] became very excited by the prospect of having a figure of authority—a conductor—who is also a performer that refuses to be placed in any one instant of any recognizable character."[8] This statement also sheds light to the idea that this piece is supposed to make you feel, and you could potentially relate it back to its minstrel quality, in that the minstrels of reconstruction, took away the identity of the African American people as whole, blanketing them as one group, and one way. But this piece is in a direct opposition to that America, as the Conductor refuses to be placed in one character, reclaiming power over self and the identity of a culture in a way. The idea that a conductor belongs within a structure can also be seen as a metaphor for culture. A lot of Miller's works speak to a self with in structure or as a part of a structure.[8]

Overall Miller's works speak to ideas of race, and the place of racial history in today's world. Her pieces often have people speaking to past events, watching an event happen over something (a structure), or are a call back to the past in some way. All with deep roots in her African American culture, and ideas surrounding "self" and structure.[8]