Elizabeth Milton

Elizabeth Milton is a performance and media artist who lives as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations in Vancouver, Canada. Her video and photo-based works utilize absurdist character-play and camp materiality to explore identity and affect. Involving a range of participants, from family members to opera singers, her interdisciplinary and collaborative works aim to critically investigate the visual language and power structures of amateur spectacle. Through hyperbolic expressivity, comedic excess and processes of endurance, Milton examines the performative potential of maximalist femininity, novelty store glamour and the garish refuse of commercial culture.

Her work has been exhibited and performed in Canada, The United States and Europe at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Artspeak, Access Gallery, the Grunt Gallery, VIVO Media Arts Centre, the Western Front (Vancouver); the Surrey Art Gallery; the Nanaimo Art Gallery; Gallery TPW, Nuit Blanche (Toronto); Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts (Winnipeg); Neutral Ground (Regina); Deconstrukt Projects (Brooklyn), Dynasty Handbag’s Weirdo Night (Los Angeles) and Altes Finanzamt (Berlin).

Milton holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of British Columbia and a BFA in Visual Art from Simon Fraser University. She is a faculty member in the Department of Fine Arts at Langara College where she instructs studio courses in Media and Performance.