‘Sophie Milner has taken the viewer on a voyage sailing in and out of the female body, on a flight of the soul. The viewer feels like they are fioating in a timeless space created by the artist. This is a voyage worth taking, sailing in a distinctly feminine realm.’

‘The female form is liberated from portrayals by male painters and the male gaze. Exposure and vulnerability are part of the female experience, and Milner's painterly explorations are deeply psychological. The feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray in her reexamination of Plato's cave describes the cave as the place of origin, a cosmogonic womb. Milner's semi-transparent bodies feel like wombs, containers for a uniquely feminine history positioned outside of male dominated painterly traditions. Milner's bodies are internalized landscapes, microcosms, and containers representing the feminine psyche.’

‘Seeing Milner's semi-transparent figure fragments, the viewer feels them to be pregnant with sacred relics and histories and engaged in an act of mythological re-birthing.’

‘Each body part becomes a portal revealing an inner landscape. There is an interplay between the scenes glimpsed beneath the transparent layers in the spaces surrounding the figures and the suggestions of happenings within the forms. Inner space and outer space, macrocosm and microcosm are in dialogue.’

Extracts from Ann Mcoy’s writing on Milner for Unstitching, 2022.

Ann McCoy is an artist and critic. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, and is an Editor-at-Large at the Brooklyn Rail, a New York publication.

Download and read the full text HERE