Jackie Milad

b. Baltimore, MD, 1975

Jackie Milad is a mixed-media artist whose abstract drawings and textured collages explore the layered quality of her multi-ethnic identity. Based in Baltimore City, Milad was born to an Egyptian father and a Honduran mother. She draws on the symbolism of ancient Egyptian and Mayan creation myths, as well as contemporary aesthetic influences in the form of street graffiti by young protestors in Cairo, pictures from her family, poetry fragments, and irreverent American pop cultural references. Milad often returns to the particular Egyptian and Central American Mayan objects held in western institutions as her source of inspiration. She tears images and cuts away from old works to add pieces to new ones, continually removing and revealing underlying layers of collage. This way of working metaphorically mimics historical processes of exchange and cultural hybridity.

Milad is a multi-year recipient of the Individual Artist Grant from Maryland State Arts Council. In 2019 she was named a Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalist and a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Ruby Grantee. In 2022 Jackie received the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Travel Prize to conduct in-depth research on the Egyptian antiquities held at the British Museum and Petrie Museums in London. Her work is included in several public collections, including The Baltimore Museum of Art, Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Library, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Baltimore, MD; Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD; and Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH.