Fountain I, 2022. Photography by Maria Baranova. Courtesy Miles Greenberg and Worthless Studios, New York
In conversation, Miles Greenberg uses the word “ecstatic” to describe his experience of performing. I ask him if he means leaving his regular way of living to enter another state and he replies: “In fact, it may be instasy rather than ecstasy. When I perform, I feel every cell of my body and I am connected to the cosmos at the same time.”
This neologism provides a key to his work — and to contemporary life and art-making as a whole. As a culture, we have often thought of ecstasy as a transcendence of the self. Miles reminds us that, as you leave your body, you also open yourself to the greatest awareness of the physical self.
He is keenly aware of body politics: the politics of the Black body, the politics of the classical body, how the two intertwine and contradict one another at the same time. However, he does not want his work to be
