Troy Montes Michie: Rock of Eye is an early-career survey for El Paso-born artist Troy Montes Michie (b. 1985), combining the artist’s previous collages and assemblages that center magazine images of the Black male body in addition to sculptural works that trace the social history of the zoot suit. By utilizing textiles, garments, and archival materals from newsprint to erotic magazines, Montes Michie subverts dominant narratives and investigates the ways in which bodies of marginalized communities are frequently erased, fetishized, idealized, and criminalized. With Rock of Eye, Montes Michie’s stitches suture histories and geographies; they establish thresholds for crossing. His needle hits rock.

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About the Artist

Through assemblage and juxtaposition, Troy Montes Michie (b. 1985) engages black consciousness, Latinx experience, immigration and queerness. Utilizing textiles, garments and archival paper, from newsprint to pornography, Montes Michie subverts dominant narratives by placing past and present in confrontation. Through his use of contrast patterning, a technique of camouflage, Montes Michie investigates the ways in which bodies of marginalized communities are frequently erased and fetishized. Montes Michie holds a BFA from the University of Texas at El Paso and an MFA from Yale School of Art. His works have recently been included in exhibitions at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU (Richmond), The MAC (Belfast), The Shed (New York), The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. He is currently a Lecturer of Visual Arts in Program at Princeton University.

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Image caption: Troy Montes Michie, Out of Sight, Out of Mind (detail), 2018. Magazine pages, inkjet prints, clothing patterns, fabric, graphite, acrylic, colored pencil, and tape, 62 x 52 inches. Collection of Noel E.D. Kirnon.