LOS ANGELES, CA.- The William H. Johnson Foundation for the Arts announced that Nicole Miller is the recipient of the 2015 William H. Johnson Prize, which annually honors an exceptional early career African American artist with an unrestricted award of $25,000. Miller, a Los Angeles based artist who has developed a powerful body of work in film and video installation, joins the company of 13 previous awardees, a wide ranging and accomplished group that includes Laylah Ali, Nadine Robinson, Edgar Arceneaux, Jennie C. Jones, and Clifford Owens, among others. New York based artist Abigail DeVille was honored as a finalist.

Nicole Miller’s work plays on the conventions of documentary film to create video portraits that challenge our ideas about representation and the construction of identity. With a keenly sensitive eye and subtle touch, Miller makes storytelling and performance the subjects of her work as much as the individuals or locations being presented. Recent projects include Anthony (2015), a video portrait of a deeply committed Jimi Hendrix impersonator performing Nina Simone’s “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life”; Death of a School (2014), a meditation on a soon-to-be shuttered school where the artist’s mother had taught; and David (2012), in which a man narrates the story of the loss of his arm as he enacts phantom limb therapy in front of a mirror.

The 2015 jury included Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, independent art writer and curator; Kathryn Kanjo, Deputy Director, Art & Programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Catherine Opie, artist and Professor of Fine Art, University of California, Los Angeles; and Robert A. Pruitt, artist and 2013 recipient of the William H. Johnson Prize.

Nicole Miller earned an MFA from the University of Southern California (2009) and a BFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (2005). She has had solo exhibitions at Ballroom Marfa; High Line, New York; Kunst Werke, Berlin; Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and LA>