In ‘The Balcony’, Wardell Milan explores the absurdity of politics, social and political structures, power dynamics and spectatorship and how these forces affect one’s personal existence. The portfolio’s title is an allusion to the relationship between performer and spectator in a theatre setting. Milan imagines the viewers observing the action ‘as if they are sitting above in a balcony watching the melodrama unfold before them.’ In his work the human bodies themselves become stages on which questions of gender, race, sexuality and power are being negotiated.

Milan spent the first days in the studio working on preliminary drawings, using images from newspapers or magazines as references for the compositions he would later execute on copper plates. He then transferred these drawings into line etchings while simultaneously experimenting with other intaglio printing techniques which he then incorporated into his etchings. The result is a suite of prints executed in a range of grey tones, pattern and line work, employing time-honoured printmaking techniques to create decidedly contemporary, politically charged visual narratives.