Jackie Milad: The Beat of My Heart (Nabḍ Qalbi)

Arcadia Exhibitions is pleased to present “Jackie Milad: The Beat of My Heart (Nabḍ Qalbi)” from February 4 through April 19, 2026, in the Spruance Gallery.

From Danielle O’Steen

Jackie Milad’s artworks represent a collision of contemporary life and ancient Egyptian culture. An American artist of Honduran and Egyptian descent based in Baltimore, Milad creates monumental canvases that draw from her deep research of Egyptian antiquities at historic sites and in Western collections. She builds her paintings with layers of wildly colorful, abstract marks, personal imagery, pop culture references, and her drawings of Egyptian artifacts. Milad’s collaged paintings teem with life and Day-Glo colors, as she explores and reclaims the complicated histories around these antiquities. Her artworks act as interlocutors, in dialogue between the past, present, and future surrounding her Egyptian heritage and diasporic identity.

For the last three years, Milad has spent time studying and drawing Egyptian antiquities marooned in institutions in England and the United States. She focuses on intimate objects such as shabtis, or small figurines that were part of Egyptian burial practices for thousands of years. These ritual items were ubiquitous and placed in Egyptian tombs to serve and honor the deceased in the afterlife. The shabtis were widely looted and scattered into Western collections in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, what Milad describes as “this representation of dispersed heritage.” The artist layers her large-scale canvases with drawings of shabtis and other artifacts. Milad has also created her own contemporary shabtis—colorful, abstract figurines encrusted with jewels and crystals—that become stand-ins for their ancient predecessors.

The Beat of My Heart, translated from the Arabic Nabḍ Qalbi, brings together five of Milad’s monumental, collaged paintings with a large collection of her contemporary shabtis. The exhibition presents the artist’s encounters with her material heritage, as Milad stitches together allusions to ancient history with the color and complexity of contemporary life.

Biography 

Jackie Milad (Baltimore City, 1975) is a U.S.- based artist whose mixed-media abstract paintings and collages address the history and complexities of dispersed cultural heritage and multi-ethnic identity. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Select exhibitions include The Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, Maryland), The Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, Maryland), Academy Art Museum (Easton, Maryland), Weatherspoon Art Museum (Charlotte, North Carolina), The Mint Museum (Charlotte, North Carolina), Arthur Ross Gallery University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), and Harvey B. Gantt Center (Charlotte, North Carolina).

In 2024 Jackie Milad became a Creative Capital Grantee and the inaugural Robert W. Deutsch Foundation’s Alumni Rubys Artist Grantee. 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, Academy Art Museum, Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Library, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, Pizzuti Collection and Meta (Facebook) Open Art Program. Milad received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and her MFA from Towson University. She is currently represented by SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina and Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.