The Beat of My Heart, translated from the Arabic Nabḍ Qalbi, brings together five of Jackie Milad’s (2024 Awardee) 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.

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 19th and 20th 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.