A 27-year-old artist spends her time making the world a brighter place by vomiting rainbows.
The U.K. born Millie Brown expressionist adds color to her life through her work, which involves drinking colored soy milk and then regurgitating the substance onto white canvases.
Brown’s eccentric artistry began in 2005 and has since gained the attention of Lady Gaga and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. She can be seen vomiting shimmering turquoise liquid over Lady Gaga in her music video for “Exorcist Interlude,” which was widely used throughout Gaga’s Monster’s Ball Tour.
Although the vomiting visionary has been praised for her craft, and her artistry has even drawn comparisons to that of expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, there persists a lingering concern as to how this could affect her health.
Prior to each performance, Brown starves herself for two days as a means of cleansing her system, which she finds to be both “fascinating” and “inspiring.” As a vegan, Brown claims that the strains she submits her body to aren’t threatening to her health, the Daily Mail reported.
“It’s definitely not recommended to put your body through this, but I’m generally a healthy person so I feel like that balances out the rest,” Brown said.
However, some UT students would care to disagree.
“The fact that she thinks starving herself and inducing vomiting once a month is okay is ridiculous,” junior nursing major Danielle Drouin said.
Drouin continued to say that the act of vomiting is horrible in itself, let alone starvation. The nursing student explained that repetitive vomiting “dehydrates you and the acid from your stomach destroys the lining of your esophagus and mouth and erodes the enamel on your teeth.”
“Over time it depletes your body’s electrolytes, destroys your esophagus beyond repair and can eventually lead to brain damage, although this chick is probably already brain damaged if she thinks this is okay for her body,” Drouin said.
With this in mind, it’s difficult not to question Brown’s actions for the sake of art.
Samantha Gatelaro, a freshman at UT, pointed out that Brown could achieve the same effect by using traditional methods–paint and a paintbrush.
Although the art major did admit that Brown’s work is “weird but cool,” she attributted this to the fact that the process by which Brown creates her paintings is shocking.
“My parents always told me art is about getting a reaction, whether it’s positive or negative. If you read the description and it says that [Brown] threw this up, then you’re like ‘What?! What just happened?’ Then you’ve got a reaction,” Gatelaro said.
Shock art, which is contemporary art that incorporates disturbing imagery, sound or scents, much like Brown’s, isn’t anything new.
“[Brown’s] not the first one to do something like this. People have pushed boundaries long, long ago,” associate professor of art Chris Vale said.
Vale specializes in painting and uses classical and experimental approaches. He is currently exploring themes in contemporary art with his students that pertain to the human body and how it has been used throughout history.
According to Vale, shock art was a trend that was popular throughout the ‘90s, but it eventually transpired. Artists such as Chris Ofili flourished during this period because his work had substance. Some of Ofili’s pieces addressed fertility and made use of materials like elephant dung, which was symbolic of his African roots.
“That’s what’s missing from Brown’s work. There’s no meaning to it. There’s no issues being addressed. It’s pretty gimmicky,” Vale said.
Kai Miller can be reached at kai.miller@spartans.ut.edu