Both Miehling’s sculptural practice and his modes of living have been concerned with an idea of ‘belonging-in-transience’, driven by a dual desire to be rooted in a particular location and to embrace the fluidity of nomadic movement on the other. The exhibition Searching for Belonging is informed by this duality. The starting point of the exhibition is the performance and video work ‘I Find My Way Around’ from 2020. Here, three performers in rurality explore the bodily and mental relationship to their new surroundings. Enhanced by the tension of elastic ropes attached to the bodies with climbing harnesses, they develop new physical gestures within new physical circumstances: Rolling, twisting, sitting, standing, lying, creeping. In response to that performance, Miehling developed a series of wall-based sculptures and drawings. The silhouettes of the works become architectural blueprints, in which abstractions of body shapes find their ways and (eventually) settle down.
