Millie Brown, “Rainbow Body”
Stary Browar, Poznan, Poland
performance installation

Rainbow Body was a durational performance installation by Millie Brown presented beneath the glass dome of Stary Browar — a five-day, five-hour-per-day meditative action that transformed the public atrium into a space of stillness, endurance and heightened perception. Known for her work with the Marina Abramović Institute and for performances exploring vulnerability, transformation and the limits of the body, Brown approached Rainbow Body as a ritual of presence.

For the duration of the installation, she remained seated in a meditative state directly under the dome, immersed in natural light that shifted across the hours. The architecture became part of the performance: the vertical clarity of the space, the resonance of footsteps around the atrium, the slow accumulation of attention from passers-by. The work unfolded not through overt movement, but through the subtle, continuous act of holding the body in concentration.

Rainbow Body referenced the Tibetan concept of dissolving matter into pure light — a symbolic transition between the physical and the energetic. Brown treated the space as a vessel for this transformation, allowing her breath, posture and stillness to become the material of the work. The colours suggested by the title were not literal pigments but imagined, internal chromatic states evoked by the viewer’s own perception.

The installation challenged the tempo of a commercial and cultural centre. In a place defined by circulation, sound and consumption, Brown introduced an opposite force: absolute slowness. Visitors encountered the work in passing or through deliberate return, witnessing the body as a site of discipline, fragility and focus. The performance invited them into a suspended moment — an encounter with presence stripped of spectacle.

Rainbow Body at Stary Browar was both a public meditation and a sculptural gesture, a temporary reconfiguration of the space into a chamber of attention. It positioned the artist’s body as an instrument of perception and offered viewers an unexpected experience of quiet intensity at the heart of the city.