In her meticulously constructed videos, VLM conjures a surreal and idiosyncratic visual vocabulary, frequently populated by oozing cheese Danishes, animated ponytails, and manicured hands. Her practice bears the influence of her work as a graphic facilitator, a job for which she traveled the country to diagram the development of ideas at group meetings and conferences, often for corporate clients. In her work as an artist, VLM turns this skill, which she described as “mind map scribing,” inwards, rendering the contours of her own subconscious and the logic of her dreams and memories.

In 2019, the New Museum presented “Screens Series: Virginia Lee Montgomery”, a selection of videos, in which certain visual motifs—revolving drills, video glitches, prodding digits, reaching limbs, and dripping viscous liquids—recurred in different contexts. Collectively, these forms and gestures ruptured material surfaces, opening up portals to unknown ends. The exhibition was part of the museum’s Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists and was curated by Kate Wiener, of Education and Public Engagement Curatorial Assistant.