Melanie Christine
Melanie's work stems from a fascination for semiotics and textures. She derives inspiration from the origin of words, leading to an exploration into the multitude of meanings and contexts that a word can hold, using etymology, image or word assimilations, oxymorons and assonances.
Through her video-performances, sculptural work, installations and drawings, she crafts a collection of both visual and audiovisual artefacts that allude to our relationship to the object, the meaning and the use we assign to it, occasionally employing détournement; the art of manipulating something that has already be done.
THE ARTIST
Melanie Christine
BLOB
Bronze, Wood, 2019
'Blob' is an embodiment of the notions of humility, vulnerability, insecurity, and self-consciousness. The sculpture is an attempt at outlining the feelings of her generation about 21st century insecurity, the absurdity of the cult and obsession of image, the importance of physical appearance (and its malleability), whether it is on social media or in real life; a burden enforced by modern Western media.
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THE PROCESS
It is the desacralisation of something to give birth to something else. Our understanding of the world relies a lot on dichotomies; we naturally judge, classify and discriminate. What stains, what is impure or corrupted causes visceral responses such as anxiety, fear, disgust and fascination
Melanie Christine
ONLY HUMAN STILL ANIMAL
Soap, Hair , Clay
2020
Strongly attached to this matter and involving both personal experiences as well as public issues, Melanie's body of work focuses on the notions of domesticity, intimacy, the body, and dirt being matter out of place, obsessively avoided or discarded.
With her practice, Melanie Christine responds to and challenges order, codes and presumptions, and invites the reader to embark on a poetic journey, shifting the balance between the controlled and the chaotic, the sterile and the viscous.
Melanie Christine
PARASITE
Plaster, soil, crassulal ovata 2020
On the cyclical essence of Nature and parasitism: Claiming the Earth as our realm, we took over Nature, damaged our lands and harmed wildlife and flora. We tend to ignore or conceal the fact that we produce complex and toxic man-made waste to get rid of natural waste. The more we embrace the hyperclean rituals that Western culture requests from us, the more we kill our planet and its biodiversity. Who's the parasite?
Melanie Christine
SOAP FILM (stills)
2020
'Soap' is a collection of 15 stills from a 3-minutes film. The breaking-down of the video in single stills, which follow each other chronologically, stretches the perception of duration regarding the act of handwashing; Even more relevant in these strange times, when a serious virus is still wreaking havoc, the choreographic ensemble seeks to foreground the utmost importance of the act, while subtly turning its incidental dullness into an invitation for contemplation.
Melanie Christine
A PERFECT WASH (stills)
2020
​'A-Perfect Wash!' is the first video featuring Boneca Melucci. Her character is informed by the substance of the pieces she features in. Working with the resistance of the not completely solid, not completely liquid, sticky substance opens up to the principles of leakiness, concept disrupting symbolic order, embodying the chaotic. From symbols of status and wealth to germ-theory, the notion of dirt remains ambiguous, relative, and still inherent to systemic value.
