"Only Human, Still Animal" Photograph

Born 1994, Marseille, France. Lives and works in London, United-Kingdom. 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. 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. 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.