NADA Miami 2021

Melissa is a material artist, therefore connecting to an object’s presence is important to her process. In her 20s she was trained as a textile designer, which has broad applications but was a language that felt natural to a childhood found object maker like her. Humans’ connection to textiles and the relationship textiles have to body and memory are so compelling. Fabrics hold the form of the body long after being removed. They become emotional and political spaces, which is content that she could mine forever. In her work, Melissa often start with Indian silk that is part of the material memory of her childhood and late father. He wore this material often. She print photographs from family archive onto the silk and then use needles and wet felting to create interventions or distortions to the imagery so that it more accurately reflects her lived experiences and memory.