Melania Toma GBA

ARTIST STATEMENT

Melania Toma is an Italian multi-disciplinary artist living and working in London. At the center of her practice lies the exploration of the narrative subjectivity - intersubjective we, within traversing webs of gender, power hierarchies, and ecological degradation. 

These intersectional analyses include the often less visible ‘intimate’ scales, such as concepts of hybrid femininity, structures of domesticity, and the possibilities of the transformative power of the self. She questions the palimpsest of colonial ideologies and narratives that are necessarily linked to them, through research that highlights the theme of collecting as a practice. She creates works that serve as trans-morphing objects not only rooted in one geographical place and culture but as interconnected process around the notion of cure. 

Language and our possibility to communicate with the pluriversal realities are at the center of her latest production. Lead by the desire to make this interaction, she carries a visual semantic research that plays with the double forces of construction-deconstruction of the real. The work she produces is a manifestation of this process of translation. Her work seems to address  a fictual-nomadic space where childhood-world imaginary and ancestral symbols are merged with personal stories, icons, inner voices and myths.

Toma conceives of these works as trans-morphing, ghost-hybrid creatures whose extrinsic power crosses the boundaries between the individual and the collective. These embodiments are questioning the schisms of biomedicine inside post-human beings that are profoundly linked with the social-environmental context and the unseen realm of spirits.

CV

 
2023

Studio Response, Saatchi Gallery London, 21 December- 21 Jan 2024

Sistema Tempo, MO.CA: Centro Per Le Nuove Culture, Brescia, IT, 20th Nov – 20th Dic

MATTER , Flowers Gallery, London Uk, 9th Sept - 4th Nov

As Soon as the Sun Sets, (Solo), Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London, UK, 27th Sept-1rst Nov

Soft Monuments, Frestonian Gallery, London, UK 29th Jun - 29th Jul


2 for 1: a dialogue with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals,Thorp Stavri, HAZE, Hypha Studios, London, UK 15th Jun - 08 Jul 

London Design Biennale, Italian Pavilion with Triennale Milano, Somerset House, London, UK 1rst Jun - 25th Jun

Dopo il fuoco, sotto la cenere, Condotto48, Roma, IT
18 Mar - 15 Apr

Casa Wabi. Artist in residence, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, MX 08th Feb - 10th May 

From the Rattle, FOLD Gallery, London 11th Jan- 11th Feb 2023


2022

In the Garden, San Mei Gallery, London, 17th Dec- 30th Dec

Ingram Prize, UNIT 1 Gallery, London 23th Nov - 29th Nov

Cabin UTROBA (Solo), Sarieva Gallery, Plovdiv, Bulgaria 04 Oct- 29 Oct

Pigeon Park 2, Pigeon Park Project, Manor Place, London 7 Sept – 26 Oct

17th International Triennial of Tapestry of Poland, Lodz 2022
10 Oct 2022 – 10 April 2023

Nocturnal Creatures, White Chapel Gallery and SZN: Summer, SEASON, London, UK 23 Jul – 10 Sept 2022


Daughters of Pacha, Roksanda Ilcic, London, UK 10 Jul– 10 Aug 2022

2021

The Dinner Table, San Mei Gallery, London, UK 8 Dec - 23 Dec 2021

 

London Grads Now.21, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK 4 Nov 2021 - 16 Jan 2022

Postcards from Isolation, Archaeological Museum Innsbruck 4 Nov - 6 Nov

Unknown Observers, Sotheby’s Institute of Arts, The Cookhouse London 13 Oct-16 Oct

 

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, Uk 22 Sept 2021 - 2 Jan 2022

Venice meets Linz, Edition Doppelpunkt, The Contraband Collection, Linz, AT
3 Sep- 16 Sep

THERIACA, The Contraband Collection VeniceEdition, Metaforte, Venice, IT
25 June -4 July

 

STAYING WITH THE TROUBLE, l’etranger and Desmond&Austin Fine Arts, London, UK 12 April - 28

Apr

DEEP CUT, Asylum Chapel, Peckham, London, UK 4 Mar - 5 Mar

2020


CLAY, TJ Boulting, London, UK
28 Aug – 30 Sep

EDUCATION

Master Degree Fine Arts, Chelsea College, UAL, London, 2021

Graduate Diploma Fine Arts, Chelsea College, London, 2020

Bachelor Degree in Conservation of Cultural Heritage and Performing Arts Management, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy 2019

Erasmus Program: Kunstgeschichte, Universität Wien, AU, 2018