Tiziana La Melia

Last updated
Tiziana La Melia
Tiziana byHenderson.jpg
Born1982
Palermo, Italy
Known forPoetry, performance, painting, drawing, installation, playwright, sound art
Awards2014 RBC Canadian Painting Competition
Website http://tizianalamelia.com/

Tiziana La Melia was born in 1982 in the city of Palermo, Italy. [1] She is currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia, as a practising artist, writer, painter, and poet. [2] She works within the mediums and intersections of poetry, writing, text, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, collage, performance, and video work. Her oeuvre thematically and conceptually focuses on the intertwining thoughts she has about female archetypes, the feminine unconscious, auto-fiction, passion, and desire. [1]

Contents

Biography

Early life

Tiziana La Melia was born in Palermo, Italy, which is located on the major island of Sicily. Her family relocated to rural Winfield, British Columbia, in the Syilx Okanagan territories of Canada, when she was still a young girl. [3] Having grown up within the context of a multi-lingual family newly settling in Canada, La Melia began her creative endeavours from this very young age. Inspiration for a growing imagination found her in the form of a fascination with the quotidian. Creativity, for La Melia, came from observing everyday occurrences. [3] In a statement from La Melia in an interview with Jacqueline Ross in 2013, she reveals that growing up in a bilingual home let her notice the slippages of language – that is the playfulness of puns or inventive cross-lingual jokes. These instances became an inspiration to incorporate the use of limitations in language within her artistic practise later in life. [4]

Education

For post-secondary education, La Melia has attended both Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University of Art + Design (formerly Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design). These institutions are both located in Vancouver, Canada. In 2008, she received a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from Emily Carr. [5] After this was achieved, La Melia relocated to Guelph, Ontario, to pursue a graduate degree in Studio Art. There, she spent time developing her interdisciplinary practise at the graduate level. In 2011, La Melia received a master's degree in Fine Art, specializing in Studio Art from the University of Guelph. [5]

Exhibitions

The Eyelash and the Monochrome (exhibition)

The Eyelash and the Monochrome shares a title with the 2018 text published by Talonbooks in Vancouver. [6] The 2014 exhibition acted as a starting point for the text to be written, as it references many of the same multi-faceted themes such as Greek tragedy, teenage obsessions, the writings of Joyce Carol Oates, Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein or Yvonne Rainer. [7] The act and object of writing is often folded into La Melia's artistic practice. For example, the titles of artworks are often lines from poems, drafts, or plays. [7] Sculptures are the remnants of performances, walls are pages, paintings are also windows, and windows are doors. The work in this show functionally blurs the boundaries between artistic media, collapsing the historical hierarchies between them. [7] Instead, La Melia's exhibition cohesively glues together histories of the artist's life; including the imagined parts of it. As the title of the show and book suggests, La Melia is thinking about the presence of absence, and what nuances may spring from these interstitial spaces. [7]

Broom Emotion

Broom Emotion is a solo exhibition of La Melia's artwork curated by Frank Balland in Paris at Galerie Anne Barrault in 2017. This show, much like all her shows, takes poetics as the starting point of her artistic process. [1] In relation to Broom Emotion, Balland describes the invitational image as of a comb gliding through hair as being a central imaginative metaphor for many underlying themes of the exhibition. “It starts with the comb’s teeth, having streaked the wet hair, greased with the gel agglutinating on the wooden handle, like sticky slobber, thick foam. There is too much of it, and it leaks from the body, through its lifeless ends, pushed out by the sweep of the hand, both firm and delicate,” says Balland. [1] Broom Emotion grapples with witches, women with brooms, domestic activities, social relationships, literature, art, cinema, and dreams. [1]

The pigeon looks for death in the space between the needle and the haystack

The pigeon looks for death in the space between the needle and the haystack is the first solo exhibition by La Melia at Unit 17 in Vancouver. The show and artworks come also from a group show, Garden Gossip, at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff, Canada. [8] The exhibition contains the artwork 'Self Defense' which refers to inter-species connection and mediation between humans, plants, and animals. [8] The work is made up of a collection of painted works in basins that are all hung up on striped posts. [8] Hou describes these paintings as “haiku sized”, [9] which references La Melia's inter-disciplinary approach to art making that takes creative writing texts as central to her practice. La Melia also enlists water-jet cut mirrors within the installation that serve as a method for viewers to analyze their complicity towards self-identifying with art-objects. According to Hou, the mirrors play a central role to his reading of the exhibition because their reflections expose the fact that “our complicity with the art-object-becoming-social is embellished with personal vanity in our complicity with the viewer-becoming-more-beautiful. [9] ” The exhibition functions as a spatial poem, where the movements of any viewer may write another passage.

Written works

Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect.

Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect. is a collection of writings by La Melia that contains writings, scripts, plays, poems, experimental prose, and other forms of creative texts spanning back to the artist's early career in 2005. [10] The text was originally published in 2016 as Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect. Selected Writings 2005–2015 by Publication Studio in Vancouver, [11] but was republished in 2018 by Blank Cheque Press with additional texts and an updated foreword by the artist. [10] The texts in Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect. reference the La Melia's interests which include Hollywood cinema, literature, costume history, and insect anatomy. [10] La Melia exercises her nuances understanding of dialects between language and vibration, emotions and signifiers. Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect. expresses the texture of speaking, the vibration of meaning, and the pulses of language. [10]

The Eyelash and the Monochrome (book)

The Eyelash and the Monochrome is La Melia's first major collection of poetry, published in 2018 by Talonbooks in Vancouver. [6] This book shares a title with the 2014 exhibition at the Mercer Union Gallery in Toronto. The title of the text describes an image of writer's block that plagued La Melia during the process of writing a text to accompany her 2013 exhibition entitled ‘Lot’ in Vancouver. The title evokes the image of an empty document on a computer screen, the only content is the blinking cursor. [2] This cursor, which La Melia imagines as being the length of an eyelash, ‘blinks’ endlessly and repetitiously until it becomes the taunting wink of the computer itself. [2] The collection of poems evokes this image by weaving together various forms of writing that may not traditionally be considered to amalgamate into a cohesive literary structure. However, the book gathers poems, performative texts, images, illustrations, and parallel texts. The Eyelash and the Monochrome is a genre defying text that functions both as a collection of poetry as well as an artist book. [6]

Selected group exhibitions

Selected solo exhibitions

Awards and residencies

2014 RBC Canadian Painting Competition (National Winner)

La Melia was selected as the national winner above fourteen other finalists of the 16th Annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition, a title which is also accompanied by $25 000 purchase prize of her artwork. [12] The work which was selected and purchased is entitled Hanging On To the Part, which moved the jury because of the work's use of abstraction and narrative to portray the mythology of feminine archetypes as well as personal narratives – all within the formal qualities of the painting. [12] Jill Burch, the CEO of the Canadian Art Foundation and publisher of Canadian Art magazine at the time, said the following in regard to La Melia's award, “With a mandate to create greater visibility and appreciation for Canada’s extraordinary artistic talent – both at home and abroad – the Canadian Art Foundation is thrilled to partner with RBC on this initiative… This year’s winners will no doubt continue to do us proud in the years ahead. [12] "

2015 Sobey Art Award Longlist Recipient (West Coast & Yukon)

La Melia was nominated to represent the West Coast & Yukon for the 2015 Sobey Art Award in Canada. [13] The Sobey Art Award is an annual award that celebrates Canada's most exciting young artists and provides heavy financial support to the winners. The top prize winner receives a $100 000 award, each of the shortlisted artists receive a $25 000 award, and the longlisted artists receive a $2 000 award. [14] This award is one of the most impactful awards for young contemporary artists in Canada, and provides much visibility and publicity for both the artists as well as the Arts in an international context. [14]

La Melia partook in the Artist in Residency program at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, in Grande Prairie, Alberta. The exhibition, which was produced as a product of the residency, was entitled Rust Daughters, Say It With Flowers. [15] The show was concerning the feminine unconscious of the spaces and histories of the Peace Region of Northern Alberta. Specifically, La Melia explores the relationship of Euphemia McNaught and Evy McBryan and their impact on the historical artistic community of the region. [15] With these histories as inspirational research for the show and artworks, La Melia produces Corduroy Road which uses the technique of frottage and rubbing to transfer the indexical history of the space into La Melia's own practise. The act of frottage becomes a writing tool. It is an imprint of time and space that unveils the hidden language of the unwritten, the unread, and the still to be written. [15]

Listed notable awards and residencies

Related Research Articles

Germaine Koh is a Malaysian-born and Canadian conceptual artist based in Vancouver. Her works incorporate the artistic styles of neo-conceptual art, minimalism, and environmental art, and is concerned with the significance of everyday actions, familiar objects and common places.

The Sobey Art Award is Canada's largest prize for young Canadian artists. It is named after Canadian businessperson and art collector Frank H. Sobey, who established The Sobey Art Foundation. It is an annual prize given to an artist 40 and under who has exhibited in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated. A jury consisting of an international juror and representatives of galleries from the West Coast and the Yukon, the Prairies and the North, Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces creates a longlist of 25 artists, five from each region. The jury meets to select the winner and four other finalists, one from each region.

Mireille Eagan is a Canadian arts writer and curator.

Divya Mehra is a Canadian artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Mehra's work deals with her diasporic experiences and historical narratives. As reminders of the realities of displacement, loss, and oppression, she incorporates found artifacts and readymade objects. She received the Sobey Art Award, presented annually by the National Gallery of Canada, in 2022.

The RBC Canadian Painting Competition was an open competition for emerging Canadian artists that was established in 1999. The RBC Canadian Painting Competition is supported by the Canadian Art Foundation, the publisher of Canadian Art (magazine). Initially naming three regional winners, since 2004 there were one national winner and two honourable mentions. The first two competitions had only winner and runner-up. The competition had 15 finalists, five from three regions in Canada, Eastern Canada, Central Canada (Ontario), Western Canada. Three regional juries convened to determine one national winner and two honourable mentions from the 15 finalists. The national winner received a purchase prize of $25,000, the two honourable mentions each received $15,000 and the remaining 12 finalists receive $2,500 each. The winning work and the honourable mentions became part of the RBC Corporate Art Collection which holds more than 4,500 works. In 2016, 586 works were submitted. In 2008 an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal provided an overview of the first ten years of the competition. The RBC concluded the RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2019.

Amalie Atkins is a Canadian artist making use of film, fabric-based sculpture and performance. She currently resides in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arabella Campbell</span> Canadian artist

Arabella Campbell is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia in 1996, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2002. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute from 1998 to 2000. She has exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. She works out of a warehouse studio in False Creek Flats, Vancouver.

Brenda Draney is a contemporary Cree artist based in Edmonton, Alberta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeneen Frei Njootli</span>

Jeneen Frei Njootli is an interdisciplinary Vuntut Gwitchin artist known primarily for their work with sound and textiles, performance, fashion, workshops, and barbeques.

Allison Hrabluik is a visual artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her practice primarily involves video, experimental film and animation. Her practice is informed by literature, narrative, and storytelling and she often utilizes traditional mediums such as collage, sculpture, and print media.


Lucie Chan is a visual artist born in Guyana, who is now based in Canada. Her artwork employs various techniques including large-scale drawings-based installation and animation focusing on such themes as cultural confusion, the transient nature of human connections, and shape-shifting identity.

Cecily Nicholson is a Canadian poet, arts administrator, independent curator, and activist. Originally from Ontario, she is now based in British Columbia. As a writer and a poet, Nicholson has published collections of poetry, contributed to collected literary works, presented public lectures and readings, and collaborated with numerous community organizations. As an arts administrator, she has worked at the Surrey Art Gallery in Surrey, British Columbia, and the artist-run centre Gallery Gachet in Vancouver.

Evelyn Roth is a Canadian born interdisciplinary artist who has worked across the arts in textiles, sculpture, performance, dance and interactive fabric arts. Specialising in environmentally sensitive events, festivals, school programs and art gallery exhibits. Roth is based in the town of Maslin Beach, on South Australia's Fleurieu Peninsula.

Luanne Martineau is a contemporary, multimedia Canadian artist best known for her hand-spun and felted wool sculptures. Her work engages with social satire as well as feminist textile practice.

Joseph Tisiga is a multi-disciplinary artist and a member of the Kaska Dena Nation. He lives and works in Montreal, Quebec.

Maureen Gruben is a Canadian Inuvialuk artist who works in sculpture, installation and public art.

Anne Low is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Montreal, Canada. She uses sculpture, installation, textiles and printmaking to explore the relationship of historical contexts of contemporary functional objects and themes that occur, such as the domestic and the decorative. Her works highly focus on the physicality of an object and utilize her historic knowledge of weaving and various methodologies.

Zadie Xa is a Korean-Canadian visual artist who combines sculpture, painting, light, sound, and performance to create immersive multi-media experiences. Drawing inspiration from fields such as ecology, science fiction, and ancient religions, her work explores how beings imagine and inhabit their worlds. Her work is centered on otherness and is informed by personal experience within the Korean diaspora, as well as by environmental and cultural contexts of the Pacific Northwest.

Maggie Groat is an artist and educator who lives in Canada. She received her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Guelph in 2010. Groat has taught at the University of Guelph, University of Toronto, and at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she was the Audain Artist Scholar in Residence in 2014.

Aleesa Cohene is a Canadian visual artist based in Los Angeles.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Balland, Frank (April 2017). "Tiziana La Melia: Broom Emotion" (PDF). Galerie Anne Barrault.
  2. 1 2 3 Prata, Rosie (7 January 2015). "Tiziana La Melia's Winking References". canadianart. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  3. 1 2 Kopp, Céline (April 2018). "Tiziana La Melia: Cursing our edge" (PDF). CodeSouthWay.
  4. ↑ Ross, Jacqueline (April 2013). "Rehearsal for a Poem: Tiziana La Melia in Conversation with Jacqueline Ross" (PDF). Cmagazine. 117.
  5. 1 2 Cooper Cole Gallery. "TIZIANA LA MELIA". Cooper Cole. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 Talonbooks. "The Eyelash and the Monochrome". Talonbooks. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Mercer Union. "The Eyelash and the Monochrome". Mercer Union. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  8. 1 2 3 Unit 17. "Unit 17: Tiziana La Melia". Unit 17. Retrieved 1 March 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  9. 1 2 Hou, Julian. "GLAMOUR GRAMMAR" (PDF). Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  10. 1 2 3 4 after8books. "Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect". after8books. Retrieved 1 March 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  11. ↑ Book Machine (18 March 2016). "Tiziana La Melia: Oral Like Cloaks, Dialect launches Tuesday March 22". Book Machine. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  12. 1 2 3 4 RBC. "Vancouver's Tiziana La Melia wins 16th Annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition". RBC. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  13. 1 2 National Gallery of Canada. "Sobey Art Award – Past Awards". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  14. 1 2 National Gallery of Canada. "Sobey Art Award – About". National Gallery of Canada. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Art Gallery of Grande Prairie. "Tiziana La Melia". aggp. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.