Exhibitions
PREY / TELL : MELISSA VANDENBERG
Slocumb Galleries (ETSU) / 232 Sherrod Dr., Johnson City, TN October 1 - November 8th
Melissa Vandenberg
PREY / TELL spans roughly a decade of work, pulled together with full acknowledgement of an upcoming election. The title, a painful play on words, earnestly requests our feedback and attention.
PREY / TELL is born of both fury and bewilderment by what is worshiped and elevated through acts of commemoration. As a self-professed civil species, we are rife with rage and hypocrisy. Our hypothetical exceptionalism–a notion championed by the West, the white, and the masculine–undermines our human(e) potential. What are morals, faith, and veneration without empathy, love, and gentleness? PREY / TELL attempts to make sense of an anxious and busted world through its materiality and iconographies (icons) of reverence.
Our morals are distilled in the monuments we erect. The ways in which we offer tribute to the fallen expose profound shortcomings in our societal fabric. Here, "fallen" refers to a spectrum of loss—children lost to violence, lives lost to war, bodies deprived of autonomy, and freedoms absent through corporal and cultural colonization.
This collection of soft monuments and burn drawings explore the fragilities and fears that govern all of us—fear of death, fear of being forgotten, and perhaps the most common, fear of losing power.
Born and educated in Detroit, Melissa Vandenberg is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and curator living in Eastern Kentucky. Her work surveys a devolving socio-political landscape using myths surrounding patriotism, pride, and partisanship as points of departure. Narrowing world views and false perceptions of a "homeland" prompts creative projects that respond to bodies, prejudice, violence, and unrest. The physical works employ commonplace media—matches, fabric, handkerchiefs, flags, hangers, vases, and other familiar and domicile materials. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, and abroad in Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, Iceland, and Sweden. Melissa received a BFA in 1999 from Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan and a MFA in 2005 from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She has been the recipient of numerous grants including a Kentucky Foundation for Women Artist Enrichment Grant, the Al Smith Fellowship, Great Meadows Foundation Travel Grant, and was shortlisted for the Luxembourg Art Prize in 2016. Her work is in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, Gummifabriken in Värnamo, Sweden, 21c Museum in Louisville, KY, and the Rockwell Museum in Corning, NY. Melissa is an Associate Professor of Art at Eastern Kentucky University and Director of the EKU Giles Gallery. She is represented by Maus Contemporary in Birmingham, AL.
Exhibition is supported by the Tennessee Arts Commission and ETSU SAAC Funds in partnership with the ETSU Votes, Women's Gender & Sexuality Studies and Department of Art & Design.
