Jag har skalat av mig – Melanie Kitti

Among hundreds of sculptures left behind in Carl Eldh’s (1873-1954) old studio, plaster sculptures and fresco paintings by the artist Melanie Kitti (b. 1986) are exhibited. For Carl Eldh’s Studio Museum, the artist has produced a new series of artworks that are now presented in her first exhibition in Sweden.

The bumpy surfaces of the shapeless plaster sculptures are covered by colorful paintings, executed on damp lime plaster. A bit of Hessian cloth sticks out of the plaster; the material choices reflect the materials already present in the studio since Eldh’s time. Resting atop sparsely distributed white podiums, the arrangement is reminiscent of what it might look like in a classical sculpture museum. But beneath all the layers of paint, plaster and plaster, there is an excavation of deeply personal events in a kind of art historical showdown.

Kitti’s artistry intertwines the visual arts with language, where text and painting produce fragmentary images from a landscape of dissolved bodies, divisions and memories. In contrast to Eldh’s sculptures, her work is often based on subjective experiences of grief and vulnerability, through a kind of constant, border-crossing becoming.

About the artist

Melanie Kitti (b. 1986, Sweden) is an artist and writer educated at Forfatterskolen in Copenhagen as well as the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and Kunsthøgskolen in Oslo. In 2022, her critically acclaimed debut book Halv Urne, Halv Gral was published by Gyldendal. Kitti has co-founded Abhivyakti, a non-profit magazine with only BIPOC contributors, and has co-organized the exhibition space Destiny’s in Oslo (2016-22). Kitti’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at, among others, Overgaden Copenhagen (2023), Rønnebæksholm, Næstved (2022–23), Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo (2022) and ARIEL, Copenhagen (2022).

The exhibition is curated by Caroline Malmström and Sara Bourke.