Melody Hesaraky
Melody Hesaraky is a performance artist, photographer, printmaker, bodypainter, filmmaker, and textile designer who has exhibited in major cities such as New York, London, Barcelona, Istanbul, San Francisco, and Düsseldorf, Germany. Her most recent exhibitions include dual shows at West Chelsea Contemporary Gallery in New York as well as a solo feature at Decollage Art Space in Istanbul. Melody has been published by the New York Times as well as Flair and Vanity Teen Magazines. She completed two international artist residencies recently in India and Portugal at Kriti Gallery and RAMA Studios.
Although Melody works in a variety of mediums and methods, her most fascinating works tend to be her performance art and printmaking, which will be the focus of the article. If not using herself, Melody tends to direct models into various poses against staged backdrops. She paints the models with body paint and assembles props or set design to compliment the performance, which become documented through photography. The printmaking fuses with textile design as they are screenprinted on sheets of cotton with some integration of painting. Each performance has a specific concept such as emotions connected to body movement, turning women into living paintings, or the brutality and endless bloodshed of war.
While breaking taboos around nudity, the models within the performances interact with their environment through engagement with props, paint, or backdrop surface. The lingering depiction of death sometimes becomes represented through skulls and splattered red paint. These performances imbue a primal, ancient spirit offering a reclamation of our natural inclinations as human beings. Typically portrayed in enclosed spaces, the works reflect the isolation of the pandemic. The artist brings her drawings to life by scribing and painting them onto her models, conforming to their anatomy and stretching out their bodies in poses as expressive as the artworks themselves.
A Day With Melody Hesaraky (pictured above) probably remains Melody’s most reflective work because of the autobiographical and inner psychological depictions. The performance has Melody signaling to the audience to stop and observe or dance in amusement. In the backdrop remains artworks by the artist and drips of red dye on her dress representing death with the words “stop killing” written on posted paper. An ecological and anti-war piece with demands to cease the slaughter of people and animals, A Day with Melody Hesaraky remains a rebellious piece expressing the artist’s concerns for the global community.
Melody Hesaraky explores the expressive nature of fusing ink and the written word as stage props with actors, leaving a thoroughly dramatic, theatrical performance. Her direction in performance art as well as her textile printmaking reveals an artist dedicated to saturation and intricacy simultaneously, metaphorically and literally. The actors interact with their environments and pose with a sense of authenticity as if comfortable with their guidance by the director. Her performative works contain dialogue without words, relying on body language and the organic flow of the ink and paint on her subjects to signal to the audience personal interpretations. A thoroughly gifted and brilliant artist, Melody Hesaraky presents theatrics through minimal communication and interactions which leave a lasting mark in their unique set design.
