MELANIE DANIEL
SHAKING THE LAND AN INTERVIEW
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SHAKING THE LAND AN INTERVIEW WITH ARTIST MELANIE DANIEL MARCH 2022 'A FAINT EARTHLY BREATH' EXHIBITION AT GALLERI CHRISTOFFER EGELUND BY STEPHANIE STRØYER
“I use a psychedelic, non-naturalistic palette to describe imagined future narratives… I love color and it doesn’t hurt to use it as a confrontational tool.” Canadian born artist Melanie Daniel has been working across the globe. She is widely represented in exhibitions and collections internationally and for the first time represented with a solo exhibition in Denmark. In acidic colors her work explores futuristic scenarios where the natural world has undergone severe change as a consequence of global heating and environmental pollution. Read the interview below to explore the story behind her work and how the world is slowly turning into the universe that Daniel portrays.
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THE EXHIBITION Q: As an artist you are represented across the world from Tel Aviv to the U.S. but this is your first solo exhibition in Denmark! Your work explores daily life in an almost apocalyptic near future where the figures of your paintings try to regain some sort of normal existence. The exhibition ‘A Faint Earthly Breath’ opens shortly after the UN has released their newest alarming report, which indicates that your subject is more relevant than ever. Can you tell me a little more about the thoughts that went into the process of this particular exhibition? A: First, I must say that I’m very excited to be exhibiting in Copenhagen for the first time! Deciding on a title for this show was difficult. I wanted a name that would reflect the vulnerability of our warming planet, but mainly to recall the silence that follows a storm or turbulent period. Whereas titles for my previous shows indicated a fallout or after-effect of some catastrophic event, (After the Flood, Only Four Degrees, Goin’ Where the Climate Suits My Clothes), 'A Faint Earthly Breath' is rooted in the present. It is about taking a deep breath, pausing, smelling the trees and the dirt, and listening to the breathing of the land.
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THE COLOR
A: A few years ago, art critic Megan Abrahams characterized my work as “Emily Carr on acid.” I thought that was great! I use a psychedelic, non-naturalistic palette to describe imagined future narratives. In previous shows, I pictured environmental collapse through a spectrum of neon pinks and electric teal and radioactive orange. With color being so dominant in many of these works, they take on a declarative position. I have to say that I see a kind of chromophobia that runs through much of Western visual culture— color denotes something lurid, less serious, while the absence of color is seen as indicative of a deeper intellectual engagement. I love color and it doesn’t hurt to use it as a confrontational tool. Along with color, the paintings almost always have a dense markmaking, fusing abstraction and figuration together. I find that painterly propositions always seem more interesting than direct documentary realism.
Q: When seeing your work for the first time, the exploration of the natural world by means of a psychedelic palette might very well be the first thing that jumps out. You yourself have described the colors as retina scorching. To me, this very distinct color scheme of bright and vivid hues contains the possibility of being both paradisiacal and dystopian. What initially brought you to work with this palette?
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THE MIGRATION
Q: You have been developing your voice as an artist while also living an itinerant life, living and working in both Israel, Canada and the U.S. How do you think this history of migration is expressed in your work?
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
A: Sometimes I wake up at night and I’m not sure where I am. Being somewhat nomadic has afforded me with a perspective that whittles away the expendables. I’ve learned to mobilize quickly, with a family (pardon the military reference, but I feel like an officer when organizing my family) and to get my bearings and not waste time thinking about the past. But the immigrant experience is a whole other bizarre thing. I feel that I fiercely belong to two separate worlds and to neither. This feeling must have trickle down into my studio at some point. I have often incorporated conflicting cultural motifs, referencing Canadian landscape painting embedded with unlikely designs or iconography. While these themes co-exist side-by-side, they are never happily fused and always irreconcilable. Whether through conditions of war, social unrest, political turmoil or environmental catastrophe, the human figures in my paintings hover in a state of estrangement from their surroundings, or they are camouflaged, ghostly.
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THE TECHNIQUE
Q: I would love to dive a little deeper into your artistic technique and the way you start a painting. I am curious about the link between your exploration of the organic and natural world and your technique of letting one painting grow out of another by pouring pigments and mixes from preceding painting onto the canvas. It almost carries a reminiscence of cell division or parthenogenesis. Do you feel that there is a poetic quality to this technique or has it been more of an aesthetic choice?
A: That’s a great analogy, the parthenogenesis! Studio work is a solitary vocation and can sometimes seem like self-sustaining organism, but it really isn’t autonomous at all. Art begets art - ideas spring from existing knowledge. The ova don’t fertilize themselves, but become combined with other elements from the greater world. Actually, on the other hand, there is something to what you said because when I work intensely, I surround myself with my new paintings so that I can quote from them and keep myself from extrapolating too much. I never start with a white canvas and will always stain it first, if only to avoid the starkness of the tabula rasa. Sometimes I’ll make a cocktail of pigments in solvents and reserve portions that have been used on another canvases. I suppose there is something poetic about it, or like cell division, as you said, because one painting grows out of another, not just by sharing pigments but because there’s a common thread or manner in a steady studio practice, day after day. A set of marks or leitmotifs get cut and pasted throughout the series whether I intend it or not. My hand always remains my hand and I guess the work eventually becomes identified as mine.
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THE ICONS
Q: Another distinct feature of your work is the integration of digital symbols derived from early computer graphics that suddenly emerges, all pixelated, within the natural scenes. How do these icons play into the narrative of your paintings?
A: When I made these paintings, I was looking for an anomaly that could be implanted in some of the scenes; something that would shake up the timelessness of a landscape. I used the retro icons from my youth playing Pac Man, Mario, Tetris, and the more recent pixelated look of Minecraft and common Internet icons like the No WiFi Dino. We’re a technologically advanced species on the verge of extinction playing video games featuring extinct species. Irony doesn’t get better than that.
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THE FUTURE
A: Things don’t look too promising. Growing up in British Columbia, we rarely experienced fires on this scale. In my childhood, the fires were rare, occurred when they needed to and were allowed to burn themselves out or were easily extinguished and controllable.
Q: Finally as an professional artist who has been exploring the increasingly drastic challenges of the natural world I can’t help but circle back to the recent UN report that indicates that the planet is headed for a 1,5 degree rise in temperatures as early as in 2035, which means that the climate and ecosystems are somewhat turning into the universe you portray. What role do you think art has to play in the near future where rethinking of societal structure is urgently needed?
Now, I’m horrified at the accelerating changes I’ve experienced in that part of the world. It’s a nightmare. With the heat dome effect and temperatures soaring to 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit), forests and towns are incinerated in minutes. Last summer, we couldn’t see the sun and wore masks outside because of the smoke, not because of Covid. Ashes fell from the sky for months. The lake which was once cool and refreshing became very warm and devoid of aquatic life. On Vancouver Island, marine life was rotting along the coast. I often wonder how governments will deal with mass evacuations. Where will people go? What will we eat? How will we grow food or access clean water? No country is acting with sufficient urgency.
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As a Canadian, I can say that Canadians generally still feel a deep sense of entitlement to use natural resources as a way of maintaining a very high standard of living. This is a dangerous and outdated philosophy and one sadly, which is deeply and historically ingrained in our culture. It’s an outlook so contrary to that of the First Nations, the native people of our land. They have a common saying that we must always consider the results of our deeds on the seventh generation after our own. Having said that, taking on the climate emergency isn’t a job for any one individual. Sure, we can travel less, eat less meat or not at all, consume less, and vote for leaders who are sane and truly have a grip on reality. But as artists, we are only effective at reflecting what is already out there in the world and artists have no obligation to contend with any theme, regardless of its urgency. The reason I paint about our probable extinction is because it’s the thing that keeps me up at night. My fears follow me into my studio and everywhere I go. Maybe one day I’ll find a way to calm the voice in my head and I’ll paint something else.
'A Faint Earthly Breath' is exhibited at Galleri Christoffer Egelund Mar 18 - Apr 23 2022 Bredgade 75 1260 Copenhagen K Open Wed-Fri 15-18 PM Sat 12-16 PM For more visit www.christofferegelund.dk