Katiushka Melo, (b. 1977) is a Hudson-based interdisciplinary artist, born in New York and raised by Chilean parents.
Her work often addresses the challenging questions around the role and representation of women in modern society, specifically women of color. The physicality of her actions and repetitiveness found in her performances addresses the challenges women face both culturally and socially. They are cathartic and ritualistic. Much of her artwork materializes as a sort of rite, orchestrated to symbolize the perpetual repetitive cycles of life, from rebirth and renewal into womanhood, from ancestor to the body one occupies. Her work is about loss of identity, as a first generation non immigrant, as a child of parents who fled their country shed of its identity by a right wing authoritarian military dictatorship. She explores the feeling of otherness throughout her work while still embracing her feminine mysticism and connection to earth. She wants to disrobe the perceived difference in many spheres including gender, race and geography and often mirrors the unsettling judgement of racism, discrimination, appropriation and feelings of otherness all while asking us to consider the spiritual, ethereal and physical connection to body and earth.
Her work has been exhibited in the Americas, Europe and Asia, most recently at Miami Art Basel and a solo show at Veracruzana Cultural Center for the Arts in Mexico.