Catherine Mellinger

Title

Catherine Mellinger

Contributor

Catherine Mellinger

Artist Statement

Mellinger's work takes inspiration from both historical collage movements and contemporary feminist perspectives. With a practice that began rooted in the ideas and themes behind female artists of the Dada period, namely Hannah Hoch, she continues to find empowerment in the works of Joan Jonas, Francesca Woodman, Ana Mendieta and Cindy Sherman. Mellinger’s recent work centres on her experience as a mother living with mental illness. Her new series of works survey 30 years of having a name for what she experiences - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Though she is herself a mid-career artist by the standards of overall practice, Mellinger is a new emerging artists within the disability/Mad Arts community. She examines notions of “performative mothering” and dips her toes into the anthropological history of clowning. She is honoured to count choreographer Jennifer Dallas and photographer Melanie Gordon as collaborators. Mellinger is also lead artists of the inter-arts project Post-Part, currently preparing for it's third exhibition in Kitchener, Ontario. Inspired by the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Post-Part re-imagines the experience of Postpartum Mood Disorders as an immersive arts installation using illustration, collage, RGB filter technology and audio compositions created by using testimonies from birthing parents. Her previous work includes an artistic exchange with contemporary writer Marianne Apostolides, which resulted in a suite of images that was published in Apostolides’ book Deep Salt Water (published by book*hug 2017). The works have received many accolades within the literary and arts communities, including recently being reviewed in Feminist Studies Volume 46.1 within the essay “Abortion as a Feminist Pedagogy of Grief in Marianne Apostolides’s Deep Salt Water” by Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst.

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Citation

mellangearts, “Catherine Mellinger,” Artist Parent Index , accessed March 29, 2024, https://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/586.

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