Moving Image was one of the most promising new fairs this season having taken place March 3rd-6th. The show focused solely on video art and exposed the varied diversity both in content and technical advances. Melanie Bonajo, originally from the Netherlands, was one of the featured artists whose work I really enjoyed. The piece, Diversion, 2009, is a silent narrative that is both mystical and painterly and from the series Furniture Bondage. The female body is present and laden with objects ranging from strainer to a foam mattress. They are part adornment and armor. Two of the women “battle”, the clinking of their accoutrements present in the the spacious white room.


A dialogue of sorts also occurs between the masked protagonist and viewer
They killed me.
But I didn’t die.


In layering the body and veiling identity the forms that remain carry a different symbolic resonance. The movements contain a sexiness that also feel like a still-life. Everything is deliberate and the body is both tantalizing for the gaze and vessel for the items it carries.

They killed me.
But I didn’t die.

Melanie Bonajo: one to watch! She is currenlty represented by P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York.

More soon
(sorry for recent delay in posting, keep checking back!)
xo
— Posted from my iPhone
Http://www.katyhamer.com