2026 Emerging Art Prize Nominee. RSA John Kinross Award 2026 recipient. Matilde Melodia is an artist-researcher and facilitator working across photography, collage, performance, and participatory practice. Her work explores the body as a site of experience, memory, and communication, particularly in relation to trauma, movement, and non-verbal forms of expression. Using her own body as both subject and material, she investigates how gesture, fragmentation, and reconstruction can reveal what is difficult to articulate through language alone.
My practice began as a way of understanding how experience is carried through the body – through gesture, movement, and reaction, even when words feel insufficient. Working across photography, collage, and performance, I use fragmentation and reconstruction to explore memory, trauma, and the traces of lived experience. Through dialogue, workshops, and collective making, I create spaces where uncertainty, difference, and exchange can coexist. I hope my work encourages viewers to slow down, look closely, and reflect on the ways our bodies hold, communicate, and transform experience.
Artist statement
I am an artist-researcher and facilitator working across photography, collage, performance, and participatory practice. My work explores the body as a site of experience, memory, and communication, particularly in relation to trauma, movement, and non-verbal forms of expression. Using my body as both subject and material, I investigate how gesture, fragmentation, and reconstruction can reveal what is difficult to articulate through language alone. Facilitation and collaboration have become central to my practice. Through workshops, dialogue, and collective making, I create spaces for reflection, exchange, and accessibility, exploring how meaning is formed between bodies, materials, and people.
