From adolescence onward, Melanie Flood (b. Queens, NY) has used the camera to regard herself and the world. Her practice is built upon relentless auto-documentation through which she explores her subjectivity as a woman and engages a critique of the “ideal” female body, while considering broader social scripts surrounding aging, sex, and feminine performance. For Flood, precarity and vulnerability are sources of artistic power that unites her work in a provocative, evolving record of lived experience.
Flood often manipulates subject matter—whether her own body, other people, inanimate objects, or scenes—with reflective mylar, screens, fabric, or studio lights, allowing her to control what is revealed and obscured from the visual field. She also incorporates elements of vernacular photography and iPhone pictures to emphasize the everyday absurdity of dominant beauty standards and commercialized conceptions of womanly “self-care.” Unflinching self portraits and irreverent still lifes encourage viewers to reconsider feminine-coded aesthetics that are usually relegated to the superficial and unserious. Within the realm of her work, Flood demonstrates a total willingness to look, deploying the photographic medium as a strategy for greater understanding and representation.
Flood has had recent solo and two-person shows at ILY2, Portland, OR; Ruschwoman, Chicago, IL; Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, OR; and Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR. In 2024, her work was included in a comprehensive solo exhibition of contemporary photography at the Schneider Museum of Art, Ashland, OR. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, such as the Regional Arts and Cultural Council Grant, Precipice Fund Award, Oregon Arts Commission Artist Fellowship, and two Ford Family Foundation Visual Arts Exhibition Grants. An exhibiting artist and arts professional for over twenty years, she currently teaches in the Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design at Portland State University. Flood spends her time between Portland and New York. Flood holds a BFA in Photography from The School of Visual Arts, NY 2001 and an MFA in Contemporary Art Practice from Portland State University, OR 2017.
inquires:
studio: flood.melanie@gmail.com
gallery: info@ily2online.com