Melanie Kitti b. 1986

In Kitti’s working practice, both in painting and writing, painting is seen as a kind of hybrid form between painting and sculpture, navigating the boundary between applied arts and fine arts. The intention is to approach painting and its fundamental building blocks. For several years, Kitti has worked with frescoes and is drawn to the historical connotations they bring. A fresco is a type of pictorial art historically associated with architectural history. This aspect captivates greatly within the genre of painting—the paradoxical role it plays as both an art-historical monument and simultaneously a common possession of a medium used as a tool in, for example: therapy and education.

For Kitti, painting is a tool to process her complex history. Like writing her poems, painting is a reflective space where she can draw upon and explore motifs connected to her identity. In working with limestone painting, she sees a parallel in the layered buildup of sediment of pigments and minerals and the gradual excavation of her memories and dreams as a motif circle, such as close-up body parts and animals. In her artistic practice, Kitti is collecting glimpses of her past and present, painting them out, and writing them down as poems in an attempt to bring together all the pieces of her own personal puzzle game. The pieces might fit as planned or maybe in an unexpected new way.

Melanie Kitti (b. 1986, Sweden) is an artist and author, educated at the Academy of Creative Writing in Copenhagen and the Royal Danish Art Academy in Copenhagen and the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. Gyldendal published her critically acclaimed debut book Halvt urne, halvt Gral in 2022. Kitti has co-founded Abhivyakti, a non-profit magazine with only BIPOC contributors, and has co-organized the exhibition space Destiny’s in Oslo (2016–22). Kitti’s works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in venues including Overgaden Copenhagen (2023), Rønnebæksholm, Næstved (2022–23), Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo (2022), and ARIEL, Copenhagen (2022).