Artists

Melanie Smith

Press release

On the occasion of the exhibition, a conversation between Helena Chávez and Melanie Smith will take place on Thursday, January 8, at 6:30 pm at the Mexican Cultural Center, at the invitation of Kathy Alliou.
• A guided tour with Helena Chávez and Melanie Smith will take place during the opening at Galerie Peter Kilchmann on Friday, January 9 at 6:30 pm.

The artist would like to express her gratitude to the team at the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes for the warm welcome they extended to her during her researches.

Galerie Peter Kilchmann is delighted to present the sixth solo exhibition devoted to Melanie Smith (b. 1965 in Poole, UK; lives and works in Mexico). An Age of Liberty When the World Had Been Possible marks two decades of collaboration with the artist and will be shown for the very first time at the gallery’s Paris location.

A multidisciplinary artist whose exhibitions consistently explore drawing, painting, performative film, and installation, Smith enjoys drawing from the vast fields of painting and art history, intertwining them with moving images. In her most recent works, the artist examines the impact of extractivism on specific ecosystems and environments in Latin America. Her research, almost anthropological in nature, leads her to observe territories under multiple threats: whether it is the disappearance of certain species or the uses and traditions that developed in their presence.

Smith simultaneously reveals and affirms how a territory is a space of fragile balance and how the conditions of existence of all the species that inhabit it— human, animal, or plant— can either guarantee or prevent flourishing and enrichment.