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ARTIST STATEMENT
"Day addresses a radical ambivalence in the status of Christian faith in the US whose ostensible messages of peace are often co-opted as moral cover by the right wing for a violent agenda." — Valerie Imus, former Curator/Director, Southern Exposure, San Francisco
My interdisciplinary practice spans video, performance, social engagement, and installations exploring the unknown, uncertain, and unseen. I engage resonant contexts, rituals, and time as material — in works that unfold over years and even decades. Growing up with a British TV evangelist grandfather, I became attuned early to how belief is fixed, packaged, and weaponized. I'm preoccupied by our tendencies to disambiguate belief and fix the image. So I work with layers, choruses, and composites, and frequently invite participation as a way to engage questions of doubt, agency, and voice.
I co-founded Wall of Song Projects (2017–), an evolving series of video installations and participatory performances exploring collective singing, civic life, and women's sports. Recent work draws on the harmonies and dissonances of collective everyday singing; hand-coded simulations of turbulent wave forms; and experimental films moving between meditation and the act of looking — where the landscape itself encodes histories of colonization, sacred site, cinematic spectacle. I wonder about the softening of certitude as a way to lay groundwork for deeper questioning across different groups, ideas, and beliefs.
BIO
Mel Day’s work has been exhibited and screened at venues including Grace Cathedral, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Salesforce Tower Artist Midnight Series, Southern Exposure (San Francisco), San José Museum of Art, San José Institute of Contemporary Art (San José), Berkeley Art Museum, and internationally. Honors include the Silicon Valley Artist Laureate Nexus Award, Headlands Center for the Arts Alumni New Works Award and UC Berkeley Fellowship, an Experimental Media Arts Residency at Stanford University, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus (Germany), a collaborative residency at The Lab (SF), Djerassi Artist Program, and a Guest Fellowship at Montalvo Arts Center. Day holds an MFA from UC Berkeley with a year’s exchange scholarship to Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow University in Scotland. She has held Adjunct Faculty positions at San José State University, UC Berkeley, Santa Clara University, and the University of Toronto, Mississauga.
W: mmd.ca // IG: @mel_m_day