Angel­i­ca Mesiti

Born Syd­ney, Aus­tralia 1976

Lives and works in Paris

Angel­i­ca Mesi­ti has long been fas­ci­nat­ed by per­for­mance: as a mode of sto­ry­telling and a means to express social ideas in phys­i­cal form. In recent years she has been mak­ing videos that reveal how cul­ture is man­i­fest­ed through non-lin­guis­tic forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and espe­cial­ly through vocab­u­lar­ies of sound and ges­ture. While bor­row­ing arche­types and styl­is­tic cues from cin­e­ma, and using the visu­al lan­guage of film to present detailed stud­ies of human sub­jects in height­ened states of rever­ie or reflec­tion, Mesiti’s works eschew lin­ear­i­ty. Instead, she uses a rich, aes­thet­ic treat­ment to uncov­er the trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial of all human beings, valu­ing the qual­i­ties of ambi­gu­i­ty and inde­ter­mi­na­cy in their own right.

Exhi­bi­tions include The Rites of When, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Syd­ney (2024), Moth­er Tongue, Bendi­go Art Gallery (2022); In The Round, Tal­bot Rice Gallery, Edin­burgh (2021); Over the Air and Under­ground, Galerie Allen, Paris (2021); A Hun­dred Years: Aus­tralian War Memo­r­i­al Com­mis­sion (2021); The Musi­cal Brain, High­line Art, New York (2021); Angel­i­ca Mesi­ti: Moth­er Tongue, Auck­land Art Gallery Toi o Tama­ki (2020); The Future of Silence, Nam June Paik Art Cen­tre, South Korea (2020); ASSEM­BLY, Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol (2020); Busan Bien­nale 2020: Words at an Exhi­bi­tion – an exhi­bi­tion in ten chap­ters and five poems, Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art Busan (2020); ASSEM­BLY, Aus­tralian Pavil­ion, 58^th Inter­na­tion­al Art Exhi­bi­tion of La Bien­nale di Venezia (2019); When doing is say­ing, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019); Angel­i­ca Mesi­ti, Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia, Can­ber­ra (2017); Relay League, Art­space, Syd­ney (2017); Tossed By Waves, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Mel­bourne (2017); Rock the Kas­bah, The Insti­tute of Islam­ic Cul­ture, Paris (2017); Sug­ar Spin – You, Me, Art and Every­thing, Queens­land Art Gallery and Gallery of Mod­ern Art, Bris­bane (2016); The Colour of Say­ing, Lilith Per­for­mance Stu­dio, Mal­mo Swe­den (2015); The Call­ing, Ian Pot­ter Mov­ing Image Com­mis­sion, ACMI, Mel­bourne (2014); You Imag­ine What You Desire, 19^th Bien­nale of Syd­ney, NSW (2014); NEW12, Aus­tralian Cen­tre for Con­tem­po­rary Art, Mel­bourne (2012); Alter­na­tive Visions, Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Pho­tog­ra­phy, Japan (2011); and Rap­ture (silent anthem), Cen­tre for Con­tem­po­rary Pho­tog­ra­phy, Mel­bourne (2010).

Pub­lic col­lec­tions include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Syd­ney; Art Gallery of West­ern Aus­tralia, Perth; Auck­land Art Gallery Toi o Tama­ki; Aus­tralian Cen­tre for the Mov­ing Image, Mel­bourne; The Chartwell Col­lec­tion, Hamil­ton; Fond Region­al d’Art Con­tem­po­rain (FRAC) Franche-Comté, France; KADIST, Paris and San Fran­cis­co; Monash Uni­ver­si­ty Muse­um of Art, Mel­bourne; Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art Aus­tralia, Syd­ney; Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia, Can­ber­ra; Nation­al Muse­um of Mod­ern and Con­tem­po­rary Art, Korea; Queens­land Art Gallery of Mod­ern Art, Bris­bane; and UQ Art Muse­um, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land, Bris­bane. Her works are also fea­tured in inter­na­tion­al pri­vate and cor­po­rate collections.

CV

Bib­li­og­ra­phy