Melissa Catanese, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based visual artist and author who expands the meaning of photographs, will give a visiting artist lecture on January 29 at 5 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall at the West Virginia University Canady Creative Arts Center (CCAC).
Catanese plays with images as raw material, breaching the surface to bring out the meanings hidden beneath them. She is also the author of several photography books, including “The Lottery,” which unites her photographs with anonymous vernacular photos, press images and NASA archival imagery to evoke the same mob mentality and tribalism of Shirley Jackson's short story of the same title.
Her work has been exhibited at the Mulhouse Biennial of Photography and No Found Photo Fair in France, Aperture Foundation in New York, Cleveland Museum of Art, Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco and Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh.
Catanese is a full-time lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and the founder of Spaces Corners, an artist-run photography bookshop and project space located in Pittsburgh. She also teaches as a visiting faculty member at Ithaca MFA at Ithaca College, Hartford Art School Photography MFA and International Center for Photography.
The lecture coincides with the installation of Catanese’s upcoming exhibit, MUTATIONS, in the CCAC Paul Mesaros Gallery.
"Melissa Catanese’s artwork is super smart and interesting, working with a lot of appropriated archival imagery,” said Dylan Collins, an associate professor for the School of Art and Design. “For MUTATIONS, she will be hanging unframed prints (silver gelatin and archival pigment prints) of various sizes. This is all new experimental work, and we are very excited for her to share it.”
The visiting artist lecture is non-ticked and free to attend and is part of the College of Creative Arts and Media’s Curiosity Series, which brings diverse art events featuring students, faculty and internationally acclaimed guest artists to the community.
For more information about the Curiosity Series and upcoming exhibits, visit https://creativeartsandmedia.wvu.edu/events.