Melissa Ichiuji - Virginia

https://www.melissaichiuji.com/

Melissa Ichiuji creates sculptures that are stunningly confident, bold, aggressive, playful, and original, full of sexual puns and possible allusions to larger traditions of Surrealist and contemporary works.
Dollmaking marries beautifully the rigor of fine art, thefreedom of play and the healing power of self reflective object making.Dolls are the oldest, most popular toys that ever existed. Since the beginning of civilization dolls have functioned as playthings, magical dream keepers and spiritual intermediaries. Guise and Dolls Figurative Sculpture Classes invite participants to draw inspiration from personal history, memories, and desires to be used in their creative process. Through journaling, sketching and discussion, each student will choose a theme for their portrait and then learn basic techniques for building armatures and joining soft materials and found objects to create a uniquely, personal, sculpture.

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She thinks deeply about the conceptual and emotional resonance of her works in the context of the long history of Dadaist and Surrealist work, the histories of sexual representation in art and popular culture, and the connections with her experiences in dance and performance. Her sculptures are at once intimate, personal, and playful, and prompts for recognizing some of our deepest psychosexual fantasies and repressions. Many of Melissa Ichiuji’s childlike doll figures are also emblems of play, prompting us to recall what having a body was like when there weren’t any adults around to police appropriate behavior. 
artin Irvine, Associate Professor Georgetown University