Melissa Koziebrocki is an interdisciplinary feminist artist whose performance art practice focuses on the body as the site for processing trauma and promoting healing. Through radical somatic explorations, their work dwells in the margins. With each courageous act she takes, Koziebrocki exposes her underbelly and opens up a tender space to address daily experiences of carving the form. With a voracious appetite, they invite the critical gaze of the public to consume their body as a spectacle and a sculptural form.
Koziebrocki is the 2015 recipient of the Graduate Fellow Award from the San Francisco Art Institute, where she received her Masters of Fine Art in New Genres in 2017. She has been an artist-in-residence at MASSMoCA, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Vermont Studio Centre, and the International Feminist Art Conference at Artscape Gibraltar Point. She has taught contemporary art, digital media art and performance art at the Bay Area Video Coalition, San Francisco Art Institute, the Contemporary Art Gallery and Place des Arts Coquitlam.
Koziebrocki’s art has been exhibited at selected cultural spaces such as the Socrates Sculpture Park, Berkeley Art Museum, Artist Television Access, Rhubarb Festival, and Toronto Pride. Her art has been featured on the cover of Foglifter Magazine. In 2007, Koziebrocki founded the Fridge Door Gallery at McGill University.
At MacDowell, Koziebrocki created Sit and Spin, a site-specific performance in Eastman Studio. The performance, held on February 17, featured a suspended yoke (discovered in a corner of one of MacDowell’s historic barns) carved with the initials XIX and MJM, echoing the legacy of Marian and Edward MacDowell’s oxen. After detailed measurements, she sculpted a foam double of herself, and together they circled in unison, bearing the yoke’s weight. During the 27-minute performance, the space resonated with the sounds of piano, wind, and echoes of the past. The audience was invited to capture any unique sound with a microphone. When the rotations came to an end, the yoke was lifted, carried, and released - embodying themes of labor, memory, and connection.
Portrait by Carolina Porras Monroy
