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Melissa Martin

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Melissa Martin

(Born 1975, works in New York)

Dining Room, 2006

Wood, bricks, concrete

Dimensions variable

An ongoing theme in Melissa Martin’s art is the relationship between the human body and social rituals. In Dining Room, she connects traditional holiday meals with rituals of incinerating food and objects. Dining Room is an exact replica of the dimensions and design of a dining room at Wanås Castle. In a performance when the artwork was installed in the park, the artist had the table set for a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner and a Swedish Christmas dinner. But instead of being eaten, the dinners were burned in the fireplace along with the table linens and the china. Martin carried out yet another performance in 2006, Embedded. Dressed in camouflage made of fabric, custom-printed from a photograph of the ground, she laid down among the wood anemone in the park with her mouth full of poisonous Lily of the Valley flowers that she had grown using her own bodily fluids.