Melissa Catanese
Finalist

Melissa Catanese (b. 1979, Cleveland, OH; l. Pittsburgh, PA) has an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally including at West Virginia University, Morgantown; Aperture Foundation, New York City, NY; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; Carnegie Museum of Art and Silver Eye Center for Photography, both Pittsburgh; Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA; Light Work, Syracuse, NY; as well as The Mulhouse Biennial of Photography, France; PHMuseum, Bologna, Italy; 10th Daegu Photo Biennale, South Korea; and Musée des beaux-arts du Locle, Switzerland. Her work is held in public collections including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; and Light Work. She received a Heinz Endowments Investing in Creative Development Award and was shortlisted for a Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award and the Foam Paul Huf Award. Catanese was an artist-in-residence at the Carnegie Museum of Art and Light Work. Her artist books include Fever Field (Spaces Corners, 2024), The Lottery (Witty Books/The Ice Plant, 2023), Voyagers (The Ice Plant, 2018), and Dive Dark Dream Slow (The Ice Plant, 2012) and are held in library collections throughout the US. Catanese is the founder of Spaces Corners, an artist-run project space and imprint dedicated to the contemporary photobook and she teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.

Statement from the artist: 
My practice merges authored and found imagery into fluid, sensorial experiences through collective structures. Drawing on free association, repetition and rhythm, I re-cast this material into carefully assembled, inconclusive narratives charged with psychic longing, ecological tension and provocative forms of beauty and violence.

melissacatanese.com
@melissa_catanese