Fabiola Menchelli (born Mexico City, Mexico; lives Mexico City) received a BFA in Computer-Mediated Arts from Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia and an MFA in Photography and Visual Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. She has exhibited recently at venues, including PROXYCO Gallery, New York, NY and Marshall Contemporary, Santa Monica, CA as well as at Black Box Projects and Blain Southern Gallery, both London, United Kingdom; Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo, Fundacion MARSO, Casa Wabi and Brett W. Schütz Gallery, all Mexico City; Paris Photo 2018, Paris, France; and Photo Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She has been invited to artist residencies, including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE and Casa Wabi and Casa Nano, both Mexico. She has received a Fulbright Fellowship, the Prize of Acquisition of the XVI Mexican Photography Biennial of the Centro de la Imagen and a National System of Art Creators FONCA grant.
Statement from the Artist:
To work with light as substance is to come to terms with its matter. With each process, I delve into things as I learn and unlearn, unraveling knowledge. This feels uncertain and exciting as it expands ways of looking through photography, its histories and processes. In optics and astronomy, parallax describes a shift in the apparent position of an object, which depends on the embodied experience from which the object is observed. The cameraless images in this body of work begin in the darkroom, as light touches the surface of photosensitive paper and trace the contours of a physical object. Harnessing volatile techniques like multiple exposures and solarizations, I then construct a macrocosmic image from layers upon layers of microcosmic experimentation. The scale of the resulting image is amplified, further exaggerating the figurative and literal distance between the object and its representation, the image becomes autonomous simultaneously pushing and pulling our own sense of perception.