BIO
Melina Vera-Jaramillo is a Montreal-based artist of Colombo-Peruvian descent. Her interdisciplinary practice spans installation, photography, performance, video, and writing, and explores themes of memory, territory, and diasporic identity through material and participatory processes. She is currently developing projects that engage community-based practices and organic materials, exploring collective memory, relationships to land, and embodied forms of knowledge through participatory processes. Her work has been presented in group exhibitions at the MAI, FOFA Gallery, VAV Gallery, POPOP Gallery, and Produit Rien, among others.
Melina Vera-Jaramillo is a Montreal-based artist of Colombo-Peruvian descent. Her interdisciplinary practice spans installation, photography, performance, video, and writing, and explores themes of memory, territory, and diasporic identity through material and participatory processes. She is currently developing projects that engage community-based practices and organic materials, exploring collective memory, relationships to land, and embodied forms of knowledge through participatory processes. Her work has been presented in group exhibitions at the MAI, FOFA Gallery, VAV Gallery, POPOP Gallery, and Produit Rien, among others.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Melina Vera-Jaramillo’s artistic practice is rooted in photography and extends to video, installation, and sculpture, often incorporating archival materials and vernacular elements drawn from South American culture. Shaped by her childhood in Medellín, Colombia, her work explores and reinvents narratives related to identity, queerness, and traditional values.
Through this lens, the artist seeks to challenge dominant representations of Colombia—often reduced to drug trafficking and political conflict—by instead highlighting its resilience, ecological richness, and the cultural wisdom present in everyday life.
At the heart of her practice lies an interest in oral history and the creation of experimental imagery, encompassing alternative photographic processes and material explorations that push conventional boundaries and open up new aesthetic and conceptual perspectives.
Melina Vera-Jaramillo’s artistic practice is rooted in photography and extends to video, installation, and sculpture, often incorporating archival materials and vernacular elements drawn from South American culture. Shaped by her childhood in Medellín, Colombia, her work explores and reinvents narratives related to identity, queerness, and traditional values.
Through this lens, the artist seeks to challenge dominant representations of Colombia—often reduced to drug trafficking and political conflict—by instead highlighting its resilience, ecological richness, and the cultural wisdom present in everyday life.
At the heart of her practice lies an interest in oral history and the creation of experimental imagery, encompassing alternative photographic processes and material explorations that push conventional boundaries and open up new aesthetic and conceptual perspectives.