about the work

Peace I give to you (not as the world gives it), 2005-6
In Melissa Day’s video Peace I give to you (not as the world gives it), Ehren Tool, a former U.S. Marine strides into an idyllic Western American landscape of rolling, green hills singing the old Christian hymn “Peace I Give to You.” He reverentially kneels as if he is beginning a very gentle ritual, but his subsequent brutal roll down the hillside seems to be a way of merging into the earth and of thrusting peace into the American landscape. Like a desperate, absurdist Ana Mendieta, he plunges his body violently into the effort of what would otherwise seem like a playful act. The peaceful California landscape, his lumberjack-like attire and the old-time hymn suggest romantic portrayals of early American westward expansion and the Christian ethos that framed it and at times justified its more exploitive practices. The pain and breathlessness we hear as he continues rolling and singing is at sharp variance with the noble sentiments of the song, but also reminds us how exhausting it is in these times to work for peace and maintain hope or faith of any kind. Day, in all of her work, addresses a radical ambivalence in the status of Christian faith in the US whose ostensible messages of peace are often co-opted as moral cover by the right wing for a violent agenda.

about Melissa Day

Hummed, whistled, or sung, Day's recent work is preoccupied with the idea that two different states can exist simultaneously. Something is there and not there, is known and not known. Faith and doubt exist at the same time. This radical ambivalence brings with it deepening mystery and unlikely hope.

Day received her Masters in Fine Art from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Queen's University, Canada and the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland in 1992. Upcoming solo exhibitions include a collaboration/collision with Miriam Dym at The Berlin Office, in Berlin, Germany. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Super Bien! (Berlin); Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (Scotland); The Lab, New Langton Arts and San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (San Francisco); Trafalgar Hotel (London, UK); Pacific Film Archive and the Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley); and the Parkway Theatre (Oakland). Recent awards include a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Foundation’s Murphy Fellowship in the Fine Arts and the Eisner Prize in the Creative Arts from UC Berkeley. Day is represented by Peak Gallery, Toronto.

For more information, please visit www.mmd.ca.