galerie anne barrault is pleased to present Tiziana La Melia’s first solo exhibition in France. Less than a year after participating in “Lick the Toad,” a group exhibition at the gallery that marked the conclusion of her residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Montmartre, she presents paintings, installations, and a film in her third solo exhibition in France.
Following a six-month residency in Paris last year, “Kitten Healer Litter” is a domestic poem composed of multimedia works, including an episodic video that blends the structure of an Aesop’s fable with the aesthetic of a reality TV show about simple living; a collection of “cartoons” that also serve as sewing patterns, kitchen utensils, clothing, and improvised pictorial gestures—all narrated by an unreliable narrator.
In Montmartre, I developed a drawing titled Cat and Mouse (2024); it was inspired by an encounter with a damp wall in a former cheese-aging cellar while I was working in my hometown of Palermo, Sicily. The sea’s humidity was causing the plaster walls to flake, reminding me of my studies at the Palazzo Spinelli restoration school in Florence, where, at age 19, I practiced 13th-century fresco techniques based on Cennino Cennini’s treatise, sustained by a diet of honey, milk, green tea, and bread.
Tiziana La Melia