Melissa Shoes has mounted two artist installations within its SoHo store.
The Brazilian rubberized shoe company has teamed with Rachel Rossin and Cecilia Salama on special works on display through May.
Rossin’s video piece is played on massive pixelated screens that comprise the Melissa store lobby.
Salama installed an immersive experience inside a petite stand-alone room — surrounding shoppers with her conceptual, visualized play on themes like migration, eco-diversity, femininity and identity politics.
“Melissa presented me a lot of material on their new collection, called Mapping — a lot of it had to do with borders. I managed to relate this to a theme I use a lot in my work, which are butterflies. They possess both power and vulnerability — I started doing a lot of research about their migratory journey and learned they are one of the largest symbols of immigration right now,” the artist explained of her piece, titled “Danaus Plexippus.”
Salama’s work has a souvenir component — the installation offers a butterfly-shaped “seed bomb” to visitors. The tiny objects are inlaid with milk thistle seeds, and when planted, they grow to become a plant enjoyed by butterflies as a source of shelter and food.
Seed bombs
joanna@totolici.com
For Melissa, the installations offer a dual
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