Photo: Peter Fall
Blood Thirsty ©Tiny Island Studio
With BLOOD THIRSTY, Ira Melkonyan and Jimmy Grima continue their research into the performativity of liquids, venturing into perhaps the most symbolic bodily fluid.
Re-imagining blood and other biological substances, the performance explores a feminist mysticism of leaking bodies, political borders and a sense of connection.
How much can a person contain? Working in a laboratory, between glass tubes, vials and refrigerators, organising blood. While pandemics spread and wars are fought. Disaster approaches from a distance. Strange reflections, desires and visions leak into the regulated routines of a bloodless environment made of seemingly hermetic walls and vessels.
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Blood Thirsty - Artists Portrait - The Rubberbodies Collective - Ira Melkonyan Jimmy Grima 2024 © Sean Decelis
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Blood Thirsty © Tiny Island Studio
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Blood Thirsty © Tiny Island Studio
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Blood Thirsty © Kinosaki International Arts Centre and Photo by bozzo
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Blood Thirsty © Kinosaki International Arts Centre and Photo by bozzo
Ira Melkonyan) is an artist working across theatre, performance, writing, drawing, installation, and object art. She lives and works between Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Gozo, Malta.
With a background in microbiology, her transdisciplinary practice explores non-human actors, transitions, and the entanglement of biological, sensory, and political processes.
Since 2009, she has been a founding member of the Rubberbodies Collective (Malta), where she collaborates with Jimmy Grima on temporary performative structures and collective processes.
She holds a B.Sc. in Microbiology and Virology (2010) and an M.A. in Theatre from DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam (2018). Her long-term project Upstairs Geology was presented at Zürcher Theater Spektakel and Donaufestival, among others, and received the ZKB Recognition Award in 2019.
In 2023, she was commissioned by Stichting Bewaerschole in the Netherlands to create a solo exhibition and a permanent public audio sculpture, on view in Burgh-Haamstede/Netherlands until 2026.
Her current project Blood Thirsty combines scientific research with personal archives and diary notes from the first year of the war in Ukraine. It is supported by international partners such as SPRING Utrecht, HELLERAU Dresden, and the Kinosaki International Arts Centre in Japan.
Ira Melkonyan is currently a fellow in cooperation with Theater RAMPE, Stuttgart.
BLOOD THIRSTY will be shown as part of the performance triple ARTISTIC POSITIONS FROM UKRAINE.
A co-operation between Akademie Schloss Solitude and Theater RAMPE as part of Ira Melkonyan’s cooperation fellowship.
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