Ira Melkonyan

Ira Melkonyan, born 1988 in Odessa/Ukraine, is an artist working across theatre, performance, writing, drawing, installation, and object-making. She lives and works between Amsterdam/Netherlands, and the island of Gozo/Malta.

Her transdisciplinary practice explores non-human actants, transitions, fluidity, and porous boundaries. Drawing from her background in microbiology, she investigates the entanglement of biological, sensory, and political processes as a basis for imagining ecologically conscious forms of coexistence.

She distinguishes between art-making and the art market. While collaborating with numerous institutions across Europe and beyond, her work is shaped primarily by artistic inquiry and critical engagement. She is a founding member of the rubberbodies collective (est. 2009, Malta), where she collaborates with artist Jimmy Grima to develop temporary performative structures and collective creation processes.

Melkonyan holds a degree in Microbiology and Virology (2010) and an MA in Theater from DAS Graduate School (DasArts) at the Amsterdam University of the Arts (2018). Her long-term research project Upstairs Geology, focused on liquid matter as a performative medium, has been presented at Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Switzerland), Donaufestival (Krems/Austria), and other venues. In 2019, she received the ZKB Recognition Award for Emerging Artists with Upstairs Geology 50/50, created in collaboration with the rubberbodies collective.

In 2023, she was commissioned by Stichting Bewaerschole (Burgh-Haamstede/Netherlands) to produce a solo exhibition and a permanent public audio sculpture as part of the program The Future Has Many Histories. The sculpture remains on view in the town center until 2026.

Her current project Blood Thirsty centers blood as a performative agent and draws on her scientific training and personal archive. Based on diary entries written during the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the work is supported by institutions such as SPRING Utrecht, wpZimmer (Antwerp/Netherlands), HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts (Dresden/Germany), VEEM House for Performance, BAU (Amsterdam), and the Kinosaki International Arts Centre (Japan).

Ira Melkonyan is a fellow in cooperation with Theater Rampe in Stuttgart.