Melissa Joseph’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions at NADA Miami, RegularNormal, and Rider University, and in group shows at Jeffrey Deitch, the Delaware Contemporary, and the Lite Haus Gallery in Berlin, among others. A second-generation American whose father emigrated from Kerala, India, Joseph often incorporates Indian silk into her work. She addresses themes of memory, family history, and the politics of how we occupy spaces. She intentionally alludes to the labor of women as well as the unique juxtapositions of diasporic life.

BMAC spoke with Joseph about “Airplane Window Series 14A and 14B,” on view through October 10, 2022, as part of the group exhibition Felt Experience.

Airplane Window Series 14B and 14A (2021)
needle felted wool on amate bark paper
96 x 48 inches (each)

My first transatlantic flight was before my first birthday. We flew from Pennsylvania to India for Christmas so I could meet my dad’s family who still live(d) in Kerala. I don’t have a tangible memory of this trip, but I do have memories of many of the trips that followed. Peering out of airplane windows became a regular vantage point for me. I started taking photos from planes as soon as I had a phone camera, and I am not alone in this. There are pages of images and multiple social media accounts dedicated to the view.

In 2014, I happened to wake up during sunrise on a trip to Italy, where I was teaching art at an international school. The light in the cabin, even in my half-wakened state, was mesmerizing. Anything the light touched was pink, purple, and shifting to blue. The sun drew a particularly beautiful line on the tray table next to the window (an object I am generally not fond of). I took a series of photographs of the window and seat back. While I photographed them, the light changed dramatically every few minutes. The photos managed to capture a moment that I had rarely experienced, even traveling with some frequency. I knew immediately that those images would become something, but not what or when.

Melissa Joseph, “Memory Pairing #24” inkjet print on Indian Duppioni Silk, stone, wax, ink, 27 x 24 inches

I would find out four years later, when I started a series called “Memory Pairings” that combined found and made objects with silk photographs. After combing my archive for images, I printed the plane windows on silk, then draped and paired them with other objects in poetic relational arrangements. The images made a new appearance three years later, after I developed a felt painting practice. I began the current “Airplane Window” series in the spring of 2021, having been recently vaccinated and feeling enthusiastic about potential herd immunity. Soon that hope was no longer a possibility, but I continued to use the motif of airplane windows as a starting point for sensations of anticipation, distance, in-betweenness, and hope. Embedded into any work about dislocation are questions of violence and force. These images are meditations on personal and external stimuli from the last year, inviting viewers to make space for the possibility of being transported.

Felting allows me to combine the image and the substrate into one object, solving conceptual problems I had been battling. The distortion and fuzziness of the wool appropriately captures the selective specificity of memories. I can softly and carefully suspend my stories in these works, while leaving enough room for others to find pieces of their own histories and reflections of self.

Some notes:

Planes are in-between spaces, where I feel like my physical and mind spaces match up (unlike on land, where I am either in one place or another place).
Plane windows are not always happy; for some they represent loss, leaving home, isolation from loved ones, war, etc.
Early commercial planes tried square windows, which made planes crash because the corners were weak spots for pressure from outside.
Now the window shape is a symbol of strength for me, of the ability to withstand pressure.
These are the largest works I have felted so far. I appreciate how they become an environment that can encompass the viewer, similar to the way I was enveloped by the experience. It was not something I could hold in my hand.
I appreciate the abstract quality of these works, and their ability to read as paintings as much as felt works.
I think my work is in conversation with painting, but these are very much objects.
Most of my work in the show is wet felted. There is one piece that uses a silk photo of the plane window (“Podcast”) referenced earlier, and the rest are wet felted—a different process that creates more distortion in the work.