MELISSA BORMAN
Bio:
Melissa Borman is a Minneapolis-based photographer and installation artist whose work examines the power of objects, images, and ephemera to hold stories, navigate grief, and honor resilience. She has exhibited widely, including at the Donegal Regional Cultural Center (Ireland), Galería Valid Foto (Spain), Griffin Museum (Boston), Filter Space (Chicago), and the Museum of Arts and Sciences (Georgia). Her work is supported by Minnesota State Arts Board grants, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Jerome Foundation. She has published three artist books, two of which are held in the Walker Art Center’s Rosemary Furtak Collection.
Statement:
Rooted in shared experiences of memory, grief, loss, and resilience, my work reflects deeply vulnerable expressions of human connection and endurance. As a Minneapolis-based photographer and installation artist, I draw inspiration from film, literature, music, and poetry, weaving these influences into my practice.
Much of my work is shaped by my upbringing in a peripatetic military family, where my father’s closeted identity in the military and my mother’s struggles with mental and physical illness influenced my creative evolution. Growing up with frequent relocations and shifting family dynamics, I am driven to share stories my parents were denied opportunities to tell.
In 2023, I completed and exhibited [Re]collections & Earthly Artifacts, an experiential multimedia installation and artist book. The project emerged during lockdown as I revisited abandoned works spanning two decades. My father’s memorial card, scanned shortly after his death in 2008, became the foundation for Memorial, a large-scale meditation on grief. The work took on new meaning in 2020, a year marked by personal and collective loss: my mother passed away, and George Floyd was murdered near my home in the same week. The enlarged and abstracted image became a reflection on individual and collective mourning, deepening my exploration of how personal narratives intersect with broader cultural trauma and resilience.
I Took a Deep Breath and Listened is a sound- and image-based project that explores mortality through breath and was exhibited in April 2025. The work marked an expansion of my practice by placing sound at the center of the experience. The audio piece, Song, was presented as a single-track work for headphone listening, creating an intimate and focused encounter. Inspired by hearing my mother’s final breaths through a nurse’s cell phone, the piece was made by removing the sung vocals from a recorded a cappella song and leaving only the inhales. By centering breath—the space where the voice should be—the work reflects on loss, memory, and the quiet presence of what remains.
