Luam Melake

Luam Melake was born in San Diego, California, in 1986. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in interdisciplinary field studies with a major in architecture. Luam Melake uses structure and materials to explore and exaggerate the interdisciplinary relationship between art, design, craftsmanship, architecture and industrial production.

Her furniture design and mixed-media textile works reveal a delicate combination of counterintuitive materials and unorthodox structures. The resulting works blur the lines and seem to separate disciplines, while revealing a certain tension between the handmade art object and the industrially produced product.

Luam Melake has been exhibited at R & Company, New York (2023), Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York (2022), Parker Gallery, Los Angeles (2021), Versant Sud, France (2020), Fondation Blachère, France (2020), at Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ (2020) at Addis Fine Art, New York (2018).

She was a resident of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York (2017-18 and 2022), the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha (2019), the Blachère Foundation, France (2019) and received the Female Design Council scholarship in 2021.