1996 | Born in Padua, Italy; she is based in London, UK.

The paintings of Melania Toma are marked by a constant tension—between exuberance and stillness, organic flow and rapid gesture, harmonic beauty and imperfection. Her work navigates the space between nature and culture, challenging anthropocentric perspectives and conjuring a universe in perpetual transformation. Toma’s compositions are porous and mutable, layered with delicate washes of paint and dense clusters of sand. Soft, sweeping strokes collide with the raw force of color, which seeps into and overtakes the coarse surface of the canvas. Weaving together personal myths and archaic symbols, she crafts a visual language that transcends the human condition and opens new pathways for relating to the natural world. Her paintings resemble ever-shifting, anthropomorphic forms—hybrid presences born of the fusion between organic and inorganic matter. These figures resist fixed identity and counter binary oppositions—dissolving the boundaries between nature and culture, human structures and organic transformation—and invite us into a universe shaped by ongoing metamorphosis