Stefano Melissa
Dirty Art Department
Biography
Stefano Melissa (b. 1999, Milan) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans diverse techniques, life remnants, internet aesthetics, and culinary experimentation—both as an individual and within collectives. Their work explores the ghostly, dreamlike textures of the pleasure sphere, inviting audiences into multi-sensory experiences grounded in speculation, reality distortion, and intimate processes of identity (de)construction.
X LEFTOVERS
X Leftovers is a multi-sensory installation featuring a sound piece created in collaboration with The Hague–based artist Arda(io). The work draws inspiration from both the conclusion and the genesis of X Diary, a horror-fantasy epistolary novel recently written by Stefano Melissa. Following an alleged accidental explosion—triggered by the crafting of an illegal potion in a desperate attempt to break free from an ex-lover’s curse—X’s bedroom is reduced to fragments. All that remains are a few scattered relics. What was once the sanctuary of the undead protagonist, X, now stands as a monument to an uncanny transformation. Objects and architectural elements begin to dissolve into one another, haunted by flashbacks of the final moments before the blast—still echoing through the locus commissi delicti. Blending scenographic techniques, fantastical language, and interactive components, X Leftovers invites the audience into a psychodramatic landscape of conflicted emotions, where pleasure becomes both a tool of self-liberation and a force of self-destruction.