Feria Material Art Fair 2025: 11th edition

Isabella Mellado Exhibits New Paintings with Povos Gallery at Feria Material 2025

Chicago-based, Puerto Rican contemporary artist Isabella Mellado will unveil a new series of paintings with Povos Gallery at Feria Material, Vol. 11 in Mexico City. The presentation builds on her reputation for creating vibrant surrealist paintings with deeply personal, culturally resonant narratives. Mellado’s latest works explore themes of mortality, spirituality, and identity through the lens of occult, Catholic, and Caribbean rituals and history, exploring the similarities between what these spiritual practices seek.

Feria Material, Vol. 11 marks Povos’s international art fair debut, and Mellado’s second appearance at the fair following her 2024 presentation with New York City-based Swivel Gallery. Povos presented Mellado’s most recent solo exhibition, Te Diré Quien Eres, in Spring 2024, warmly reviewed by Sixty Inches from Center.

This new body of work is a continuation of Mellado’s exploration of the human condition and our often contradictory attempts to grasp the unknowable. The anchor triptych painting, titled Baile para el Señor de los Muertos, is a vivid meditation on the delicate balance between control and surrender. The painting stems from a performance Mellado staged in a Puerto Rican forest, where she danced barefoot and masked, holding a golden-painted skeleton adorned with nail gems. This ritualistic scene, photographed by her sister amidst the song of coquí frogs and the buzz of insects, serves as a powerful symbol of the human confrontation with mortality.

In Baile para el Señor de los Muertos, the figures perform a hybrid dance inspired by Caribbean Salsa and Danse Macabre, the latter a Catholic allegory historically used in Medieval European art to remind viewers of their mortality. Through this juxtaposition, Mellado explores the impact of European colonialism on Caribbean culture and the artist’s own estrangement from aspects of her heritage. The painted figures in Mellado's work are deliberately non-specific—they could be witches, high priestesses, or even Franciscan nuns. These women are depicted in a performance that could be a ritual, a prayer, or a spell, but one thing is certain: their movement is electric and empowering. It speaks to both the vulnerability and strength found in the face of life's most inevitable truth.

Mellado’s paintings continue to captivate with their bold compositions, textured surfaces, and rich color palettes. With this new series, she extends her exploration of identity, ritual, and the powerful emotions that define our shared human experience. The works are poised to resonate deeply with audiences at Feria Material, one of Latin America’s most influential contemporary art fairs.