The word enchant comes from the Latin incantare, the root of which “cantare” means to chant, to speak over, to bear life through the power of your words. Cantare creates the world, shapes and remakes the world we know. Such is the power of magic.
Magic is in full, spellbinding effect at Isabella Mellado’s “Te Diré Quién Eres [I will tell you who you are],” at Povos West Town. The show’s title, accompanied by my own rough translation, is a phrase from Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha. The full quote from which Mellado took inspiration is “tell me who you surround yourself with and I’ll tell you who you are.” There is an element of sorcery within Cervantes’ words, of clairvoyance and forbidden knowledge, for who could unwrap the mysteries of the self but possessors of fortunes and spells? The images of these secrets, these conjurings, couple nicely with Mellado’s central preoccupation: the figure of the witch.
Mellado positions the witch as a queer figure; one whose body, whose mind, whose sex, whose very presence has been othered. The witch here is baptized beyond gender; they are the big Other that exists beyond order, beyond the discourse, beyond the linear lines of the everyday. In Mellado’s lush paintings, scenes are stylized in the form of Tarot cards and classical art works. From the Arcana’s Hierophant to Fuseli’s Nightmare, Mellado’s witches find their homes in fiery temples, locked towers, crumpled beds, and other places borne of shadows and secrets. The images are also informed by Catholic iconography—the stony gaze of gargoyles, the plucked eyes of saints, the christenings of blood and fire—as the artist uses these symbols to reckon with and reclaim religious narratives of shame, secrecy, and desire. Mellado’s work shows viewers that queerness exists, queerness changes, queerness brings apocalypse and salvation. Queerness begets power, and a witch’s power never dies.
Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781. Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches. Detroit Institute of Arts. Photo: Wikipedia.
In Four of Swords (St. Sebastian) (2024) a bare-breasted figure is positioned against a tree, with their hands behind their back. They are pierced by four arrows–one in the arm, two in the torso, and the last through their right breast. A dark mask or netting partially obscures their face and appears to bind them to the tree. Their hands may also be bound. A small sliver of flame juts above their head. There are no other figures in the background, they are alone. The pose of the pierced semi-nude is not only references the titular tarot card (four arrows aligning with four swords) but also directly alludes to early Renaissance depictions of Saint Sebastian. Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom stems from stories of his imperviousness to the plague during his time as a Roman soldier and reports after his death of miracles and illnesses vanishing once shrines were built in his honor.
The images of Saint Sebastian we are familiar with, however, were created during the Renaissance. At this time, Sebastian became beautiful: his face, his body, his suffering was eroticized, and his figure was venerated by the likes of Oscar Wilde and Yukio Mishima, themselves both outsider artists who knew the exquisite costs of sex and torment. While a through line could also be drawn from Sebastian’s body untouched by illness and the HIV/AIDS crises for queer communities (such parallels have also inspired artists like David Wojnarowicz), Sebastian’s eroticization is Mellado’s concern. However, I think Mellado approaches Sebastian differently than artists of the Wilde and Mishima ilk; not just because of Sebastian’s breasts but, because Mellado’s Sebastian does not wear a look of pain–rather their face bears an expression more akin to quiet contemplation, to peace. The flame above the saint’s head is also a nod to Catholic depictions of the Holy Spirit, for those touched by God wore a diadem of flames upon their brow.
(Left) Four of Swords (St. Sebastian), 2024. Oil on canvas, 85 x 60 inches. (Right) Two of Wands, 2023. Gouache on paper, 16 1/2 x 24 inches. Photos courtesy Povos Gallery.
In Two of Wands (2024) there is a baptism by fire and a monster amidst quiet trees. A figure is seated upon a loamy forest floor. They are flanked by thick tree trunks and behind them stands a monster surrounded by flames. The monster has the face of a gargoyle and the image of an eye on each of their human hands. These eyes reappear throughout the show and reference the story of Saint Lucy. Accounts of Lucy’s blinding differ: her eyes were either plucked out by agents of the Roman empire while she was tortured for her faith, or she plucked them of her own accord to deter an unwanted suitor’s attentions. I think that for Mellado the cause of the blinding is secondary to the fact that Lucy’s eyes reappear throughout the show like a spirit above the fray; they see what you wish to keep hidden, they show you what you need, they see inside of you. The monster reaches out to grasp the sitting figure. The sitter’s face is covered by an oval that reflects the upper boughs of the surrounding trees. The mirrored sky is a clear green and two additional sets of arms rise from the seated figure. One set reaches up to mirror the pose of the flaming gargoyle. Both figures reflect and refract the other. The monster here is you, but not you. Do you feel the flames?
The queer, the magical, the sublime, the thin membrane between desire and destruction, dance throughout Mellado’s show. The brew they offer is beguiling, yet it is the quieter moments in the exhibition that continue to haunt me long after seeing their art in person. The Aftermath and La Caída [The Drop] (2023) are a pair, two separate works that must be read together in order to be fully understood. Each piece is small in scale when compared to the monumental Two of Wands and Four of Swords (St. Sebastian). In each a masked figure lies sprawled; one atop a grassy knoll, the other upon crumbling ruins. The figure of The Aftermath lies in grass, with green hair kissing their shoulders. Their mask is in the style of traditional Harlequin clown makeup, with five painted blue eyes peering outward. The light of the sun shines upon them and their left arm reaches upwards with their fist outstretched. In contrast, the blue figure of La Caída [The Drop], (“The Drop” again being my own rough translation), reaches downward from their perch upon a crumbling stone wall. Their mask is also blue but carries no eyes. If you step back from the two paintings, you can see that the figures are reaching for one another. Perhaps this is the same figure, a before and after, the consequences of the fall to earth. Or maybe the figures are a pair, and they are reaching out, forever, to one another.
This gesture of reaching, of grasping for yourself, for a lover, for another, is the flame that crowns Mellado’s exhibition. For this togetherness–this embrace, this merging of the self with the Other, this recognition—is where wisdom, where Eros is borne. Think of the witch then as the figure who meets their lovers’ hands, who feels the flames on their back, and lets their eyes fly with freedom.
Annette LePique is an arts writer. Her interests include the moving image and psychoanalysis. She has written for Newcity, ArtReview, Chicago Reader, Stillpoint Magazine, Spectator Film Journal, and others.
