May 2026

Museo de los Santos y Arte Nacional

​​​

Ghostly apparitions wander through a tropical forest, inhabit a mossy backyard, and lay to rest on snowy ground. Veiled Vejigantes dance, illuminating the dark like specters. Isabella Mellado’s Solo exhibition Entre Velos captures a yearning for homeland and a longing for reconnection. Mellado chose the veil as a symbol for this feeling in this series. For Latinos in the diaspora, the allegorical veil that separates the place that raised us and the place we choose to call home is thin, and we often find ourselves looking back through it. Nostalgia for childhood or an innate sense of belonging and understanding we felt then might prompt us to look back to those places wistfully. We might have also left those places so we could belong or thrive in ways we didn’t where we grew up. These works are an exploration of the complex tension between the places we come from and where we end up. Drawing from a life between Chicago and Puerto Rico, Mellado created this series of five paintings—as well as several photographs and sculptures—to contend with this tension.