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    Abstract acrylic and oil painting on Hessian of a flower. The painting features curved and expressive marks made out of pink, red and yellow paint taking up the whole canvas. The background has transparent elements and hues of brown and black.
    Caption
    She Bled, To Death and Transition, Eilen Itzel Mena, 2024, acrylic and oil on hessian, 120 cm x 170 cm

    Inspired by my memories of funeral floral arrangements, I employ the use of the flower motif to portray the liminal space my mother's body was in within the last 3 hours of her life. Layers of acrylic and oil paint on hessian express the complex and transitional space between life and death, the body and the spirit as well as faith and hopelessness. Vibrant hues ironically signal to the viewer that joy and faith sit amongst pain and despair, that light and rebirth sits amongst darkness and death.

    ©the artist

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    Large scale acrylic and oil painting on hessian. The painting depicts a giant all white snail walking towards the left side of the canvas in front of a palm tree. Black orbs are moving along side the snail and decorate its body. Behind the snail and above its shell is the floating hands and head of a feminine figure with pink lips, gold hood earrings and pink acrylic nails. She is smiling and is depicted as a quick moving ghost. The sky has hues of blue, yellow and a bright red mass of light.
    Caption
    Following the Snail's Trail, Eilen Itzel Mena, 2024, acrylic and oil on hessian, 230 cm x 230 cm

    As an Ifa practitioner one of the Orishas that speaks to me is Obatala. A genderless deity that represents, peace, patience, stillness and creation. In the animal kingdom, Obatala manifests as a snail, an animal who embodies many of Obatala's attributes. In this work, I wanted to capture a moment of gleeful and hopeful surrender into the way of spirit, into the path of one's destiny. Here I also invert dimensions of the spiritual and the corporal as well as the natural world and human realm by depicting the human like figure as a ghost and the snail as a larger than life being whose body is solid and grounded.hues of blue, yellow and a bright red mass of light.

    ©the artist

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    Monotype of a brown left hand with red acrylic nails, a gold ring on its pointer finger and a brown and green beaded bracelet. The hand sits in front of a grey background.
    Caption
    Hand with Ide, Eilen Itzel Mena, 2023, acrylic on Bockingford Paper (monotype), 38 cm x 47 cm

    ©the artist

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    Large colorful abstract acrylic mural painted surrounding a double doorway. Different images of abstract acrylic and oil paintings of flowers on paper are pasted alongside different parts of the mural.
    Caption
    Garden Installation, Eilen Itzel Mena, 2023, wall mural: acrylic mural on wall, 405 cm x 465 cm, works on paper: acrylic and oil on bockingford paper, 47 cm x 38 cm

    The repeating flower motif in this ongoing body of work is connected to growth, transformation, grief and healing. It is an ode to an ancestor and the process it has taken me to find joy and hope through the complexity of loss and pain. Every year through war, violence and greed we individually and collectively experience loss and grief. It is a heavy energy that sits next to our soul affecting its ability to navigate this realm and imagine life and light beyond these painful moments. One of the reasons I chose to install this work around a doorway is because of its function as a liminal space and the way the body has to go through it, we have to get through difficult moments as individuals and a species, we have to do better and value human life and human existence. We have to be ethical and loving stewards of the earth and members of the universe. My overall vision for the experience of my work has always been one that is immersive and visceral. Naming the installation, Garden serves as a double entendre. It refers to a garden containing carefully planted floral arrangements as well the garden of our mind, body and spirit that arranges an interplay between memory and feeling.

    ©the artist

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    Abstract sculpture made out of found twigs, soil and clay of a snail. Instead of a shell on its back, the snail carries a skull like figure made out of clay, soil and twigs.
    Caption
    Procession: A Snail Carries a Head, Eilen Itzel Mena, 2024, twigs, soil and clay, 65 cm x 38 cm x 33 cm

    This work marks my return to my sculptural practice. Made from clay, soil and twigs, the snail acts as a stand-in for myself, the artist as a female snail being, with breasts, who carries grief symbolized by the skull on her back instead of its home, a shell. Here the snail is also reimagined as a being who carries the body to another realm after death and transformation. This work is also inspired by my mother’s burial procession in the Dominican Republic. Procession: A Snail Carries A Head has conjured up different ideas in me about portraiture and utilizing symbols in my practice as stand ins for myself and spirit. The idea of a snail’s trail is also a metaphor for handwriting and mark making the forms and inversions found in my work.

    ©the artist

Eilen Itzel Mena – MA/MFA

I am an Afro-Dominican American artist from the South Bronx. My expanded visual arts practice utilises painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and installation as tools to search for joy and self-actualization. My work explores the liminal spaces we occupy within ourselves and in the world through the repetition of a set of symbols, forms and inversions. I have been developing a complex pictorial language.

Through highly semi-representational and abstract images, I portray the context, the meaning of these symbols/forms and their emotional range. Highly saturated pigments and dynamic mark-making in my practice is important to me, as it activates and exalts the meaning of the forms rendered. This is my form of handwriting. By including remnants of the figure, particularly heads, hands and feet, my work conveys a space in which the body and the spirit can communicate, find alignment and reconnect.