La Cometa and Povos are pleased to present 7 Pecados by Isabella Mellado.

Isabella Mellado (b. San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a painter and photographer based in Chicago, IL. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018 and her Masters in Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. Mellado is best known for her magical realist paintings on latinidad, queer identity, tarot and occult spirituality. She works in a wide range of media including painting, photography, costume design, digital collage and sculpture.

Mellado’s journey from Catholic shame to spiritual awakening is the context behind Siete Pecados. This series of seven paintings embodies and subverts how the global west has defined each “sin”— pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust—since they were first mentioned in Genesis. Each painting defies the guilt and shame that the Catholic Church teaches its followers, empowering its subjects rather than condemning them for their sins. In this series, Catholic characters and symbolism exist in tension with references to the tarot, witchcraft and Mellado’s lived experience as a queer Puerto Rican woman.

In the world these characters inhabit, humanity is not perfect. The subjects of these works are flawed, vulnerable, and in turmoil, and they wear this openly. In these works, Mellado conveys that complex emotions like envy and wrath, while poisonous, are natural. She postulates that a capitalistic society may tell us rest is a sin, just as the church condemns sloth, but who does this serve? Who among us has the luxury to truly rest and why? She paints the beauty of queer union and partnership, only to over-simplify said union by titling it “Lust” just as the Catholic church would.

In Siete Pecados, contemporary life collides with centuries-old moralizing tales that draw a clear line between good and evil. By painting demons, angels, sinners, and saints from a contemporary perspective, Mellado questions the unflinching self-flagellation of the Catholic moralizing tales told in the European art canon.