Isabella Mellado Summons Sins and Desire in Her Tarot-Inspired Paintings

What does it mean to sin? In mystical paintings in oil, Isabella Mellado diverges from the Catholic guilt she knows all too well to instead bask in desire and the beauty of transgressions.

The Chicago-based, Puerto Rico-born artist is known for her magical realist works that draw on tarot and the occult to explore queer identities and Latinidad. Mellado’s most recent exhibition, 7 Pecados, at La Cometa presented a collection of vivid paintings that, like much of her practice, reject Christian strictures. Rather, the artist questions how we might see laziness, gluttony, and lust not as wrongs to be avoided but as empowering and essential to our humanity.

a lounging woman in a robe and a mask with a tree shadow — “Sloth”

Mellado often begins a piece by staging a photo. She and her accomplices don witchy garments and commune in bodies of water or around fires, their hands occupied with a deck of cards or a chalice. These images serve as the basis for her large-scale paintings, which render the already magical scenes in a dreamy, even mysterious light.

Whereas Western religions like Christianity have left little room for identities and behaviors that don’t conform to their beliefs, Mellado beckons us into an alternative space where figures are free to revel in pleasure. The characters take on the role of witches and conjurers, those who remain anonymous behind their disguises yet engage resolutely in their own empowerment.

Mellado’s previous projects include Te Dire Quien Eres, an exhibition at Povos in Chicago that took its central premise from a line in Miguel Cervantes’s Don Quijote de la Mancha: “Tell me who you surround yourself with, and I’ll tell you who you are.” The paintings reject shame around queerness and what’s often considered monstrous, instead honing in on the intimate relationships that inform one’s life and the sacred spaces offered by a coven.

Find more from Mellado, including the original photos and resulting paintings, on her website and Instagram.

two women in front of a stained glass window. both have masks and are seated in an embrace — “Lust (The Lovers)”

a painting of a woman with a green cat in her arms and a deck of cards in the other. a pink leaf masks her face with a pink patterned border around her — “The High Priestess’

a figure in a pink jumpsuit and green mask sits on the ground with her arms raised and a figure on fire directly behind her — “Two of Wands”

three women in red, white, and black dance around a fire on a beach — “Three of Cups”

a painting of a figure wiht a knife and green mask in a forest at night with a ghostly figure behind her — “The Magician”

a vertical painting of a woman in a flowy garment swimming in red water — “Gluttony (The Emperor Midas)”

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