Fernanda Mello

Fernanda Mello (b.1988, Cacoal, Rondônia, Brazil ) is an internationally recognized self-taught artist who lives and works in Newburgh, New York. In her childhood, Fernanda took part in several Amazonian regional dance groups called Boi Bumbá, whose choreography represents tales of indigenous people versus colonizers versus the natural world. This specific tradition influenced her perception of culture and identity today, beginning a deeply personal search as an artist to share her enthusiasm for indigenous narratives that are highly sophisticated and interconnected with every aspect of life in the natural world. Currently living in the United States, she reconnects with those childhood choreographies again with new eyes through painting and other materialities. In her work, she uses concepts of origin and interconnectivity, meditating on ecological cycles of life and death. With constantly changing shapes, colors, temperatures, waves and tides, she creates meditative geometries that reflect ancestral values in a process of decolonization of the subconscious, and hold space as symbols of protection of indigenous traditions and ecological systems.