Under the Palm’s Grace
Eilen Itzel Mena

Bolanle Contemporary presents Under the Palm’s Grace, a solo presentation by Eilen Itzel Mena at Untitled Art, Miami Beach 2025. Presented within Untitled Art’s Nest section, the booth forms part of the fair’s initiative supporting experimental practices and emerging galleries.

In this body of work, Mena positions the palm tree as an active spiritual and cultural figure, holding ancestral memory, ritual knowledge and the promise of destiny. The palm appears throughout Mena’s paintings as both symbol and witness. Rooted in her Caribbean ancestry and her engagement with the Ifa spiritual practice, her works explore ritual, purpose and the possibilities of expanded language. Using a lexicon of recurring forms such as palms, hearts, clouds, flowers and rainbows, Mena builds a visual alphabet in which mark making functions as verbs and adjectives, expressing emotion, movement and transformation.

Eilen Itzel Mena, Following the Snail’s Trail, 2025. Acrylic & Oil on Hessian, 230cm x 230cm

The works in Under the Palm’s Grace move between abstraction and portraiture. Across acrylic and oil on hessian, Mena layers colour in vibrant, cyclical gestures, allowing moments of transparency where the natural weave of the material remains visible. This interplay of concealment and revelation mirrors the spiritual and emotional processes at the centre of her practice: healing, remembrance, grief and rebirth.

Mena’s reimagining of the palm also responds to a history of Caribbean colonial painting. Looking to artists such as Dirk Valkenburg, Samuel Raven, Johann Moritz Rugendas and Albert Eckhout, she observes how the palm was once rendered as decorative or passive, reflecting the violence and objectification of Black life. In contrast, her palms are sentient and protective, acting as guides, ancestors and witnesses.

Individual works such as Transition, Sombras and Held. Released. explore the body’s shifting states through grief and transformation, while Following the Snail’s Trail depicts the Yoruba Orisha Obalata as a monumental snail passing through a palm tree, symbolising destiny and spiritual guidance. In the titular Under the Palm’s Grace, the tree becomes an omnipresent figure of healing and liberation, while Tools of the Oracle and Within the Shell consider divination, protection and the choices that define spiritual purpose.

Through this presentation, Mena reclaims the palm as a living presence, an ancestor and oracle that holds memory, purpose and freedom within its form.

Artist Biography

Eilen Itzel Mena (b. 1994) is an Afro-Dominican American artist from the South Bronx, New York. She holds an MFA in Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, and a BA in Fine Arts from the USC Roski School of Art & Design, Los Angeles. Mena has exhibited internationally and undertaken residencies including ACME’s Early Career Programme, London, with an upcoming Fountainhead Artist Residency in Miami.

Untitled Art, Miami Beach
Booth N15 — Nest Section
VIP & Press Day: 2 December
Public Days: 3–7 December 2025
untitledartfairs.com

For a full catalogue of available works, please contact:
enquiries@bolanletajudeen.com

For press enquiries, please contact:
Saffron Wicks — saffron@bolanlecontemporary.com