Soy Capitán: New exhibition “no words” by Melissa Joseph

The exhibition marks a significant moment in Joseph’s career as it represents her first solo presentation in Europe. Known for her needle felted tableaus, often embedded in found or handmade objects, Joseph draws on imagery from her personal archive, creating “cocoons of memory” that preserve meaningful moments from her life as well as those around her.

For no words, Joseph took inspiration from an ongoing conversation with acclaimed poet Megan Fernandes about the precarious nature of language and visibility in light of contemporary erasures. Fernandes’ poem Discipline – commissioned for the exhibition – serves as an entry point for Joseph’s newest body of work. Discipline addresses the overwhelming influx of media, the fragmentation of truth, and the tension between correctness and personal agency.

The poem reflects on Dante’s Inferno, describing hell as a spiral rather than a straight line, a place where confession becomes inevitable and judgment is ever-present. “Hell is a funnel, a crater bombed out by Lucifer’s fall from heaven. But mostly, it is not a straight line, you can’t drop into it. You must stroll,” writes Fernandes.

Joseph connects deeply with these ideas, considering what it means to be “correct(ed),” to navigate systems of control, and to find space for truth amid distortion. Joseph often alludes to literature. Her works and many of the titles in no words respond to themes and questions posed in the poem, specifically censorship and movement within restricted spaces.

Drawing from both her own archive and the poem’s imagery, Joseph examines the ways in which words and ideas are reclaimed, rebranded, and rendered inaccessible. Working in New York and Berlin, and incorporating found objects from both, the artist enlists site as an accomplice in her examinations, allowing the works to evolve in direct response to their surroundings.

About the Artist:

Melissa Joseph (b. 1980, Saint Marys Pennsylvania USA) holds an MFA from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Her work considers themes of memory, family history, and the politics of how we occupy spaces. She intentionally alludes to the labors of women as well as experiences as a second generation American and the unique juxtapositions of diasporic life. Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, Delaware Contemporary, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA Arlington, ICA San Francisco, and List Gallery at Swarthmore College.

She has been featured in Hyperallergic, Art Forum, Artnet, Artnews, New American Paintings, WNYC, Le Monde, Vogue, CNN, Whitewall, Family Style, and participated in residencies including Artpace, Dieu Donné Workspace Residency, The Textile Arts Center, BRIC, Fountainhead, the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, the Museum of Arts and Design and has an upcoming residency at Greenwich House Pottery. She is the recipient of the 2025 UOVO Prize and a regular contributor to BOMB Magazine.

Melissa Joseph – no words

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