Melissa Joseph • no words • 02.05.–21.06.2025

Soy Capitán is pleased to announce no words, their first collaboration and exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Melissa Joseph.

The exhibition marks a significant moment in Joseph’s career as 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.

Melissa 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. She 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, accountability, and movement within restricted spaces. Drawing from both her own archive and the poem’s imagery, she examines the ways in which words and ideas are reclaimed, rebranded, or rendered inaccessible. Working in New York and Berlin, Joseph enlists site as an accomplice in her examinations, allowing the exhibition to evolve in direct response to its surroundings.

The exhibition invites viewers to engage with this dynamic exploration of language, imagery, and contemporary resonance, encouraging them to experience the layered narratives and the complex interplay of ideas.

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

Her work explores themes of memory, family history, and the politics of how we occupy space. She intentionally references the labors of women, her experiences as a second-generation American, and the unique juxtapositions of diasporic life.

Her work has been shown at, among others, the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, US (2024), ICA San Francisco, San Francisco, US (2024), Art Production Fund Art in Focus, Rockefeller Center, New York, US (2024), MOCA Arlington, US (2023), List Gallery at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, US (2023), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, US (2022), and The Delaware Contemporary, Wilmington, US (2019).

Joseph has been featured in a range of publications, including Hyperallergic, Art Forum, Artnet, Artnews, New American Paintings, WNYC, Le Monde, Vogue, CNN, Whitewall, and Family Style.

She has participated in numerous residencies, including Greenwich House Pottery, New York, US (2024), Artpace, San Antonio, US (2024), Museum of Arts and Design, New York, US (2023), Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, Helena, US (2022), Fountainhead, Miami, US (2021), BRIClab, Brooklyn, US (2021), Textile Arts Center, New York, US (2021), and Dieu Donné Workspace Residency, New York, US (2021).

She is the recipient of the 2025 UOVO Prize and a regular contributor to BOMB Magazine.