Elisa Bergel Melo

Born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1989, Elisa Bergel Melo is a visual artist deeply rooted in the discipline of photography. She attended the New England School of Photography in the United States and GrisArt in Spain, eventually earning her degree with a strong emphasis on photography from the Universidad Veritas in Costa Rica.

Bergel Melo's work is characterized by an earnest exploration of the inherent potentials latent within the photographic medium. Her thematic preoccupations traverse the realms of temporal and kinetic documentation, scrutinizing their metamorphosis through the lens of tautology. Concurrently, she probes the direct nexus between the photographic representation and reality, nuanced by an intricate interplay with memory – two forces converging within the visual composition.

She has participated in numerous exhibitions across the Americas, the Caribbean, and the United States. Notably, Bergel Melo featured prominently in the inaugural exhibition at the esteemed Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger in Basel, Switzerland.

Further contributing to her artistic growth, she has completed various international residency programs, most notably the SOMA Summer in 2016 in Mexico City.

She exhibited at the 20th edition of Zona Maco Foto in CDMX and with homework at MECA International Art Fair in Santo Domingo in 2024.

Bergel Melo currently lives and works in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

  • Las Faenas del Mar

    The title of the work comes from the book La Margarita by Alfredo Boulton, which tells the story of pearl exploitation along the Venezuelan Caribbean coast through images and prose. This chapter begins with a photograph of a net, also known as a chinchorro, around which the lives of those who harvest shells revolve. The obsessive care given to this net sustains an entire community that gathers along the shore. Margarita is also the name shared by the artist’s grandmother, mother, and herself—a name that means "pearl" and serves to trace a connection between broader history and personal narrative, linking her to the Venezuelan landscape.

    Las Faenas del Mar features a chainmail mesh, built ring by ring by the artist, simulating a fishing net that drags symbolic elements to shore. These elements relate to her recent research on the material connection between the peninsula in Venezuela where she grew up and Santo Domingo. Her migratory experience echoes ancient movements that have long linked these two places. By combining references to the sea with eight photographs from her family archive—brought from Caracas last year—memory and a fictionalized nature are woven together in a gesture of care made possible through her artistic practice. This practice, in turn, positions her as a guardian of her displaced family’s memory.

  • Las Faenas del Mar, 2025

    Enameled aluminum wire, beeswax, pearls, plaster, and inkjet prints

  • Las Faenas del Mar, 2025

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  • Las Faenas del Mar, 2025

    Details