In Her Spirit

An Exhibition Featuring
Eilen Itzel Mena & Jemila Isa

with an original sound composition from Avila Santo

Bolanle Contemporary is proud to present In Her Spirit, an exhibition featuring Eilen Itzel Mena and Jemila Isa, at The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ.
Running from 26 March – 26 April 2025, the exhibition explores the ways Black women hold, inherit, and transform spiritual legacies. The presentation will be accompanied by an original sound composition by Avila Santo, In Her Spirit creates an immersive space where the sacred and the personal intersect.

Both artists engage with spirituality, ritual, and cultural inheritance as central themes in their practices. While Mena’s work is rooted in Ifá and Egungun masquerade, Isa’s practice examines the social structures surrounding Nigerian Christianity and how faith operates as a cultural force, shaping communal life, gender roles, and public expression. Together, their works navigate the space between personal agency and collective tradition, questioning how spirituality is carried, embodied, and redefined.

Eilen Itzel Mena in her studio, 2025.
Photo: Brynley Odu Davies.

Mena’s paintings exist in a state of motion. Gestural, fluid, and saturated with colour, they move between abstraction and invocation, where each mark acts as an offering, a summoning. “Colour is memory, and transports me to my early childhood in the Dominican Republic in the 1990s, where I was surrounded by vibrantly painted homes. These hues not only contain a family's history, but express the joyous way of living on the island. The oversaturated palette and expressive mark making in my work is both personal and political; it evokes raw expression, spiritual channelling, intuitive action, and emotional honesty.” Her work engages with the aesthetics of Egungun masquerade, where layered textiles and movement bring ancestral spirits into the present. Through her use of colour, Mena creates a space that resists erasure and insists on visibility, where histories, energies, and personal experiences are rendered as vivid, expansive compositions.  

Jemila Isa in her studio, 2025.
Photo: Brynley Odu Davies.

Isa’s paintings and sculptures examine how faith is structured, performed, and upheld within community life. The White Chapel recurs in her paintings, a site of both devotion and containment, a symbol of belonging and expectation. “My paintings and sculptures offer a broader commentary on the societal role of the Church within African communities and its profound influence on the lives of women in Africa and across the diaspora.” Isa’s sculptural work draws from the presence of the street preacher, a familiar figure in many urban spaces, proclaiming messages of salvation and warning. Through a considered approach to material and form, she reflects on the authority and endurance of these women, asking how faith is enacted in public life and how it shapes the identities of those who move within its frameworks.

While Mena’s work embraces fluidity and spiritual resonance, Isa’s practice engages with faith as a structured and deeply embedded cultural force. In Her Spirit brings these perspectives into conversation, positioning spirituality as something lived, negotiated, and continually evolving.  

Accompanying the exhibition, Avila Santo’s original sound composition expands the exploration of spirit and presence. Engaging with themes of ritual, memory, and transformation, Santo’s soundscape deepens the experience, evoking the ephemeral and sonic dimensions of spirituality across the diaspora. 

The exhibition "In Her Spirit" will be held at The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ, from Wednesday, March 26 to Sunday, April 26.

For a catalogue of available works, kindly email: enquiries@bolanlecontemporary.com