Eilen Itzel Mena, born in 1994 in the USA, is an Afro-Dominican American artist, writer, and community organiser from the South Bronx, NY, now based in London, UK. After completing her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts at USC Roski School of Art & Design in Los Angeles in 2017, she graduated with an MFA in Painting from the UCL Slade School of Fine Arts in London in 2024. Mena's work has been exhibited internationally, and she has participated in numerous artist residencies, receiving accolades such as the Adrian Carruthers Studio Prize for her MFA Degree Show at Slade. She is currently an artist-in-residence at ACME’s early careers programme in London and collaborates creatively with Honey and Smoke, a global artist community focused on meditative and educational artistic engagement.

Mena’s artistic practice explores joy and purpose within the African Diaspora and Latin America, reflecting on community, ancestry, and colonial history. From an intersectional, femme, and Afro-Diasporic perspective, she creates works that challenge perceptions of trauma and reality through vibrant, saturated hues that evoke a sense of joy. Her use of colour is both a personal and political statement, reflecting memories of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, where brightly painted homes symbolised a joyful existence.

Through a variety of mediums including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and performance, Mena seeks to subvert the socio-political invisibility often imposed on Black individuals. Her work is an expressive and spiritual channeling of emotions—joy, anger, sadness, confusion—that demands complete visibility for transformation. This approach to art as a space for creative and emotional freedom is particularly poignant in her exploration of the relationship between the inner child and the adult self.

In her paintings, Mena visualises spaces that are real, spiritual, and imaginative. Her abstract works require her to embody a diasporic history, leaving behind trails of coded information through expressive mark making. In her representational pieces, remnants of the human figure—heads, hands, feet—are integrated into abstract environments, creating spaces where body and spirit converge and communicate. These extremities, often adorned with features like long lashes, lipstick, and acrylic nails, celebrate the creative expressions of beauty, self-love, and care found within femme communities of the African Diaspora and Latin America.

Significantly, Mena incorporates green and brown beaded bracelets called Ide, worn by Ifa practitioners—a spiritual tradition from Yorubaland in West Africa that has persisted in the African Diaspora through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These elements underscore her connection to spirituality and ancestry, grounding her work in a deep cultural and historical context.

Mena's art is a vivid, layered, and energetically expressive contention against the psychological invisibility of Black bodies, souls, creativity, and histories in Eurocentric societies. It is crucial for her that her artworks resonate with and are actively experienced by the African Diaspora and Latin American communities, asserting a presence that is as undeniable as the vibrant energy it emits.