Specifically tailored for Ásmundarsalur, TRAPO is the culmination of months of painstakingly painting and hand sewing the entirety of the exhibition space. The work, in part, pays homage to the works of the artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude and at the same time honouring the humble origins of Ubaldo´s painting practice that stems from trapo.

“The colorful round palm sized rags that my mom and the other women used to sew, in our poverty stricken neighborhood, during my childhood in the Philippines, out of leftover fabrics, greatly inspires my deconstructionist painterly aesthetic. These rags are called trapo in my local Filipino language.”

Hand stitching the canvas is purposely employed as a stylistic device, which is to say a piece of painterly rhetoric- an attempt at an aided serendipity. By covering the walls and leaving only its iconic windows, the work confronts the audience, with its scale, questioning their experience of the space and simultaneously highlighting the physicality and the materiality of the painting.

Melanie Ubaldo (b. 1992, Philippines) graduated with MA Fine Arts from the Iceland University of Arts in 2022. Melanie has exhibited widely in Iceland and internationally. Melanie was the recipient of the Svavar Guðnasson and Ásta Eiríksdóttir fund for promising artists in Iceland in 2021. Alongside her solo practice, Melanie is one of the founders of Lucky 3, a collective of Icelandic artists of Filipino origins. Lucky 3 were the recipients of the Motivational Award from the Icelandic Art Prize in 2022. Her works have since been acquired by the National Gallery of Iceland and Reykjavik Art Museum and other institutions for their permanent collections and in private collections.