Feria Clandestina IV
Mabelin Castellanos
December 4–6, 2025
at the Selina Gold Dust, Room 201
I’ve known Mabelin for five years now, at the time of writing. The opportunity to curate her first solo exhibition in 2023 was the beginning of the sought-after, almost fabled artist-curator relationship; a symbiotic production process of sorts where a joint fount is established.
When Mabelin invited me to curate her room for Feria Clandestina’s fourth edition, Here Now Aquí Ahora, I decided I’d approach this collaboration as an opportunity to introduce Mabelin’s practice to her peers—local emerging artists gathered in one place during the busiest week of the year, in our shared hometown. In addition to being wildly prolific, Mabelin is real, raw, and and embodiment of the devotion this work requires. In my opinion, she deserves that moment.
I wanted Room 201 to be a place of peace, beauty, and warmth, where her aesthetics and design sensibilities could shine as they’ve always meant to. The best part is that all of these wishes came true.
For available work by Mabelin Castellanos, please write to gabidigiammarco@icloud.com
Pictured, right: Waiting For No Man, 2025.
Muslin, thread, found fabric.
22 x 24 in., 55.88 x 60.96 cm.
To view the catalogue of works presented at Feria Clandestina IV, click here.
Mabelin Castellanos (b. 1958, Cuba) is a self-taught textile artist living and working in Miami, Florida. After the loss of a thirty-year career in scientific research due to a series of traumatic brain injuries, alongside the artist’s lived experiences with Bipolar disorder, agoraphobia, grapheme-color synesthesia, her practice is an act of self-liberation, and a testament to the concepts of becoming and re-invention.
Castellanos’ blend of quilting methods with gestural, figurative sewing form a singular and intentional visual language comprised of thread and repurposed fabric collage on muslin. Her daily observations serve as the foundation for a continuous archive of solitary meditations on peace, beauty, pain, courage, loneliness, humor, restraint, and survival. This sublime reframing of material storytelling evokes the pleasure and necessity of precision and mutual understanding in an otherwise aggressive culture. Within her body of work, mundanity is essential, presence becomes a ritual, and self-understanding is non-negotiable.
For the fourth edition of Feria Clandestina—Here Now Aquí Ahora—this exhibition seeks to introduce the practice of a 67-year-old artist already living and working in Miami to our local ecosystem. This introduction would expand an already well-received practice, primarily on the internet and through open calls. The goal here (aquí), now (ahora), is to highlight how our lives’ paths are always in between flux and flow, but we ultimately get to thread our destinies as we please.