Jen Mazza

Feria Material Vol. 12

February 5 – 8, 2026

Stand D04

“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory, this is our duty.” —Borges

Ulterior Gallery is pleased to present works by Jen Mazza at Feria Material vol. 12 in Mexico City, taking place at Maravilla Studios from February 5 through 8, 2026. This presentation explores the connection between two series from the artist’s oeuvre, Veil (2007) and Graft (2015), both tied to silencing of language.

Veil draws its inspiration from a fairy tale by the French author Charles Perrault. The story “Les Fées” or “The Fairies” narrates the encounter of two sisters with an old woman at a well, who is revealed to be a witch. The old woman requests a drink of water from each sister—one sister refuses, but the other generously offers it. Yet both sisters are cursed, the refusing sister finds that toads, snakes, insects, and all ugly creatures spill out of her mouth when she tries to speak. When the kind sister opens her mouth, jewels, diamonds, and beautiful things fall from her lips. But in both the beautiful and the foul curse, the sisters’ voices are tragically lost.

Mazza’s Veil paintings take up where language ends—the title Veil suggests something covered or hidden, but also hints at it being partially revealed. These paintings are like a redacted text; they resist immediate legibility. They are black paintings, literally and metaphorically, depicting black silk gauze stretched over parts of the body, perhaps a hand or a mouth. The fabric distorts and decontextualizes what’s beneath. Gauze obscures partially visible flesh, ballooning out like viscera through fissures or cuts in the fabric.

In the series of paintings entitled Graft, the formalist black-and-white reproductions remain circumscribed within the rectangle of the page. Sourced from books with heroic titles such as Pioneers of American Abstraction or New Frontiers in American Painting, Mazza has literally torn these pages from the original context.

Mazza ultimately subverts the images by overlaying her own interventions: geometric forms and formal compositional elements of written language—punctuation marks, parentheses, and asterisks. Punctuation becomes pure abstraction when isolated from a text. In this series, these marks no longer have power to control how words are voiced; instead, they silently float over reproductions of abstract paintings, serving to complicate and sabotage the originals.

Jen Mazza (b. 1972, Washington D.C.) received an M.F.A. from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2001 and is currently based in New York, NY. A committed educator, as well as an avid thinker and writer, Mazza draws her inspiration across a range of disciplines which include philosophy, literature, and visual culture. Her work has been recently exhibited in a mid-career retrospective at The James Gallery at the Center for the Humanities, in a digital project for Artist Alliance Inc., and as part of her recent talk on art and nature at the Getty Museum. Mazza’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Art News, and Hyperallergic.

Feria Material Fair Schedule:

Thursday, February 5

Press Preview, 11AM – 12PM (Press only)

Invited: First Look, 12 – 2PM (VIP)

Invited: Private View, 2 – 5PM (VIP)

Grand Opening, 5 – 8PM (Open to the public)

Friday, February 6, 12 – 8PM

Saturday, February 7, 12 – 8PM

Sunday, February 8, 12 – 7PM

Maravilla Studios
C. del Fresno 315, Gate 1
Col. Atlampa, Cuauhtémoc
06450 Ciudad de México, CDMX, Mexico