Image: Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Valencia
The exhibition will be presented at IVAM Centre Julio González from 7 October 2026 to 10 January 2027. It brings together Mexican-British artist Melanie Smith’s two latest productions, ‘Axolotl’ (2025) and ‘Tixinda’ (2025).
The Mexican axolotl, or ambystoma mexicanum, is an amphibian endemic to the Valley of Mexico, with between 500 and 1,000 individuals remaining in its natural habitat. The purple snail, or plicopurpura pansa, has historically been used to dye textiles purple in different geographies and now inhabits only the coasts of Oaxaca in Mexico, where it is endangered.
Smith works across painting, drawing, video and sculpture to find ways of approaching living forms without producing deterministic representations. The works move across different scales of vision and perspectives, using animals’ corporeality, plasticity and colour to connect the public with their particular ways of existing.
Through these works, Smith questions the relationship between culture and nature, challenging the idea of their separation and overcoming an ontological hierarchy of living things while evoking a poetics that invites another way of looking, perhaps more empathetic and curious. Helena Chávez Mac Gregor is credited as the exhibition’s curator.
