Melanie Ubaldo refers to her works as „monuments to unbelonging“, a term through which she reflects on questions of belonging, displacement, and identity within contemporary social and political contexts. Her artistic practice engages with intersectionality through the lens of autobiography. The mutuality of art and life is inescapable within her work: personal misfortunes, memories, and tragedies are explored in relation to broader societal discourses surrounding racism, identity, migration, and the experience of unbelonging.
Working across painting, installation, and large-scale spatial interventions, Melanie Ubaldo addresses questions of power, prejudice, displacement, immigration, memory, grief, and cultural inheritance. While often monumental in scale, many of her works retain a sense of sensitivity, as well as a precise and at times subtle humour in their engagement with these subjects. Her practice continuously negotiates the tension between visibility and withdrawal, intimacy and monumentality, as well as personal narratives and collective forms of historiography.
Alongside her individual practice, Melanie Ubaldo is a co-founder of Lucky 3, a collective of Icelandic artists of Filipino origins. Their collaborative work engages with questions of migration, belonging, labour, memory, and diasporic experience. Through both collective and individual practices, Melanie Ubaldo opens spaces for reflection on identity, community, and the complexities of cultural hybridity.