Melissa Lyn is a Jamaican Visual Artist that creates images of fragmented heritage that crosses time and culture. Her portraits, rich in symbolism and historical dialogue, move between ancestral memory and present realities, offering a way of seeing that is both grounded in research and guided by intuition. By linking biblical narratives, African heritage and Caribbean identity, Melissa encourages her audience to look closer at the histories often left untold.

"People exist as biological numeric algorithms. Historical names are spiritual creation concepts. Each adapts to its time. Etymologically, all these identities, “African, Negro, Caribbean” etc. prove historically that we are the same people, who broke up into various tribes. The traditions and customs based on historical influences may be different, but without a doubt or contradiction, we are who our ancestors were." 

From Melissa’s award winning work Reimagining Nanny: Avatar Erzulie, to her reflections on Christ as a celestial being, Melissa unpacks how ancestral knowledge, spirituality and scholarship coexist in her studio practice. Melissa’s commitment to the living truth found in stories, symbols and the people who carry them, is a rediscovery of her ancestral lineage in an effort to awaken purpose.