Dedicated to the African-American painter Reggie Burrows Hodges (b. 1965, Compton, California) on the occasion of his first exhibition in Europe, this publication brings together an entirely new body of work created during his move to Malta in 2024, inspired by his experiences on the island and engaging with its culture and history. Spanning over 30 new paintings, including the largest canvases of his career, Mela represents Hodges’ most ambitious body of work to date. Hodges is an internationally acclaimed artist known for his use of painting as a powerful form of visual storytelling and metaphor. Mela – a widely used Maltese word meaning “so” or “well”, which Hodges observed often precedes the expression of a thought or idea – extends his ongoing exploration of identity, memory, labour and collective experience, bringing his practice into fresh dialogue with the Maltese context. The works in Mela exemplify Hodges’ distinctive painterly language: originally trained in theatre and film, his work combines strong narrative charge with dramatic composition. Beginning with a layer of black paint, Hodges allows figures and environments to emerge through negative space, shifting emphasis away from descriptive realism toward atmosphere, gesture and psychological presence.