Isabella Celis Campos
Bogotá D.C. Colombia, 1996.
Visual artist and researcher with studies in sustainability and decolonial thought.
Her practice and interests stand at the intersection between political ecology, multispecies agencies and Andean-Amazonian cosmologies and knowledge, which allow her to weave ideas and propose broad dialogues on what it means to live and coexist multidimensionally in intricate and interdependent natural, cultural, spiritual and geopolitical (eco)systems.
In her work converge readings on socioecological conflicts, territory and the question of development. In a sort of proposal to heal, reinvent and suggest new realities in balance, Isabella explores the relations and connections between the Andes and the Amazon from multiple knowledges, cosmologies and biocultural systems that co-produce and co-exist in these regions.
Her work has been exhibited in various international and national events such as the Encuentro de Imagen at the Museum of Contemporary art Querétaro, the Biennial of Art & Decoloniality at Museo Colonial, The 46thNational Salon of Artists, the XV National Young Art Salon at Galería Santa Fe, Mujer, Memoria y espacio at ARTBO Salas (Colombia’s International Art Fair), Actos inmanentes at the 3rd International Meeting of Research & Creation from REDLIC (Latin American Creation & Research Network), Art-queología at Casa Mamífera, among others.
Isabella has also received several grants and incentives, among them are the Leaky Archive research fellowship from the German Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum and the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the XV National Young Art Salon and the fellowship for Residencias en Bloque, both granted by Idartes – the District Institute of the Arts, the grant for the residency Habitando la anarquía, honoris causa, the creation grant awarded by Uniandinos, the creation grant from the Center for Research and Creation of the Universidad de los Andes, among others.
Isabella is founder and director of Tura, a studio of exploration and research around natural dyeing from experimental ethnobotany and situated practice. She is the person behind the Repository of Socio-environmental Resources a free access platform for the dissemination and mobilization of socio-environmental issues in the glocal context that interconnects with her research and artistic work.
Isabella is currently working on the opening of the frontier in the Colombian Amazon, its relationship with satellite technologies and the solutions that come from intertwining cosmologies and cosmogonies of the TCC (Chiribiquete Cultural Tradition). Likewise, she carries out a research from the materiality and its symbolic and spiritual weight on the Quipus, an ancestral textile technology to store information used by different Andean cultures.
