ISABELLA MORALES SALIS

ARTIST BIO

Isabella Morales Salis is a queer, disabled Brazilian artist based in London. Her practice operates at the intersection of painting and sculpture, examining the construction of identity within a multicultural and diverse world.

She holds a BA in Multimedia Arts from Belas Artes University in Lisbon and completed advanced painting studies in London, supported by the ESOP Newman Scholarship. Her professional experience includes solo and group exhibitions, as well as participation in the Insights of an Eco-Artist Online Residency, which she completed twice. Morales Salis has also led and contributed to significant community-based projects, including the collaborative “mini fridge” installation at WHOLE Festival in Germany. Beyond the studio, she actively counters climate change misinformation as part of the TikTok Verified Champions programme and is a member of LandArt Collective, an online network of artists developing future-focused eco-art projects.
These experiences underpin a practice that is both critically engaged and publicly accessible. Looking ahead, Morales Salis seeks to further mature her work through postgraduate study, exhibitions, and residencies. Her research interests include South American history and heritage, ecology, Indigenous knowledge systems, folklore, and myth. She continues to explore found materials as a way of interrogating systems that label matter as waste and discard it, recontextualising these materials within her multimedia painting practice.

Her work offers a pointed critique of contemporary systems and hierarchies. Even as her visual language expands into surreal or abstract territories, it remains firmly rooted in material reality—real people, real power structures, and the urgent possibility of a more connected and just world.


ARTIST STATEMENT

Through my practice, I explore the communal unease from our disconnect from nature and the impact of colonization in South America. Drawing from personal narratives and cultural mythology, I convey the ambiguous boundaries between religion, folklore, and mental health in South America, mostly.

Moving to London, I began a constant search for my identity in a global context, and my work explores that tension. My conception process is intuitive; I build compositions from images that spark an emotional interest. The color palette and imagery are deliberately influenced by the identity and culture of Brazilian citizens, grounding my work in Brazilian imagery.

My approach is a method of processing the world while also challenging its conventions. I combine personal memory with myth and social observation to create surreal visions of queer and female figures that question established narratives of power and permanence. Through this, I look to build new paradigms for experiencing history and identity. My work, therefore, is an assertion of potential, a projection of a reality rooted in connection, complexity, and decolonized thought.