Born in 1995, Isabella Morales grew up between Brazil and Uruguay before moving to Portugal as a student. She received a BA in Multimedia Arts in 2019 from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon in Portugal, and a scholarship in Painting in 2024 from the Essential School of Painting in London. Her South American heritage, as well as her experiences abroad, deeply inform her art.
Her work deals with the legacy of the Portuguese Empire and how it changed personal memory and societal culture in South America. Isabella’s work has a dream-like narrative perspective in its compositions. Through mostly large-scale paintings and mixed-media sculptures, she examines how patterns in nature and culture mirror one another, as well as how history still affects perceptions of self, animals, and landscapes.
The artist constructs layered compositions, starting with intuitive charcoal drawings based on pictures from her heritage and collages made from her collection of digital images. Color functions symbolically—it can reflect states of mind and Latin influences.
“I’m guided by exploring folklore and myth-making in a non-linear and playful way. Coming from Latin America and now situated in Europe, I’m creating a world based on duality and feelings of dislocation. The ritual of creating is healing to me; through the body and its relationship to place, I can explore a language that understands presence and what home is.”
More recently, in sculpture, she has used discarded materials (plastic, metal, paper) to build hybrid forms that speak to regeneration and fragility. The act of reusing waste materials connects to her concern with climate change, an issue that has personally shaped her understanding of loss and continuity.
Isabella’s biggest work was a collaboration culminating in a large-scale sculpture called ‘The Mini Fridge’ (2025), involving collage, discarded material assemblage, and community engagement, at the WHOLE Festival in Germany.
Together, the paintings and sculptures form a dialogue. Isabella's work reflects how the Global South’s mythology can persist and resist through transformation and art-making—how art can turn what is damaged or forgotten into something capable of speaking again.
She has exhibited in group shows across London, with a recent solo exhibition, "Inner Land," at Broadworks by Hive in 2025. The artist continues to develop a body of work that is both a personal excavation and a necessary political statement.
Selected Exhibitions
2025: Inner Land (Solo exhibition) organised by Broadworks & Hive Curates, at Broadworks, London
2025: Surroundings, organised by Dark Yellow Dot, Genesis Cinema London
2025: Florestania, organised by Insights of an Eco Artist, Online
2025: Anticipation, organised by Knst Collective, SET Ealing, London
2024: KNST collective Launch event, Bermondsey Arts Club, London
2024: Pivotal Scholarship Group Exhibition, Karamel N22, London
2023: Art Matters 2, Art Pavilion, Mile End, London
2023: Women’s Spring Open Exhibition at The Brady Arts, London
Education
Insights of an Eco Artist program (Scholarship), Art Breeding Change Residency, 2023-2024
Advanced Painting Course (Scholarship), The Essential School of Painting, London, 2023-2024
Bachelors in Multimedia Arts, Belas Artes University, Lisbon, 2019
Professional Contributions
DYCP project called Pulped pages, a series of workshops with artist Lucie Macgregor - 2024
Artist assistant at Hadi Falapishi exhibition ‘As Free as Birds’, at CCA Goldsmiths, London, 2022
KNST Collective, London: Collective of artists crafting workshops and exhibitions - Ongoing
Sycamore Collective - Ongoing
Verified Champions for Climate Change - Ongoing
Artist assistant at WHOLE Festival 2025 at Mini Fridge art installation 2025