Isabella Morales Salis (Porto Alegre, Brazil) is a queer interdisciplinary artist based in northeast London, whose work moves between painting, video, sound, and research, imagining speculative ecosystems where the lines between human, plant, and animal dissolve. Through vibrant figuration and hybrid forms, Isabella explores transformation, adaptation, and survival—both personal and planetary—in response to ecological crisis.
Currently working primarily in painting, Isabella develops intricate, layered compositions where bodies merge with landscapes, insects, and vegetal forms, creating scenes of metamorphosis and collapse. Alongside this, she experiments with video and sound, building archives of gestures, notes, and abstractions generated through intuitive processes, often while absorbing nature footage or ecological documentation. These elements act as research fragments for future immersive installations, where materiality, movement, and multisensory environments can unfold.
Two ongoing bodies of work anchor her practice:
“Human Nature”, which envisions a post-human ecosystem inhabited by sculptural hybrids, painted anatomies, and video murals, reflecting on the fragility of coexistence; and
“Rituals of Passage”, which frames climate change as a collective rite of passage, exploring the thresholds between grief, resilience, and renewal.
Constrained by the limits of her small studio, Isabella’s practice remains painting-led, while actively preparing for expanded, spatial works that combine sculpture, video, sound, and painting into cohesive environments. She sees her practice as an evolving organism—modular, adaptive, and deeply connected to the rhythms of impermanence.
Whether through intimate canvases or imagined ecosystems, Isabella invites viewers to inhabit the thresholds where bodies, environments, and identities continuously dissolve and rebuild, proposing art as a site for reflection, adaptation, and care.
Selected Exhibitions
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