ISABEL ALICIA BAPTISTA "Claire Voyant" Embroidery 16

Isabel Alicia Baptista was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1992 and immigrated to Florida in 2001. Her family relocated to Post-Katrina New Orleans in 2007 where her challenges to assimilate to ‘America’ were amplified by her peers feelings of dislocation and deep loss. These experiences helped shape her artistic practice as an outlet for her own feelings of dislocation as an immigrant. Through painting and drawing, Baptista creates portraits of herself in quotidian moments staged in decorated domestic environments that showcase family heirlooms. The heirlooms provide an access point to a past that was lost in her experience as an immigrant, and by depicting these in the present, she is making space for what was lost in the assimilation. Baptista’s use of unconventional materials such as tattoo transfer ink, pigmented Elmer’s glue, velvet curtains, cake decorating tools, and embroidery add a physical and emotional depth to each work.

Isabel Alicia Baptista has a BFA from Cooper Union and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.