October 2019

The Shape of A Feeling and

by Nina Isabelle

About the Creator

Nina Isabelle is a process-based multidisciplinary artist working with perception, action, language, and phenomena. She builds performative and photographic frameworks as staged inquiries into how sensory perception functions as the impetus for action, reaction, response, and choice-making in art and life practices. These situational inquiry vignettes often combine sculptural objects, natural environments, soundscapes, formed or draped body coverings, and intention within a performance structure to explore the ways sensory experiences form concepts, inform thought progressions, compel action, and the unconscious and conscious impact these variables have on decision-making processes used to construct meaning and worlds. Isabelle approaches photography as an instrument to identify and inspect sensory inconsistencies and memory schisms by simultaneously displacing perception into three different vantages- the observer, the observed subject or object, and the observer of the observed subject or object. In this way, photographs become a tool to sort and solve sensory perception problems related to sequence and simultaneity, physical location and material, the affability of memory, the complexities of self and others, and the inconsistencies experienced by the observer and experiencer over time. Isabelle has presented work at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City, The Queens Museum as part of Emergency Index Documentation Discussion, ABC No Rio in Exile at Bullet Space in NYC with Feminist Art Group, Para //el Performance Space and The Ear in Brooklyn, NY, Paul McMahon's Mothership social sculpture in Woodstock, NY, as well as at The Judson Memorial Church in NYC as part of The Anarchist Art Festival, and with Anarko Art Lab's Ungovernable Zone at Ft. Tilden, NY. Her work has been presented at Roman Susan in Chicago, IL, The San Diego Art Institute, The New School's exhibition at The Bushwick Collective, CX Silver Gallery in Brattleboro VT, and HiLo in Catskill, NY as well as internationally at The Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Gimpo, South Korea, The Institute in Catalunya, Spain, Studio Fidlär in Berlin, The Bangkok Underground Film Festival in Thailand, NA Gallery in South Korea. Project-specific photographs: www.ninaisabelle.com/shapeofafeeling Web site: www.ninaisabelle.com