Isabelle Albuquerque

Isabelle Albuquerque investigates the intersections of personal identity, collective experience, memory, desire, and transformation. Her work engages with both psychological depth and formal intensity, offering multiple layers of interpretation. Drawing on her background in performance, she uses her own body as a point of departure, creating sculptures that explore the fluidity of identity and foreground women’s experiences, desire, sexuality, and embodiment across time. In her life-sized figures, Albuquerque examines metamorphosis and mythological inheritance through a rich combination of materials. She merges personal narratives with broader cultural and social themes, producing tactile works that resonate on multiple levels. By integrating traditional craftsmanship with contemporary technologies such as 3D scanning and robotic carving, she animates materials—bronze, wood, plaster, wax, rubber, synthetic resins, and even human hair—imbuing them with layered histories and agency. Her sculptures confront themes of power, sexuality, and cultural memory while existing in a continual state of transformation, questioning conventional notions of the body and humanity. Albuquerque’s interdisciplinary experience in dance and performance infuses her work with a sense of movement and ritual. Her sculptures function as dynamic entities, provoking reflection on female empowerment, self-discovery, and the intricate connections between body, identity, and desire. ...