ARTIST'S STATEMENT
My sculptures, paintings, and textiles express my care for people. I care about people. I care about our survival, communication, and connection in this increasingly disaster-full world.
My maternal family is based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and my paternal family is in Southern California. In 2017, Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico and the damage forced the majority of my family to relocate. Soon after, wildfires burned through Southern California. The damage and following mudslides displaced the other side of my family. Everything I considered stable in my life— my concept of home— was suddenly turned on its head and my perception of safety was disrupted. I consider home to be a physical space, not a conceptual one, and these events broke my trust in the longevity of those spaces. This pushed me to further explore my identity and personal history through art, with a special focus on disasters, incorporating knowledge from my geology research. Now I find myself sheltering-in-place during this current disaster in my parent’s home in LA, feeling a similar sense of insecurity and uncertainty in a place I once considered comforting.
My hands have touched every part of the memory-laden objects I make. I puncture, flip, and bend my beaded envelopes in their creation process, adding to their history of touch from before I retrieve them from the trash. Envelopes are licked, wrapped around a message, hugged around an object, moved across vast distance, and torn open. The texture of a bubble envelope even resembles skin: it wrinkles, soaks in water, and flakes off.
My beaded comforters are an abstraction of these envelopes, referencing the body and its absence. Even while a body experiences the comfort and warmth, alluded to in the name “comforter”, the specifics of the person are lost in the giant folds. The draping of my pieces mimics this reality, imitating presence and loss. The strings that hold the beads in place are hidden, yet integral— adding to the feeling of disruption and disconnect. Produce nets found in supermarkets are also attached to these comforters, associating with a network, casting a wide net, and overall connection. Yet, these nets are pinned down by the beads and reference maps, forming lone islands, detached from each other.
BIOGRAPHY
Isabela Miñana Lovelace was born in Los Angeles, CA. She graduated in May of 2020 from Brown University in Providence, RI with an A.B. in Visual Art with Honors and an A.B. in Geological Sciences. Her work is heavily influenced by disasters, as her family was directly impacted by the earthquakes and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the mudslides and fires in California, in addition to the current COVID-19 pandemic. In her work, she explores the themes of comfort, home, connection, and materiality in relation to disaster. Lovelace’s work has been included in various group exhibitions, such as “The Juried Art Show” at the Granoff Center, curated by David Antonio Cruz and Akiko Ichikawa, and “Anthropocene: human// nature” at the Science Center in the Sciences Library, both in Providence, RI. Curatorial work includes two group shows for the Geological Sciences Department at Brown University. For her 2020 solo show at the List Art Center in Providence, RI, she embellished comforters with beads and recycled produce nets to create associations with materials and allude to the presence of the body.
CV/Resume available upon request