Isabella Lolita Amram is a Turkish and Venezuelan painter and performance artist living in London.
______________________________________ Isabella’s art practice is a ritual. ______________________________
Everything from preparing the materials, to the use of colour and scale, to a piece being reworked or left alone, to the use of her body…is part of this ritual. She uses ritual as a way of inducing and processing states of transformation and uncertainty, through material and bodily gestures of disintegration, embodiment, and enduring stillness.
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In this way, the work is process-oriented and of the body. Her work draws a lot of inspiration from concepts and symbols associated with the occult: death, loss, fear, emptiness, fire, sexual energy, divination, the void, blackholes, trance-like states such as sleep and meditation, mythos, astrological archetypes, play, and the unconscious mind. A lot of these are realities, but the occult “storifies” and philosophises them, and turns them into concepts and ritualistic practices. Over the years Isabella has amassed a vast cosmology of diverse occult research and experiences that her practice draws from and adds to. What the subject of this library of research and all these lived experiences boil down to, essentially, is the inescapable collective experience of being alive and dying; to be alive and in a state of constant death and rebirth, and to be surrounded by a sense of mystery, the unknown.
Further to that, Isabella holds private tarot performances at her studio and various other venues on a habitual basis, where she guides people through card readings combined with divinatory drawings on-the-spot. The connections she fosters with her tarot sessions feed into the painting practice, almost in an “artist’s muse”-like way.
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Occult wisdom – whether from Western sources (e.g. Hermeticism, Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Rider–Waite Tarot), Eastern sources (e.g. Vedic Astrology, Buddhism), or Frankenstein-like mixtures that aim to unify them all under one umbrella (Theosophy, globalised New Age content dominating social media) – has had a way of storifying and dramatising the mundane and primordial human experience using archetypal practices, lore and art as a means to do so. Using tools for meaning-making and dramatic reenactment – primarily through repetitive and intentional ways (ritual, magic) – to connect with oneself and others, and find some comfort – is an integral part of what it means to be human. As an artist, part of what Isabella’s work aims to do is to draw from, situate herself in, contribute to, critically analyse, and create a ripple in the vast ocean that is this tradition.
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The process of creating abstract paintings can be considered a ritualistic and performative act. The performance of layering materials, employing repetitive gestures, and entering meditative states during the process align with esoteric rituals aimed at reframing the mundane and accessing different facets of reality and self. The uncertainty she faces on her canvas becomes a surface to work through things to train for her life, and what goes on in her life becomes training for the studio. The painterly metamorphosis from wet to dry becomes a tangible manifestation of the transformations she goes through in daily life, with the passing of time. So does the rapid mark-making, the stretched time periods waiting for a layer to dry, as well the extra-large surfaces she works on with intense bodily gestures in silence… They are all ways of contraction and expansion, chaos and order, destruction and creation, growth and decay.
