Isabel Alicia Baptista was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1992. In August 2001, she immigrated to Florida with her family, where they began the complex process of assimilating to ‘America.’ In 2007, they relocated to post-Katrina New Orleans. There, Baptista encountered a different kind of dislocation—one rooted in collective grief and loss. Unable to fully relate, she began to see her own sense of displacement more clearly. New Orleans revealed art as a tool for growth, coping, and survival; New York later offered the space to refine that practice. Her time in school was deeply formative—a rare, protected period where she could work fearlessly and intensely, exploring ideas and materials without inhibition.

Through painting, drawing and textile works, Baptista creates portraits of herself and her family in scenes of everyday life. Her materials are unconventional: tattoo transfer ink for sketching, pigmented Elmer’s glue as glaze, velvet curtains as canvas, and cake-decorating tools in place of brushes. These quotidian moments are staged in decorated domestic spaces, showcasing family heirlooms. Patterns are developed from the repetitive mark making in her painting practice as a shorthand for memories,
symbols of prosperity for the building of resilience. These are embroidered on found and gifted remnants. These heirlooms give her access to a past that was lost in her experience as an immigrant, and extend the use of discarded materials. By depicting these in the present, Baptista is making space for what was lost in the assimilation.