Some images refuse to remain on the surface of the canvas; they embed themselves
into the very skin of our times, etched with silence, wounds, and resistance. The art of
Isabella Leme Villalpando belongs to this visceral lineage. With a background that
weaves together the three-dimensionality of 3D animation and the ancestral essence of
painting, printmaking, and sculpture, Isabella creates a visual language where the body
—especially the female body—is the primary territory for exploration, emotion, and
protest.
Isabella fuses the ancestral power of gesture with the visual language of the present. Her
work is hybrid, but not fragmented: it’s whole in its multiplicity, like a marked body that
dances nonetheless.
From her earliest experiments in college, it was clear Isabella’s art would never be
decorative. She used India ink as if writing urgent letters. Blows of alcohol across the
paper created visual wounds, while straws transformed stains into maps, entrails, or
remnants. Here, technique isn’t an end in itself but an extension of what words can’t
express: the female body as a battlefield—both symbolic and literal.
Central to her work are themes of abusive relationships, femicide, psychological pain,
and the way violence imprints itself onto women’s bodies and memories. Isabella doesn’t
sugarcoat these narratives—she confronts them. Her paintings don’t offer easy comfort;
instead, they serve as torn mirrors where fragility finds its strength and vulnerability
becomes a form of aesthetic resistance.
That resistance is often grounded in the symbolic power and spiritual resilience of African
heritage. Isabella’s art is deeply rooted in this ancestral strength, shaping a visual
universe that is both raw and transcendent.
For Isabella Leme Villalpando, creation feels like an intimate ritual that unfolds into
political action. Each piece is a fragment of how she listens to the world—a sensitive
translation of the wounds and powers that shape us. She reminds us that art can be an
uncomfortable mirror, but also a necessary balm; that a stain may be a scar, but also a
portal; and that the female body, so often violated and silenced, can become—on
canvas and in life—a territory of defiance, beauty, and unbreakable resistance. Her work
doesn’t just portray. It pulses.
The Skin of the Image,
the Scar of the Ink
Isabella Leme