I am Venezuelan, born in Caracas on August 23, 1983, I studied the specialty of painting in the career of Plastic Arts at the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Superiores de Artes Plásticas Armando Reverón (currently UNEARTE) in Caño Amarillo, Caracas, Venezuela and in 2006 I was part of the X promotion of graduates of that institution.
Since then I have participated in approximately 13 collective exhibitions and one individual exhibition entitled Collages and Costurigraphies of Isabella Rengifo held in May 2007 at the Carmelo Fernandez Art Gallery, Caracas, Venezuela. It is also important to highlight the participation of one of my embroidered paintings in the SOFA Chicago 2008 Sculpture Objects and Functional Arts fair, as well as my participation in the V International Biennial of Textile Art, at the Sub-headquarters in Córdoba, Argentina, as a representative of Latin American Textiles in April 2009.
In September of 2009, the North American magazine specialized in textile art and contemporary crafts: FIBER ARTS published an article about my work entitled: Isabella Rengifo: A Rustic Innocence, which describes and shows a part of my work under the editing of Maria Carolina Baulo.
In 2010 I moved to Barcelona, Spain to study for three years at the Escola Massana, where I took the Ciclo Formativo de Estudios Superiores en Arte y Diseño Textil.
Then in 2013, I did the Monographic Cycle of Superior Studies in Bookbinding and Arts of the Book in the Escola Llotja also in Barcelona, Spain. During my stay in Barcelona I have concentrated on the creation of tapestries, illustrations and textile experiments in which I mix different techniques such as embroidery, loom weaving, photography, painting and drawing.
During this season I have been illustrating through the textile language, the reflections on identity, roots and transcendence that have arisen from settling down in another geographical place that is not the one of origin, as well as elements and portraits taken from the intimacy of the daily life that somehow are narrating a kind of autobiography.
I am interested in establishing aesthetic and conceptual dialogues between manual labor seen as domestic or feminine, some textile techniques that are an essential part of the traditional folklore of the Caribbean and Latin American peoples and a certain system of universal symbols linked to mysticism and spiritual self-knowledge coming from the harmonious relationship of humans with the elements of nature.
The results of these processes have been exhibited in Barcelona, on several occasions in informal spaces such as the Basar 1993, the Paella Showroom, and in the Rufian Bar.
I am currently making a collection of handmade ponchos and coats, woven on a low-warp loom, with natural materials and under the direct influence of the legacy of the Andean Master Weaver Juan Felix Sanchez.
Instagram: @mumutextil