Erexit Terram, 2023, Transparency, 10 x 10 inches
Izzy Guerrero
Isabella Guerrero is a Baltimore based artist creating work exploring topics of feminism, sexuality, activism, the body as art, and the concept of growth. Isabella has been developing her craft as a primarily analog photographer through her continued education while pursuing a BA in fine arts at Loyola University Maryland. Her practice consists of combining modern technology with classic alternative processes to create one-of-a-kind works with a contemporary perspective. Isabella’s work has been exhibited in galleries and publications in Baltimore and beyond.
Crēscens Camera
If no person is perfect, and perfection is unachievable, then why does one grow?
Perfection is not what makes people beautiful, and it is not what makes art beautiful. Perfection is unremarkable. It is our imperfections that make an individual worth knowing and loving. But, if that’s the case, why grow? If not aimed for perfection, what does growth do for a person? No growth comes without scars: painful rips in the fabric of what we believed to be ourselves, our appearance, our beliefs, our outlooks, and our relationships. Growth is the constant tearing and healing of one’s life until they are riddled with scars that tell stories of a life well lived and lessons well learned.
Growth, above all, is learning to love the imperfections. It is learning to embrace – rather than condemn – the fractal streaks that appear across legs and stomachs from the stretching of skin, the adipose folds while we sit, the divots in hips, and the wizened wrinkles from our smiles. Thus, I invite you all into my own process of growth; to find the beauty in the ripped and wrinkled images that took gentle coaxing to lift from one surface and lay to rest on another. I invite you to venture into my own growth, as I seek to see it for the bright, beautiful, and natural affair that it is. Explore the growth of my process, as acceptance of a product that, created by an inherently imperfect method, would once be impossible for me to accept. I now strive to embrace the impossibility of perfection and create work to do the same.
Venture with me to a world where, as vines and florals creep through the glass, brick, and wood of abandoned structures, life and flora burst forth from the human form and coalesce into a beautifully imperfect creature of growth.