Profile of a woman with long, dark hair and bangs, wearing colorful beaded earrings and a necklace, in a dimly lit room with a bed and decorative hanging items in the background.

Bio

Isabella Romero is an interdisciplinary Chicana artist whose roots stretch from Chimayó (Tsi-Mayoh) and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work emerges from the complexities of living as a land-based person in a “post-colonial apocalypse,” where Spanish, American, and nuclear colonization have left her homelands fragmented, radiated, and carrying what she describes as a “soul sickness.”

Through a multitude of mediums, ritual, and collaboration, Romero explores the romance of the feminine, the spirit of matriarchy, and the necessity of returning to primordial medicine while reconnecting to the cycles of nature. Her practice serves as both a homage to rematriation and an honoring of what her ancestors left her.

Romero primarily creates sculptural works, pottery, animated films, and paintings in oil and acrylic. She works with materials such as wood, clay, adobe, charcoal, beads, and plants, often combining and layering mediums through collage and assemblage.

Grounded in community-based practice, Romero served as an Apprentice of Art and Social Justice during the summers of 2023 and 2024. Her contributions to an arid, low-impact medicinal garden and public sculptures can be seen at Mesa Verde Park. Her work has been exhibited at the South Broadway Cultural Center, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and Secret Gallery.

In 2025, Romero’s pieces Chimayo and Patrona Santa Frida were published in Volume 48 of Conceptions Southwest Magazine.

Her animated film madre luna was showcased and awarded Best Animation at the 2025 Madrid Film Festival. madre luna was also screened at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in October 2025 as part of the Next Gen Native Film Festival.

Romero is a recipient of the 2025 516 ARTS Fulcrum Fund, through which she is creating a community garden in Barelas rooted in ancestral traditions of art, adobe, and plant medicine. The project is intended as a space for gathering, healing, and cultural exchange.

In September 2026, Romero will present her work Niños de la Luna in a group exhibition in San Antonio exploring identity, politics, and the complexities of the borderlands alongside artists from across the Southwest.