ISABELLA KILLORAN
WE LOVE WOMEN
PHOTOS BY CLAIRE O'KEEFE
Isabella Killoran is an artist, dreamer and creator of worlds, born and trained in London, based in Barcelona and now landed in Paris. She came seeking a change, “something that moves you and gives you clues, other energies” though the big city can be hard to navigate and she misses the Mediterranean light she says travelling and stepping outside of your home comfort “makes you value what is really important in both work and life and helps you to advance in a more refined way.”
“I don’t consider myself a creator of objects as such, I have a vision, I tell stories, generate an atmosphere, an energy, an emotion, so what the space tells us as a whole is important.” Her work goes beyond the two-dimensional, or even three-dimensional and taps into the fourth dimension of the psyche. “I like to polish all sides of the diamond.”
“As a creative director I like to create complete scenes, there is nothing I love more than working in space with representative and performative elements, not just for their beauty or physicality, but also the content and what they say to us – I often have a scene in my head and starting from there I begin to explore, how does this make me feel, what emotions does it provoke, and what do I want to communicate in this instance? What is this story about and how is it projected? What energy do you create in the space that can then be inhabited and perceived by another? Generating these kind of spaces and dynamics implies time, a more paused pace, which you don’t get from just an image, especially on a digital level.”
“When I begin a project I don’t usually start with an incredibly defined idea, my starting point can be something as simple as a material or texture, a detail of something I have seen, I go on an explorational journey with great curiosity for both the material and the process itself. I find it hard to repeat things mechanically, I need to seek out new things, just as in life you may have an objective, but you can be open to things happening along the way that may take us in another direction, well it’s the same in the creative process, I let the materials guide me and let new things I can learn from appear in the process.”
“It’s also an exploration of myself, creating goes hand-in-hand with a process of self-discovery, a self-healing process on every level, of taking root, a sense of belonging, of relevance of connection with myself and something beyond that, divine or spiritual, it’s very spiritual for me. I find it very organic and deeply connected to who I am, who I want to become, what I want to communicate – sometimes I feel like exploring something more tangible with my hands or picking up a video camera I can’t define what I do with one word but I tell stories, visual narratives, create atmospheres in the way I see most fitting I that moment.”
“so wondrous wild, the whole might see
the scenery of a fairy dream”
― Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake
“I am moved by the human aspect of my work and it really only makes sense in the moment I share it. I always say, my work is a temporal oasis, something that gets lost in time due to its fragility, it’s not something lasting like ceramics, it’s something that can touch you and generate a kind of emotion or sensation but that will probably die or not survive for years to come, so for me both the process and the moment of sharing might leave a trace but I don’t get attached to the final piece as a physical object.”
“These scenes are like stepping into other worlds, other realities, other eras for an instant.
Creating is a way of dreaming awake. Life comes with its hardships for everyone and we need that capacity to go beyond our reality. I can recreate myself in other realities.”
Many artists that inspire me come from cinema or theatre, when I was little I loved watching a movie and get completely into it, imagining I was inside it – seeing it wasn’t enough, I had to inhabit it too. I loved dressing up, we were five siblings in the family and I was left in the middle and in this void in between I subconsciously found a place of make-believe, I had an imaginary friend, and when I look back I see a seed, I still love dressing up and make-believe and seeing where that takes me.”
Isabella weaves spells with her contemporary ritual:
“I have spent a lot of time in Persia and that part of the world East of the Mediterranean where ritual and tradition are much more present in their clothing and ways of life, the desire to seek the beauty in things is present in ritual, I believe and what attracts me to that beauty is the memory of something divine in our every day. After all, the gods symbolise different types of energy, they help to embody and represent things in our human reality that do not have a physical form.”
“Surrealism is also an important influence for me, Leonora Carrington and all the surrealist women that explored in different directions, through painting, writing, sculpture, photography and many other disciplines that configure a really rich and unique performative world. They understood the importance of symbols. I identify with them and their power of imagination but also with their spirituality in mind.”
“In the end, what is attractive in femininity and women is a person who knows and is connected with themselves, I think it's palpable in the way someone talks from their inside, authentically without artifice. Beauty is being in touch with your soul, transparent, with no filters, people that seek, that are open, inquisitive, but of their own accord not because they want to meet some external standard. It’s a quality artists that inspire me have.”
“You can’t wear someone else’s suit. You have to dedicate yourself to find your suit, there are no shortcuts, it’s tough, it’s gradual and it’s lifelong. You need to learn to navigate life - at the end of the day you didn’t come here to wear someone else’s shoes.
And you have to trust because there is fear and impatience, it’s a mad rush but it’s where you will be most powerful. We each have the precise tools to get where we have to get.”
“You've always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it yourself.”
- Glinda the Good Witch, The Wizard of Oz.