Photo by Marcieline Novatore
Isabella Saavedra is an interdisciplinary artist based in Portland, Oregon. Her practice as an artist and scholar is organized around a central conviction: that the boundaries separating structures, disciplines, and ways of knowing are imaginary and therefore worth questioning. Her work is an ongoing conceptual and material investigation of what happens when those boundaries become permeable. Her work spans painting, drawing, textiles, soft sculpture, video, animation, performance, sound, installation, and social engagement. Currently, she is engaged in a sustained inquiry into the word "conduct" — its governance of behavior, its musical direction, its colonial resonances. Her work aims to document her lived experience, unmask, question rituals and systems, and write fresh scripts in the hope of generating a different vision of reality.
Saavedra received her B.S. in Studio Art from Southern Oregon University in 2020 and began her MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Fall 2025. Saavedra received a 2024 Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, as well as consecutive Arts3C Grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council in 2023 and 2024. She has attended residencies at ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership in Cleveland, OH, and p:ear in Portland, OR. Her exhibition record includes the Newport Visual Arts Center and Portland Center Stage. Most recently, she completed Understory, a permanent large-scale public art installation commissioned by the City of Portland’s Percent for Art in Public Places Program at the Mt. Scott Community Center.