Isabel Avila

Isabel Avila is a Los Angeles-based artist who uses primarily color film photography to document aspects of cultural history. Isabel is dedicated to exploring local histories of Southern California, focusing on presenting a subjective perspective of the overlap in local Native and Chicano culture. Avila’s photographs show this history living, working and actively creating a counter-narrative to mainstream perception. Avila received her MFA in Photography at CSULB and her BFA in Photography and Imaging, at Art Center College of Design. Avila’s exhibition history includes a solo exhibit Parallel Worlds that debuted at the Vincent Price Art Museum, featuring work that was also exhibited in The New World at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art and The One & the Many: Perspectives on Self & Other in Art & Human Rights Practices at the University of Dayton. Her recent solo exhibition Reflections of Land and Lineage debuted at Beyond Baroque. She was also featured in A Universal History of Infamy at LACMA’s Charles White Gallery as part of Pacific Standard Time. Work from her Native America series joined the collection at the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage. Avila has also completed a series of eight portraits of Native Americans for the permanent exhibit Becoming LA at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. She is currently a teaching artist-in-residence at Light Bringer Project.