Isotta’s current research focuses on sculpting marble—an ancient practice—through a contemporary Anthropogenic ecological lens. Her interest lies in how care and craft can transform a seemingly inert rock into a totem of geologic resilience and a gateway for reflecting on geologic time.
Isotta earned her Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Contemporary Art History from the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh College of Art in 2020. She is currently working on her first public sculpture commission and exhibiting her work in a group show in Hudson, NY. In 2022, Isotta created a ten-piece large-scale sculpture garden for a private client in Umbria. Her sculptures are also in private collections in Paris, London, Rome, and Los Angeles. Isotta is currently based between Rome and Fara Sabina, where she has her studio.
Isotta also hosts Art Is...a podcast for artists, she started the show in April 2021 as a response to the monumental shifts that emerging artists faced in the wake of COVID-19.
Das medium ist die nachricht
The medium is the message
2025, Carrara marble and vinyl sticker, 29 x 38 x 14cm (both)
Created for the Cabine Cabinet Gallery at the Sophie-Charlotte-Platz U-Bahn station inn Berlin.
We humans see faces everywhere – in electrical outlets, cars, buildings, even the moon. This phenomenon, called pareidolia, isn't just random. Our brains evolved to be face-finding experts as a crucial survival skill, making us quick to spot facial patterns even where none were intended. The Medium is the Message plays with this quirk through ancient materials and modern tricks, where the face seems whole from afar, but stepping closer breaks the illusion – the spiral eyes carved from solid marble contrast with a simple vinyl sticker nose.
The vinyl nose perfectly represents our contemporary world of imitations and digital fronts, while the carved sculptures engage with the classical legacy of decorative marble, employing familiar carved spiral features to captivate and draw the observer in. The Medium is the Message/Das Medium ist die Nachricht delves into ecological and geological themes, harnessing marble's unique capacity to evoke awareness of geological time, creating a dialogue between past and present through its materials.
Positioned on the metro platform, the composition is designed for easy interpretation, yet it prompts deeper contemplation. Even in the fleeting moments of interaction, it encourages viewers to reflect on the brevity of the present, framing the daily grind of commuting within the vast context of geological time. This strategic placement allows the work to engage with viewers on multiple levels, from quick glances to deeper philosophical consideration.
The medium is the message
2024, Carrara marble and steel, 100 x 50 x 30cm
The public sculptures were made during the Cammino Via di Francesco residency and are permanently installed in the town of Lugnola, behind the church of San Cassiano on the border of Lazio & Umbria in Italy. 📍Location
Marble serves as a portal into geological time, formed long before humanity ever existed. Two spirals rise as symbols of continuity and eternity, evoking a bygone classical era.
This idea materializes in a sculpture where the marble spirals blend with an industrial base crafted from recycled steel beams, salvaged from a Tuscan residential building. These beams, still bearing the original marks of their industrial history in Piombino, create a dialogue between past and present.
In this context, the spirals resemble eyes gazing over the landscape, inviting us to perceive the scenery as a fleeting moment within the vast expanse of Earth’s history. While our lives are brief, marble endures for millions of years, offering us a rare and almost unfathomable perspective on the scale of geological time.
Moving Upwards
-
2024,
hand carved Macael
marble, 25 x 15 x 56cm
Moving Upwards, is where land and body converge, featuring a female torso that dissolves into folds of marble, seamlessly becoming part of the landscape. The arch of the back is both topographical and intimate, capturing a state of constant transformation. As part of the ongoing series Dark Optimism: Ghost in the Stone, this work blurs the lines between drawing and sculpture, embodying themes of unity, metamorphosis, and the interconnectedness of nature and humanity.
Tides of Time
2024, hand carved Macael marble, 28x 34x 17cm
Tides of Time, part of the Dark Optimism: Ghost in the Stone series, is an intuitive and organic form that blurs the line between drawing and sculpture, merging the raw with the refined. Its highly polished surface gleams with a wet, glossy finish, contrasted by the raw marble that encases and protects it. Like a shell on the beach, "Tides of Time" is a fragment of an incomprehensible geologic timeline, serving as an anchor point for us to recognise the vast expanse and wisdom of nature, of which we are also a part.
Permanet Collection of Academia di Libera Pittua Nova Milanese