From issue: #24 The Graduate Issue 2024
Isabella Madrid grew up in Colombia, in a culture in which female bodies are often objectified and sexualised; this environment causes young girls to form specific expectations about femininity, she believes, and her series Buena, Bonita, y Barata [“Good, pretty, and cheap’”] explores photographic representations of Colombian women. Becoming a webcam model is one of their most popular jobs, and this online demand translates into the real world. In her work, Madrid re-appropriates this narrative, playing the muse, photographer, stylist, makeup artist, and art director while subverting, enacting, playing, defining and redefining the power of each role.
As a pre-teen girl in Colombia a complex of pressures impacts body identity, from the first communion, performed wearing a white pseudo-bridal dress (and often, body shaping underwear). Girls find themselves in the church hungry and trying to breathe, says the artist, while remembering that the original sin was a woman feeding herself. In addition, the quinceañera gift [on coming of age at 15] can be anything from a horse to plastic surgery. Madrid grew up on a farm, where horses represented power and masculinity, and they are another important symbol for her in considering gender roles. Born in 1999, Madrid received her Bachelor in Visual Arts at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, and her MA in Photography at ECAL, Switzerland. She is now based in Lausanne.
Isabella Madrid received Spectrum Photographic’s special award this year.
