Isabella Convertino

Isabella Convertino (New York, 1998) is a young artist residing in New York and Connecticut. She is currently engaged in undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University (CT), pursuing a major in Studio Art and concentrating in photography. Her work has been published by ROMAN NVMERALS press, and was recently acquired by the MoMA library. Convertino’s images speak to the complications of adolescence, compounding memory and trauma as points of departure. Interested in the interplay between familial and gender structures, her work probes modes of power-inheritance and the potential devastation of genetic happenstance.

to shoot the sun

“to shoot the sun” is both a reflection upon my experience with masculine energies, and a testimony to the promise–– how it will forever operate as a gendered identity. Lasting promises are made to “boy” and “girl” when they are little; promises about the future, about identity, about freedom. I’m interested in the erosion of these promises, and how this process is varied in length according to the operations of gender. As a woman, I watch with both bitterness and empathy at the sight of men having not yet experienced the brokenness of such promises, or having only just begun to have suspicions.

The title of the piece is a proposition of action, but the action is one of sheer impossibility. This crisis intrigues me. Who would attempt to shoot the sun first? Who would believe they could succeed? To conquer the sun is to believe in some personal right to immortality, invincibility; a claim to some peculiar kind of deathlessness. I cannot help but think that it would be the boys to try first.

To view more of Isabella Convertino’s work please visit her website.