fine artist - eco feminist pagan - sculptor painter performer
Isolde Finney is a multidisciplinary environmental artist, born and raised in the small-town landscape of the Midwest. As her experience as a Pagan, one who worships the Earth as a religious practice, met her interest in environmental studies Finney’s work became a synergy between mythology and ecology. Heavily using recycled and trash materials within the context of performance, video installation and film pieces, her work crafts modern mythologies revolving around current environmental crises. Recently her work has turned focus towards the crossroads of eco-feminism and of Goddess imagery.
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Finney received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis through the school of Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts with a minor in environmental studies in 2021. Her work has been shown at Sager-Braudis gallery in Columbia, Missouri and been included in various collaborative shows through the St. Louis local artist collective, The Punish Babies.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Being a Pagan means recognizing your place in the world as natural and equal to all other life around you. It commands respect and reverence for the ancient soul of the snow kissed mountain peaks that have lived for eons before you and will live for eons after, just as equally as the fading color of a fallen leaf as its death feeds new life hidden in the soil below. It is with this profound sense of love and awe that I make my environmentalist artwork. In a constant battle for balance, I draw from both the overwhelming terror and guilt of feeling complicit in the slow violence against the natural world and my worship of it.
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Utilizing and intertwining symbolism from Pagan mythology and ecology, my work tells the story of environmental degradation. This draw towards myth comes from the deeply ingrained love of storytelling that seeded itself in my soul in the stacks of my childhood library – a place I spent countless hours melting into. As both a metaphorical representation of our lasting impact on the planet, and a conscious effort to support sustainability, I currently use exclusively recycled materials. My sculptural pieces are cluttered collections of man-made detritus. These jumbled landscapes then become the home of my performance pieces in which I evoke fantastical and divine entities. While a devil reigns over a capitalism wasteland, elemental beings wither and die from pollution; all are creatures living in the shadow of human action. Through film, video installation, performance and ‘junk sculptures’ I weave a new mythology; one that tells the tale of a world burned by indifference and greed.
contact & follow
Instagram: @artof_isoldejune
email: isoldejune@hotmail.com
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