“Is it possible to make an abstraction of identity, taking into account the social aspect and the media that condition and influence the construction of the self?”
Beyond Labels: Where Art, Science, and Philosophy Collide
Isabel Englebert’s trajectory is anything but conventional. With an academic foundation that spans economics, communication, design, and neuroscience, the Argentine conceptual artist and researcher has emerged as a unique voice exploring the intersections of identity, technology, and philosophical inquiry. Her practice is rooted in rigorous research and a drive to interrogate the frameworks that govern human self-perception.
Englebert’s diverse training includes a degree in Communications Sciences, design course at Central Saint Martins in London, jewelry studies at L’École Van Cleef & Arpels in Paris, and coursework in Medical Neurosciences at Duke University. Most recently, she completed postgraduate studies in Contemporary Art Technologies at the University of Buenos Aires and participated in the GlogauAIR Berlin residency . Her recognition by Forbes as one of “35 under 35” underscores her rising influence within the global contemporary art circuit. Her investigations have been published in specialized mediums such as Arte Al Día. She was recently accepted to SFSIA 2025 in Paris at the Centre des Récollets and to the Master in Arts & Vision at Université Sorbonne, whose faculty includes Nicolas Bourriaud, Claire Fontaine, and others.
For over a decade, Englebert has cultivated an interdisciplinary studio practice that draws from the disciplines of science, technology, philosophy, and visual culture. Her early career in corporate strategic communication provided her with a global lens and an analytical approach that continues to inform her work today. This structured foundation supports the conceptual rigor that underpins each of her artworks. Whether developing an installation, a video piece, or an experimental series, she approaches every decision with a sense of purpose anchored in research. In her view, each medium, each material, and every aesthetic choice must carry conceptual weight and intentionality, forming a coherent dialogue with the themes she investigates.
The core of Englebert’s artistic inquiry revolves around identity—its construction, fragmentation, and reconfiguration in contemporary contexts marked by genetic engineering and technological saturation. Emerging from a background shaped by traditional values and a prescribed path of professional success, she began to question the very mechanisms that define individual subjectivity. Her practice became an introspective tool to decode the intricate social, psychological, and technological factors that shape the self. Through this lens, she investigates how much of our identity is truly ours, and to what extent it is shaped—or even fabricated—by external systems of influence.
Isabel Englebert: Architect of Invisible Identities
Englebert’s work is deeply self-referential, often using her own body and biology as both subject and medium. Her explorations range from genome sequencing to brainwave recordings, underscoring her commitment to confronting identity at its most intimate level. In the ongoing series Amateur Gods, Englebert uses her own genetic data, obtained through a saliva sample, to challenge notions of selfhood and authorship. Twenty-three plexiglass pieces, each engraved with a synthesis of one of her chromosome pairs, invite viewers to physically manipulate and reorder her genetic code. The public, therefore, becomes a stand-in for the scientist—or even the divine—reconstructing identity through subjective choices. This interactive installation has been exhibited at major institutions, including The Bass Museum and the National Museum Ferreyra, and presented at the Biohacking Congress in Texas.
Equally compelling is her video installation from the Presence of the Absence series, a project rooted in neuroscientific collaboration with an MIT lab. Here, Englebert engages with the phenomenon of afterimages to create a poetic analogy between visual perception and memory. The series blends AI, cyanotypes, sculpture, and video to explore the lingering imprints left by absent stimuli—both in the brain and in personal experience. One of the standout works from this body of research was showcased in Times Square in 2024, cementing its relevance within the public discourse around memory, perception, and digital representation. Her application of cyanotype—an early photographic process activated by sunlight—adds another conceptual layer by echoing the trace-based nature of memory itself.
Another significant work, It took me 4 months, 9 days and 23 hours to complete 2 km with a pen, pushes the boundaries of endurance and conceptual minimalism. In this piece, a single ballpoint pen is used to inscribe a continuous text across a 10-meter scroll of paper, suspended throughout the gallery space. The work interrogates the relationship between functionality and essence—posing the question: what remains of an object, or a person, once its intended purpose has been exhausted?
Drawing on BIC’s claim that a pen can write up to two kilometers, Englebert transforms a mundane industrial benchmark into a profound metaphor for existential inquiry. Through acts of obsessive repetition, she confronts the invisible labor embedded in meaning-making. This piece was finalist in the Arte Laguna Prize and exhibited in Arsenale Nord, in Venice, in 2024.
Tracing the Edge Between the Organic and the Digital
Much of Englebert’s recent practice is shaped by a fascination with how media, hyperconnectivity, and artificial intelligence alter the process of self-construction. Her series Who is J.Doe? brings this into sharp relief, synthesizing genome maps from anonymous human DNA samples sourced from the NIH’s GenBank. The result is a speculative figure—a hybrid entity that challenges the boundaries between individuality and anonymity. Here, Englebert invokes the surreal in order to unsettle conventional notions of identity. The viewer is confronted with a paradox: a portrait of someone who does not exist, yet is composed entirely of real, biological data. In this work, she addresses the collective aspects of identity, asking how much of ourselves is truly singular, and how much is statistically inevitable.
Her studio practice relies on an intricate balance between intuition and analysis. Concepts begin not with immediate execution but with prolonged periods of theoretical development. Ideas are dissected, documented, questioned, and reshaped until they are ready for material translation. Parallel to this conceptual incubation, Englebert conducts experiments with various media—testing scales, volumes, colors, and shapes. She refers to this phase as “adjudication,” a term that captures the deliberative process through which material choices are justified. Each element is selected only after it proves itself capable of carrying the conceptual weight required by the project.
An example of this method can be found in the Solutio series, where she works with her own used clothing, integrating symbols of personal history with bio-data such as brainwaves and genetic sequences. The garments are altered and reconstructed to express themes related to the female experience and Jungian interpretations of individuation. Here, Englebert explores how identity—particularly female identity—is a layered construction shaped by both internal and external forces. Through the transformation of familiar objects into sites of meaning, she creates a symbolic vocabulary that speaks to both personal narrative and universal inquiry.
Isabel Englebert: The Self as a Laboratory
In Englebert’s creative world, the artist is not merely a maker but a kind of researcher—or even alchemist—operating at the intersection of disciplines. Her studio becomes a hybrid space, one part laboratory and one part philosophical atelier, where each artwork is an experiment designed to challenge assumptions about the human condition. Drawing on figures like Duchamp, Kosuth, and Eduardo Kac, she aligns herself with a conceptual tradition that values the process of inquiry over aesthetic decoration. Her affinity for Yoko Ono also reveals a performative and poetic sensitivity, especially evident in her long-duration works and participatory installations. These influences inform a practice that prioritizes questioning as much as resolution.
Her obsession with epistemological limits—what can truly be known—fuels her drive to blur the boundaries between science and art. This inquiry is not just theoretical; it takes material form through extended research, expert consultations, and technical experimentation. Whether sourcing data from MIT labs or translating philosophical frameworks into physical objects, she immerses herself in each subject until the concept finds its natural expression. This approach imbues her works with both intellectual density and visual resonance. She refuses to settle for surface-level symbolism, insisting instead on artworks that carry the full weight of their inquiries.
Currently, Englebert is working on her first book, a science fiction novel that weaves together her primary research themes: artificial intelligence, feminism, genetics, and identity. Like her artworks, the novel promises to navigate the liminal spaces between the real and the speculative, between empirical fact and philosophical possibility. While her visual art captures questions in object form, the novel allows her to stretch these questions into narrative time. In both endeavors, she continues to explore the complexities of what it means to be a self in a world where even that concept is subject to reinvention.
