ISABELLA MARIE GARCIA
Interdisciplinary Lens-Based Artist | Writer | Educator
Isabella “Isa” Marie Garcia is an interdisciplinary lens-based artist, writer, and educator living in her native Miami, Florida. Interested in alternative educational spaces, holistic aftercare, and supporting visual artists in the American South in her practice, Garcia is a recipient of a 2026 Oolite Arts Home + Away Residency at Artpace, San Antonio, Texas, a 2026 DVCAI Artist Catalyst Award and Spring 2026 Miami-Dade County Artist Access Grant, a 2025 Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Award and the 2024 WOPHA Research Fellowship for The Photography Care Matrix: Teaching Traditional and Experimental Photo Techniques within Prison Environments, Residential Rehabs, and Alternative Schools, a 2024 Visual Aids Research Fellowship, and the 2023 Locust Projects Wavemaker Research and Implementation Grant for What Happens When the Dust Settles?.
For the past seven years, Garcia has worked with arts-based organizations such as Burnaway, Ten North Group, Tropic Bound, LnS Gallery, and UNTITLED, Art. She participated in an alternative arts residency titled School of the Alternative in Black Mountain, North Carolina as documentarian in 2023, teaching faculty in 2024, and a student in 2025. Selected solo and curated exhibitions include THE ARTIST AS ACTIVIST (A4A:MIA Open Call Finalist) (2025), Touché Boutique, Miami, Florida, Fernando Garcia: Calendars & Gradation Systems (2025), Laundromat Art Space 2025 Open Call Finalist, Miami, Florida, INFRAMUNDO (2024), Tunnel Projects, Miami, Florida, and UPROOTED (2024), Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, Florida. Selected group exhibitions include The WOPHA Community Exhibition (2026), Andy Gato Gallery at Barry University, Miami, Florida, PARIS: CITY OF LIGHTS (2025), The Humid, Square Du Vert-Galant, Paris, France, SPARE CHANGE: 2025 Portfolio Exchange (2025), Miami Paper and Printmaking Museum (Invited), Septindecim: animacy, agency, exchange (2025), The Elizabeth Holden Gallery at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, North Carolina, Told, Retold: The Pedagogy of Knowing & Becoming (2025), Green Space Miami, Miami, Florida, in other words (2025), Tunnel Projects, Miami, Florida, Women of Vision: Photography, It’s About Time (2025), Doral Contemporary Art Museum, Miami, Florida, and What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women Reading Room (2024), Miami-Dade Main Library, Miami, Florida.
Her writing and photography is found in publications such as the forthcoming University Press of Florida's A New Anthology of Florida Writers, Literally Everyone’s Invited: An Ode to South Florida, Frieze Magazine, Atlanta Center for the Photography's New South II: Double Vision, Islandia Journal, Queue Magazine, The Fountainhead 2025 and 2024 Yearbook, Prism, Contemporary And América Latina, On / Off-Shore: Poets of the Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora, The Art Newspaper, Miami New Times, So to Speak: A feminist journal of language and art, and Burnaway, where she works as their editorial assistant. A 2023-2024 ICA Narrative Teaching Artist, 2024-2025 ProjectArt Miami Teaching Resident, and current MOCA North Miami Photography and Digital Arts Educator and O, Miami Lead Sunroom Teaching Artist, Garcia was in residence at Bakehouse Art Complex for their 2025 Summer Open program and is an associate artist with the organization. She is pursuing a low-residency MFA in Image Text at Cornell University beginning Summer 2026 and graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts in English from Florida International University in 2019.
Photograph by Chantal Lawrie.