Isabel Burr Raty is a transdisciplinary artist, researcher and Kung Fu trainer of Chilean and Belgian roots, operating somewhere between the live and visual arts. Her practice explores the interstices between the organic and the artificial to bring to light chapters left out of history books, ultimately rethinking the memory of the future.

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Stemming from years of activism collaborating with the indigenous Rapa Nui people of Easter Island, Chile, in their struggle for autonomy, she is based in Brussels, where she teaches media theory and mentors at ERG (École de Recherche Graphique) and is an affiliated researcher at nadine Laboratory for Contemporary Arts.

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Looking into diverse matter and healing meanings, Burr Raty bridges ancestral and scientific perspectives, spanning from the knowledge of the Andes to quantum physics. Her hybrid artworks—as exemplified by projects such as Beauty Kit and The Spine—manifest as installation-performances and lectures within the black box and beyond, combining living materials with analogue and digital media. By creating hyper-reality settings that blur what is real and what is not, she challenges established understandings of value, inviting the public to embody collective experiences of transformation and craft counter-systemic objects.

 

Isabel's works, workshops, and collaborations have been shown and programmed internationally at venues such as Viernulvier, Campo, and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Ghent; KVS Theatre, La Loge, Constant_V, and iMAL in Brussels; Out of Sight Antwerp, Palais de Tokyo Paris, Kapelica Gallery and Kersnikova Institute Ljubljana, TRAFO Poland, ISEA Hong Kong, Cultivamos Cultura Portugal, Vondel CS Amsterdam, and Ars Electronica Linz. Furthermore, she has given talks and performative lectures at Queer Eco-futures (Queen Mary University of London), KAKAMAMA (Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design), FACTT (Humboldt University Berlin), Science Friction (AKI Academy of Art & Design), FEMeeting (Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon), Taboo - Transgression - Transcendence in Art and Science (Ionian University, Corfu), the Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences (University of the Arts Berlin), and the Human Enhancement Clinic (Border Sessions, The Hague).

 

Since 2016, Isabel has joined a number of research organizations including a.pass, the EU project Staying in Touch, and wpZimmer, where she has curated events focusing on sci-fi worldings and territorial restoration, among other topics. In 2018, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) awarded her the 3Package Deal Grant, partnering her with Waag Futurelab and Mediamatic in Amsterdam.

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​​​​​​STUDIES - BRIEF

Isabel holds a post-master’s degree in Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies from a.pass, Brussels. She studied Philosophy at the Alberto Hurtado University and Lecoq Physical Theatre at La Mancha, both in Santiago, Chile, as well as the Imaginative Realism Method at the Chekhov Studio in London. She has conducted extensive research into theosophy, biology, and physics, backed by over a decade of immersive living experience with indigenous communities in the Andes and Polynesia. In 2015, she started a focused training in Inner Alchemy and Sexual Kung Fu with Mantak Chia at the Universal Healing Tao Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand.​​​​​​​​​​​