Isabel Aline Bérénos

 

 

B. 1987 - Curaçao

Isabel Aline Bérénos is a contemporary abstract and
non-figurative painter whose work explores movement, symbolism, spirituality, and
(cultural) identity. Working primarily with acrylic paint, ink, and pastel, she creates
intuitive compositions characterized by rhythmic repetition, organic forms, layered
textures, and expressive mark-making.


Bérénos spent more than two decades in Amsterdam, where she studied,
graduated, and developed an international career in the performing arts. Her
background in choreography, dance education, and movement continues to shape
her visual language, infusing her paintings with a strong sense of rhythm, energy,
and flow. After returning to Curaçao, she worked as an artistic director in creative
education before fully dedicating herself to her independent art practice in 2019.
Her first solo exhibition was presented at The Curaçao Museum, followed by several solo and group exhibitions in Curaçao. Her work has been acquired by
private collectors and is held in collections locally and internationally. Known for
both intimate works as well as large-scale pieces and commissions, she has
completed public art projects, including an 800-square-metre commissioned
floorpainting.


While creating from her studio, Bérénos contributes to charity auctions and
collaborative community initiatives. Through her practice, she invites viewers into a
sensory and introspective space where movement, memory, and collective human
experience converge

 

Artist Statement, Isabel Berenos

I am intrigued by the ways in which nature, ancestry, and spirituality shape our
experience of the world. My earliest paintings were very personal but my art has
gradually evolved toward a more universal terrain. Working primarily through abstraction, my process is intuitive; I enter a state of focused concentration. Through repetition of lines, patterns, layered forms, and shifting spatial relationships, the painting emerges.
The island's flora and fauna—especially the sea, the plants, and their patterns—provide direct inspiration for my paintings. I also think deeply about the region’s complex history and cultural inheritances: the connections to Africa, South
America, and Indigenous cultures.


For the exhibition Caribbean Soul, I created a diptych that reflects on the Caribbean
as a space of convergence where cultures, beliefs, histories, and identities meet,
overlap, and transform one another.


The diptych Alakondre I & II takes its name from the Sranan Tongo term Ala Kondre,
literally meaning "All Lands." Rooted in Surinamese Winti culture—Suriname being
the country where my grandparents lived—the concept represents an embrace of
plurality: of many origins, truths, faiths, and many ways of being. It is about
difference enriching a community rather than weakening it.
Alakondre I & II is a visual meditation on Caribbean society and daily life itself; it
cannot be understood through a single narrative; it exists as layered and evolving
realities where multiple identities coexist. This understanding is why I use multiple mediums, primarily acrylic paint, pastel,
Chinese ink, and spray paint. Occasionally, figures and symbols appear within my
pieces.


I am particularly drawn to Creole spiritual traditions that emerged from African
systems of knowledge and their encounter with the Americas. They offer ways of
connecting to the earth, the unseen, the cosmos. I’d like to think that with my
paintings I tend to create spaces for contemplation—visual environments that invite
a sense of comfort in the understanding that we are all connected.