Isabel Legate is a cross-disciplinary artist, designer, and performer working at the intersection of film, spatial design, and embodied practice. With a background in fine art (BFA, Cooper Union) and a Master's in Interior Architecture (Piet Zwart Institute), her practice spans independent filmmaking, sculpture, painting, and performance. Most recently, Legate has focused on filmmaking as an effective way of bringing together the different elements of her practice. She often begins with formal, energetic experimentation, such as collages, drawings, and paintings that go on to inform the aesthetic of her films. Her work focuses on themes of metamorphosis, feminist temporalities, desire, and the strange thresholds between states of being.
Caltha
Caltha is a retelling of the myth of the Caltha Palustris flower – a five-petaled, vibrant, yellow bloom that
grows abundantly in the Biesbosch National Park in The Netherlands. In the traditional myth, a maiden
named Caltha falls so in love with the Sun God Apollo that she stands in a field, desirous and paralyzed
as her body and spirit wither away – a flower grows in her place. In the film, the myth is retold but this
time Caltha doesn’t want to melt.