Isabel Okoro

Isabel Okoro (b. 2001) is a Nigerian visual artist currently based in Toronto, ON. Isabel’s work largely focuses on the Black youth experience and exploring the interactions between the motherland and the diaspora as she visualizes an imagined world.

Isabel developed an interest in photography at the age of twelve while attending a boarding school in Lagos, but it wasn’t until she moved to Toronto in 2016 and received her first camera that she began to develop her artistic practice. Interested in how photography and film can be pushed to tell stories that we need to see but haven’t been awarded the opportunity to create, she coined the term normatopia. This term describes a space which considers the tensions between a harsh reality and a utopia, and chooses to rest and thrive in the humanly achievable sweet spot that exists in the middle. A self-proclaimed dreamer, Isabel’s work is a combination of thoughts that acknowledge the past, confront the present and imagine a future.

Isabel has completed residencies at 2022 FLDWRK x DesignTO and Gallery 44 (Toronto) and was the 2021 recipient of the Getty Images ‘Definition Future’ Grant. Notably, the AGO’s Department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora recently acquired two photographs for their permanent collection.