FLAVIA BERTORELLO Argentinian-born-NYC-based artist, architect, and educator exploring the body-environment relations through a research-based practice that includes drawing, writing, and experimenting with materials in various formats, scales, and spatial contexts. Interested in site-responsive processes, Bertorello’s work exists at the intersection of drawing, sculpture, printed media, installation and restoration.
CURRENT STATEMENT /2025
My practice navigates multiple scales—geographical, temporal, and conceptual. Using my body as an interface, I connect the physicality of place, soil, and land to lived experience. I draw parallels between geologic histories and human narratives, linking deep time with the present. Projects such as Body as Land explore how the body becomes a tool for mapping the land. The textures, tones, and shapes created through pressure resemble sediment layers, erosion patterns, and other natural forms. My recent study of soil microbiomes deepened my interest in the unseen, microscopic life that shapes ecosystems. I am fascinated by how soil composition, bacterial communities, and human-made structures transform one another over time.
I work across media, often layering drawing, mapping, and formal elements to create spaces that function as environments. My philosophy embraces the cyclical nature of transformation, seeing each act of making as part of a larger continuum. This perspective extends beyond visible structures to include the invisible microbial worlds that cohabit with us—bacteria, fungi, algae, and other organisms that inhabit soil, water, and stone. These living agents influence how environments change, age, and renew themselves, and they leave behind traces and textures that can be read as their own form of making.
In recent projects, I have been engaging in the interplay between the natural and the fabricated within urban and historical contexts. My work often begins with a question about how human interventions—whether architectural, infrastructural, or artistic—alter the ecology of a place, and how those places, in turn, alter us. This includes not only examining built forms but also studying the slow, persistent colonization of surfaces by microbial life. To me, these interactions are not merely signs of decay but evidence of an ongoing negotiation between human culture and the nonhuman world.
Education
2018-2019- Transart Institute for Creative Research, University of Plymouth, UK. MFA.
2014-2018- The Art Students League of New York. Sculpture & Painting.
1997-2006- National University of Cordoba, Argentina. M.Arch & Urban Design.
Publications
2025- Ooze- Made Land- Artist Book-Self published
2023- NYLAAT program overview, New York Latin American Triennale
2023- Body as Land- Artist Book-Self published
2022- Shape of Nature- Jewelry Book-China Humanities Publishing House
2020- Growth & Evolution-Jewelry Book- China Modern Publishing House
Art Residencies
2025- Genspace NYC. Brooklyn, New York.
2024- Swale House/ Urban Soil Institute. Governor’s Island, New York.
2023- New York Latin American Art Triennial. Governor’s Island, New York.
2021- Untethered Magic. Nairobi, Kenya.
2019- Field Kitchen Academy. Wüsten Buchholz, Germany.
2019- Transart, UferStudios. Berlin, Germany.
2019- Transart, Art in general. Brooklyn, New York.
2018- Transart, UferStudios. Berlin, Germany.
Group Exhibits
2025-2026- Bronx Art Space: “BEYOND THE ARTIFACT: Do we call it architecture or a system of contingencies?”/ group exhibit. New York Latin American Art Triennial. NYC
2024-“Ipaint flowers so they won’t die”/ wearable art/ group exhibit. Rome, Italy
2023-“Ooze”/ installation/ group exhibit. Governors Island, NYC
2023-“This jewelry is 100mrb”/wearable art/ group exhibit. Beijing, China.
2022- “I break”Venice experimental video and performing arts festival/Pallazo Bembo, Venice,Italy.
2021- “eternal flame” / video/ group exhibition / V Gallery, NYC
2020- “the heart cave” / sound piece/ online symposium/ transart reading room
2020- “Coil of life”/ wearable art/ group exhibit. Beijing design week. China.
2020- “This Happened”/ installation/ citadel + compagnie. Toronto, Canada.
2019- “Iron and Granite: IN Conversation”/ performance & installation/ Uferstudios, Berlin. Germany.
2019- “Particle lake”/ sculpture & sound installation- live stream/ New York-Cordoba, Argentina
2017- Elizabeth st. Garden Fundraising show/ poetry piece/ NY, NY
2017- “Red dot exhibition”- Sculpture- Phyllis Harriman Mason gallery, NY, NY
2016- “Red dot exhibition”- Sculpture- Phyllis Harriman Mason gallery, NY, NY
2015- “Red dot exhibition”- Sculpture- Phyllis Harriman Mason gallery, NY, NY
2010-“Nuage” - The Lab gallery/ installation / NY, NY
flabertorello@gmail.com
+1 646-852-7305