Isabel wears a JONATHAN ANDERSON blazer, ALQUEMA dress, and SHUSHU TONG heels. Photographed by Andrea Genota.
Isabel wears a JONATHAN ANDERSON blazer, ALQUEMA dress, and SHUSHU TONG heels. Photographed by Andrea Genota.
The visual artist reflects on the collaboration’s creative process while discussing how art can engage and speak to new audiences
Before she helmed art galleries and sparked collaborations with creatives beyond fine art, Isabel Santos leaned toward pursuing her own creative career. Art, after all, has always been close to home. Her grandfather is the celebrated cartoonist and illustrator Mauro “Malang” Santos; she is also the daughter of visual artist and gallerist Soler Santos and painter Mona Santos. While she grew up with a natural affinity for the medium, Santos shares that she sometimes considered the idea of doing more than just creative work, an impulse that led her to earn a degree in European Studies at university.
However, it was after a post-graduation trip along the many museums and galleries across Europe that she found herself rekindling her passions for the arts, later inspiring her to further understand the craft by taking residencies in New York, Marnay-sur-Seine, and Berlin. With newfound knowledge and budding interests toward film, textiles, and ceramics, Santos would later culminate her experiences by practicing in their home studio, paving the way for her vivid yet stratified approach to storytelling.
Since then, Santos has gone on to join her first group exhibit in 2013, which later led to her first solo show in 2014, as well as a competition in 2020 that showcased her worldview through wearable pieces of art, among other milestones. Today, Santos continues to shape a visual style that layers her emotions and life experiences with nuances of 1940s pop culture and iconography, creating works that not only invite introspection but also a curiosity to question the familiar.
In partnership with Vogue Philippines, IQOS brand manager Henry Yap joins Santos as they discuss the creative process behind their collaboration on the Curiosity Without Limits campaign, a project that IQOS hopes will rethink the way technology and fine arts can come together for a meaningful purpose.
“Isabel stood out for us because of her artistic lineage and her evolution as a contemporary artist,” Yap explains. “Her ability to challenge the norm and express her ideas in new ways and forms just felt natural for IQOS to collaborate with her.”
According to Yap, the collaboration was poised to answer the question of how curiosity takes form, a prompt which Santos took to experiment on through her understanding of texture-play and evolving composition. “My usual work focuses on blending illustrations, fonts, and other typographies, so when the IQOS team and I started working together, and we figured out the direction we were going toward, we ended up using those elements in the final work.”
Santos continues to describe how the raw look of her drafted composition encouraged her to test out other methods she had recently started practicing as well. The IQOS team also shares how they thought to feature her work across everyday carry items and accessories as a way to extend the messaging of the campaign beyond the canvas.
“Art allows ideas to be experienced and not explained. At IQOS, our curiosity leads us to guide how we create products for our consumers, and we felt that art is such a good medium for us to make that driving force tangible and expressed in an engaging way,” says the IQOS team. Santos echoes these sentiments, saying,
“I think that when people visualize their definition of art,
they’re always flat because they’re used to seeing just
paintings, but it’s a whole other world now.”Advertisement
She continues, “So through this collaboration with IQOS, they turned my art into everyday products that can both introduce my work to new audiences as well as create new dialogue through their interpretations with the piece.”
Yap hopes that this collaboration can bring new meaning to the way technology and fine arts come together to create experiences for those eager to explore their curiosities. “This partnership with Isabel Santos is just the beginning for us. Throughout the year, we’re going to have a lot more product news, innovations, and engaging experiences that just invite people to explore what’s next for the brand.”
Discover the IQOS x Isabel Santos collaboration through the IQOS website. Visit IQOS on Facebook and Instagram to learn more.
by LIAM BITENG. Featuring ISABEL SANTOS and HENRY YAP. Video by CHAPTERS PH. Photographs by ANDREA GENOTA. Art direction by LARA CASTAÑEDA. Styling by STEVEN CORALDE and CHARLOTTE SOMBILLO of QURATOR. Makeup by MURIEL VEGA PEREZ. Photographer’s assistant KEVIN GONZALES. Account manager ICE LEE. Produced by BELLA MARISTELA. Project implemented by CHLOE MADLANGBAYAN and ESAB RAYMUNDO.
