"Within my Maze of Memory" : Isadora Jackson
Within my Maze of Memory
Isadora Jackson
Curated by Leslie Moody Castro
September 12th - October 24th, 2026
On view Saturdays, 12-6pm
5419 Glissman Road, Austin, TX 78702
Opening Events: Saturday, September 12th
Members Preview, 6-7pm, Become a Member
Public Reception, 7-11pm, RSVP
Sponsored by Austin Beerworks & Tito's Handmade Vodka
Members Meet & Greet with Isadora Jackson & Leslie Moody Castro:
Thursday, September 10th, 8-10pm
Become a Member to receive the location
In this immersive installation, Isadora Jackson transforms the culvert gallery at Co-Lab Projects into a maze of image, light, shadow and sound. The exhibition considers memory as something we continually move through fragmented, reconstructed, obscured, and reshaped by the present, and not as a fixed archive.
The project has developed through an ongoing dialogue between Jackson and curator Leslie Moody Castro during a residency in Mexico City, and following a residency in Latvia. Together, Jackson and Moody Castro recalled stories and memories passed down from family members—much of which was embellished as generations of familial stories are—a discovery made while Jackson was in residence in Latvia in December 2025. While moving together through museums, galleries, streets, conversations, and everyday encounters, Jackson and Moody Castro began thinking about the maze as both a physical structure and a way of understanding memory itself. Rather than presenting a linear narrative, the installation asks what it means to navigate the past through partial images, recurring symbols, shifting associations, and spaces that alternately reveal and conceal.
Images drawn from personal memory become less like illustrations of specific events and more like fragments of icons that surface, disappear, and take on new meanings through their relationships to one another. A sound composition by Erik Jackson extends this experience beyond the visual, creating an atmospheric layer that moves through the installation and further destabilizes any single reading of the space.
The maze ultimately becomes a metaphor for remembering: there is no complete view from one position, and no return to a memory exactly as it was. Instead, the exhibition invites viewers to inhabit the uncertain space between recollection and reconstruction, moving physically through a landscape where personal memory continually encounters the present.
Isadora Jackson is a multimedia artist whose work investigates how psychological, emotional, and ecological landscapes shape our sense of place. Rooted in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands where she grew up, her practice translates geography, memory, and identity into layered visual languages using symbols, maps, and architectural forms to explore how real and imagined boundaries inform belonging. Jackson holds a BFA in Painting with a double major in Cultural Anthropology and a minor in Native American Studies, and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from New Mexico State University. This interdisciplinary foundation continues to guide a practice where personal narrative meets cultural research.
She is an Associate Professor of Art in El Paso, Texas, teaching painting, drawing, and professional practices with an emphasis on creative sustainability and community engagement. Jackson’s work has been widely exhibited, collected nationally and in Mexico, and is represented in multiple permanent public collections. Her awards include recognition from the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, as well as the Minnie Stevens Piper Professor nomination and an Outstanding Faculty Achievement Award.
Her practice has been featured in magazines, newspapers, podcasts, and radio, and in books such as The Motherhood of Art and Painting Our World. She also actively supports artists through service on local and national committees, including the College Art Association Professional Practices Committee and the board of the Texas Association of Schools of Art. She is a founding member of Borderlines, an initiative fostering exhibitions, residencies, and exchanges for emerging artists across New Mexico, Texas, and New York.
Working across painting, installation, projection, and light-based media, Jackson creates conversations that connect disciplines, cultures, and environments, illuminating the complex relationships between people and the places they inhabit.
This exhibition is supported in part by H-E-B, Texas Commission on the Arts, Individual Donors, and Members like You!
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