Isabel Nolan is an Irish artist whose practice moves across sculpture, hand-tufted tapestry, painting, drawing and writing. Based in Dublin, she uses crafted objects and images to examine how people build explanations for reality through science, philosophy, religion, literature and art. Cosmic events, historical figures, architecture and ordinary forms meet in installations that balance intellectual inquiry with colour, humour and material presence. Rather than illustrating a single theory, Nolan’s work considers how knowledge is shared, revised and made tangible, and how apparently stable systems remain fragile and open to transformation.
Born in Dublin in 1974, Nolan studied at the National College of Art and Design and the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dún Laoghaire. In 2025 she contributed to Liverpool Biennial, and in 2026 she represents Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale with Dreamshook, curated by Georgina Jackson. Presented from 9 May to 22 November, the pavilion brings together sculpture, drawing and hand-tufted tapestry inspired by dreams, early printing and the Venetian humanist Aldo Manuzio. Through images of books, celestial bodies and invented structures, the installation asks how private imagination becomes collective knowledge and how ideas reshape the worlds people inhabit.