POOL

By Isabel Torok

Meet the Artist

My name is Isabel Torok, and I am a multidisciplinary artist and choreographer based in NYC. I will graduate in May of 2026 from Marymount Manhattan College with a BFA in Dance (Choreography) and an Arts Management minor. My work draws attention to the ways in which women are diminished or erased from society, and I am interested in how femininity exists in liminality, constantly shifting or adapting. I continue to interrogate notions of beauty and mundaneity, art and functionality. I have presented several dance works at Arts on Site and MMC, as well as acted as co-producer for MMC Dance Works in Progress showings. I have also performed works by esteemed choreographers such as Omar Román de Jesús, Raja Feather Kelly, Dolly Sfeir, and Tamisha Guy. POOL is a multimedia collage reflecting on my personal history of womanhood that utilizes cyanotyping as imprints of memory, specifically in relation to my body and themes of home. A collection of found textiles, such as doilies, kitchen towels, tshirts, and lace, was hand-stitched together in the image of the stained glass window from my childhood home. The images appear like reflections in water; I took inspiration from light refraction and the impermanence of a reflection. I grew up in swimming pools, and there I learned what stillness feels like. And that there is really no such thing. There’s always a wake to leave, or to live in. I thought of my personal universe as water flowing, spilling, and collecting to pool in the corners of my mind. This work orbits around me, my grandmother (Helen) and my mother (Heidi). POOL traces the cycle of daughter becoming mother becoming grandmother and what echoes in every archway of a home, a family.