Gabi Dao

archives - artistic research - audiovisual - autobiographical - community - decolonization - Diaspora - digital - ecology - experimental - film - gender - installation - ceramics - LGBTI+ - media - nature - objects - residency - sculpture - textile - video - science & technology

My interdisciplinary practice is interested in multiple truths, blurry temporalities, sensory affirmations, more-than-human voices and ways of knowing otherwise.

Often I work through long-gestating, fluid processes of gathering, breaking and repairing from my own world-making vernacular of audio/visual fragments, tactile collections of whatnots and scraps of linguistic detritus. Thinking with these materials, I often begin at slippages in so-called 'history', archives and storytelling— towards channeling the ineffable tensions between grief and joy, alienation and belonging, dissidence and complicity, disassociation and sentimentality. My work manifestos as experimental films, installations, sculpture, collage and scent.

I am a queer second-generation Vietnamese/Chinese person from the stolen and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations (colonially known as Vancouver, Canada) now based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

  • Portfolio
  • Activities
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    • Artist-in-Residence

    Residencies / exchange

    BREAKDOWN

    Other

    Hold these questions close

    Exhibition / presentation

    Vision321

    • 20-01-2024 t/m 18-02-2024
    • In collaboration with: Hearth x The Plumb
    • Location: , Toronto
    • Group exhibition curated by the collective Hearth at The Plumb, including artists Douglas Cooper, Oliver Husain, Chang Yuchen
    • https://hearthgarage.com/

    Lakenhal Late

    Performance

    • 08-12-2023 t/m 08-12-2023
    • In collaboration with: Museum De Lakenhal
    • Location: , Leiden
    • An evening of performances on the occasion of the announcement of the winner of the Doesjenel Prize. Each artist who was nominated for the prize (GC Heemskerk, Emma Van Noort and Kwinnie Le) invited artists in their community to respond to the works in the prize exhibition. I was invited by the winner Kwinnie Le to host my ongoing social sculpture, Scent Bar.
    • https://artoffice.info/account/profiel/?k_updated=true

    What breaks on the horizon?

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 14-10-2023 t/m 13-01-2023
    • In collaboration with: Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin
    • Location: Gallery, Lethbridge
    • Solo exhibition of new body of work, includes 4 channels of video and a sculptural installation of ceramic and textile marionettes
    • https://www.saag.ca/current/gabidao

    The Ground Up and the Washed Down

    Exhibition / presentation

    • 07-07-2023 t/m 27-08-2023
    • In collaboration with: A Tale-of-aTub
    • Location: Gallery, Rotterdam
    • A group exhibition curated by Yin Yin Wong. Exhibition of a film installation and collage alongside Hieke Pars, Raffia Li, Junghun Kim, Gayatri Kodikal, Fileona Dkhar and Dagmar Bosma.
    • http://a-tub.org/en/program/the-ground-up-and-the-washed-down

    Acknowledgments

      Publication

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