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Gaia Drr

video, sculptuur, residency, performance, installatie, Experimenteel, Educatie, Ecologie, beeldhouwen, Artistiek onderzoek, Archieven

I am a multimedia artist based in Rotterdam, originally from Milan. My practice explores how human activities, production, and culture manifest in the material world, especially through the lens of pollution, toxicity, and contamination. Over the past four years, I have worked with two main topics of inquiry: air pollution and soil salinity. My work materializes through installations, including video, sculpture, performance, and collective experiences, often incorporating locally sourced material or self-made biomatter and discarded objects.

Contaminated Tissue
Contaminated Tissue - Dust serves as a space-temporal archive, tracing human actions in physical reality. Similar to an archive, pollution captures and preserves information about past events, ideologies, and behaviors. Billions of particles in the air reveal cracks in hegemonic thinking, reflecting cultural production and human activities into tangible toxic materials. Gaia collects pollution samples from Milanese building facades using organic latex, creating contaminated tissue to reflect and map air quality across different neighborhoods in the city.
The myth of the CiucciaNebbia
The myth of the CiucciaNebbia, Installation - In the Milanese urbanscape, architraves, facades, and main entrances are adorned with grotesque ornaments: morphological and monstrous creatures intended to protect inhabitants and ward off malevolent spirits. However, these demonic stone faces now bear witness to modern-day pollution realms. Layers of black dust, stemming from emissions in manufacturing, waste treatment, combustion, and transport, shroud their features. .These monstrous forms, once symbols of protection, now embody the warning signs of our environmental impact. The resulting installation becomes a composition of hybrid bodies, blurring the boundaries between imaginary realities and the tangible environment.
The myth of the CiucciaNebbia
The myth of the CiucciaNebbia - Pollution is often portrayed as an external matter to human bodies and culture. The project embodies the phenomenon of air pollution as CiucciaNebbia (meaning 'fog-sucker'), a mythical creature that walks the streets of Milan. Their body is made of fine toxic particles that settle on the facade of buildings. These layers of smog act as a living archive of Milan’s industrial history, along with the ideologies and lifestyle of its inhabitants. The CiucciaNebbia poses the question of what it means to assume the role of a hybrid subject, to embody a series of relationships and to identify with one’s surroundings when it is disrupted, contaminated and toxic.
Saline Dimension: Meals from a salt-burnt ground
Saline Dimension: Meals from a salt-burnt ground - Project in collaboration with Studio Stolfa, Supported by Stimularings fonds. “Saline Dimensions: Bodies from a Salt-Burnt Ground’ is an interdisciplinary project that explores the issue of soil salinization and its impact on plant growth in the Netherlands. Through merging material experimentation, speculative narratives, culinary experience, the project highlight correlations between saline agriculture and crops adaptation into a dinner format. By focusing on collective experiences and spatial perceptions as communication tools, we want to nurture intuitive means of understanding the impact of soil salinisation in an age of accelerated climate change.
The day after the feast
The day after the feast - “A Day After the Feast” is a video art project that archives a performative table setting featuring centerpieces made from salt-polymers that melt and crystallize the soil beneath them. These materials are combined and altered through the addition and evaporation of water. The project focuses on material research, specifically examining changes in the soil caused by increased salinity levels. It analyzes physical, optical, and sensory aspects of these changes. By integrating physical and performative elements, the work explores narratives related to soil, food scarcity, and consumerist society.

Marble Pyrgos, Art Residency Program

Datum:
Locatie: Tinos Island
In samenwerking met: Patricia Pulles and Filippos Kagiorgis, supported by Mondriaan funds

A five-week residency to study traditional marble carving techniques. Under the mentorship of sculptor Filippos Kagiorgis, I gained hands-on experience in marble carving and produced artifacts inspired by architectural ornaments, drawing from Filippos' extensive archive of designs. The residency, guided by curator Patricia Pulles, also included visits to local quarries and archaeological sites.

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