Gaya Giacometti

Born in Naples, Italy 1977

Lives and works in London

 

MA Textiles 2005-06. Goldsmiths. University of London

BA Surface Design 2002-05. London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London

 

 

Gaya Giacometti is an artist working across disciplines. Her practice involves drawing, music, performance, creative writing and martial arts. She has extensively worked with textiles and refers to them as a fascinating and versatile medium that could never be confined to the gallery space.  

 

Remarkably during her time at Goldsmiths, whilst expected to deliver a presentation of her latest video work, she confronted the seminar with a seemingly hypnotised businesswoman that  she claimed she had found at London Bridge station. Because she had no previous associations with performance art and because of the way she was 'acting out' her piece, a number of people  were drawn to believe her story. This led to a surreal series  of  question and answers and eventually to a failed attempt by the tutors to bring the event back to its conventional form. 

 

 The work in her words: "I am fascinated by the paradox of a form that in its fixity, can only be a  misrepresentation of the flux of life from which it is generated. I try to draw directly from an unknown feeling and avoid the safety of existing ways. This means finding new words, looking at ordinary things as if always for the first time, dismantling existing styles. As an artist I commit to this sort of instinctive understanding. The experience that I call the only truth, creation". 

 

Influences F. Nietzsche, Post Structuralism, J. Derrida and Deconstruction, R. Barthes, Chan Buddhism and Shaolin Martial Arts, Taoism, Metafiction, Punk Rock Samuel Beckett, J.L. Borges, J.G. Ballard, Robbe Grillet, David Lynch, Bruce Nauman