Image: New Growth 7 (2021) by Gio Swaby. Cotton fabric and thread sewn onto muslin. Via www.claireoliver.com.
Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design graduate Gio Swaby's textile work is making an impact across the globe
Gio Swaby just completed her Master of Fine Arts degree in the Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design program at OCAD University. Her multimedia textile work celebrates Black womanhood by portraying moments of joy and empowerment. Currently, her embroidered portraits are on view in a solo exhibition Fresh Up at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg in Florida, which will tour to the Art Institute of Chicago next year.
Midway through her graduate studies in April 2021, Swaby had her debut solo exhibition Both Sides of the Sun at Claire Oliver Gallery in Harlem, New York. The show was a massive success, selling out to collectors before it opened. Since then, her work has been collected by major American museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Bestselling American author Roxane Gay was one of Swaby’s first clients.
The artist grew up in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. Her mother was a seamstress who raised her and her four siblings. Swaby is known for her quilted and stitched depictions of her female friends and family members, sewing together pieces of fabric in bold prints to showcase their individuality and personal style. Through this work Swaby resituates public discourse on Black women, shifting the narrative away from the sadness, violence and trauma often fixated on by popular media.
“My work is addressing [the] reciprocity of love in the Black community and especially with what I’ve experienced with other Black women in my life who have really been so pivotal in forming my identity and the person I am today,” Swaby remarked in an April 2021 New York Times interview.
While completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design Swaby worked with film and video, a departure from the paint and ceramics she engaged during her studies at the College of the Bahamas. During a residency at Popop Studios in Nassau, she met a quilter who showed her various sewing techniques. She was drawn to the accessibility of textiles both functionally and conceptually and made her first fabric-based portrait in 2013.
"[Art] can be intimidating when you feel like you don't have enough knowledge about something, or you feel like the space is not for you," she continues. "I want my work to say that this space is for you, and it's okay to connect with this work on any level that you do," Swaby noted in a recent article published by Harper’s Bazaar.
Her practice is inspired by Black artists from the Bahamas including Lillian Blades whose mother was also a seamstress and sculptor Kendra Frorup as well as Jamaican artist Ebony Patterson, who is known for her intricate paper-based installations that, despite their beauty, communicate a darkness located in the entanglement of race, gender, class and violence.