Draft:Gabi Dao

Gabi Dao (b. 1991) is an artist and organizer currently based between the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations (colonially known as Vancouver, Canada) and Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Dao graduated Summa Cum Laude with an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and received the Master Fine Art Research Award (2023). They also hold a BFA from Emily Carr University. Dao was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award (2021) and received the Portfolio Prize Award for Emerging Artists (2016).

Dao's practice encompasses sensory entanglement and affirmations, cumulating in a diverse array of artistic expressions including sculpture, installation, collage, moving image, sound, miscellaneous forms of writing and community events. They insist on counter-memory, multiple truths, other ways of knowing and blurred temporalities, against the capitalist linearity of cause-and-effect. Thinking with the materials of audio/visual fragments, they question about the belief system that shape the connections between people, experiences, and materiality within this contemporary late capitalist society.

Their works have been screened, exhibited and participated in projects across Turtle Island, Europe and Asia.

Selected Solo Exhibition
What breaks on the horizon? (2023-2024), Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, AB

a sentimental dissidence (2021), The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON. Be shortlisted for the 2021 Sobey Art Award.

A Knife to Wither Your Petal Fingers (2018), Blinkers, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Open Sesame (2015), Spare Room, Vancouver, BC

Selected Group Exhibition
Tear Possibility collage series (2023), The Wilful Plot, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Vancouver, BC

Tear Possibility collage series (2021-2022), New Acquisitions, Burnaby art Gallery, Burnaby, BC

Soothsay (2020), in collaboration with geetha thurairajah. Unit 17, Vancouver, BC

Many, Looks, Work (2017), SOOT, Unit 17, Vancouver, BC

Voices Tuned, Curled Up in a Spiral and Polished Like a Shell (2017), noise gives the listener duration as an artifact, Artspeak, Vancouver, BC

Ambient, Spotlight, Sparkle (2015), No Monologue, 221A, Vancouver, B