Artist Biography
Gabi Madrid is a multidisciplinary artist lives in Atlanta, Georgia and works from their studio at South River Art Studios. They are a graduate of the Savannah College of Art & Design where they received their BFA degree in sculpture in 2019. Madrid has exhibited their work in group shows nationally and internationally. They currently have work on display on Freedom Park Trail and part of Art on the BeltLine in Atlanta, GA.
They are the recipient of The Creative’s Project 2023-2024 Residency at Echo Contemporary Art and granted a full scholarship at Penland School of Craft. The artist works in a range of mediums from new media installation, found objects, paper & book arts, as well as reclaimed wood and metal.
Madrid’s work is informed through their intuition and personal history, therefore, engaging in an ongoing conversation focused on healing and the processing of past experiences. Their journey as an artist has begun an unfolding of generational and ancestral trauma, connected to their Muscogee Creek heritage. Within their work, there is an exploration of self-development, identity formation, and the collective unconscious.
Artist Statement
When I was young, I thought that one day that I would find the one medium that would be my own, but as the Wheel of Fortune turns, I have found that I am an artist with the desire to explore many mediums. I let the concept determine the medium which can range from new media installation, found objects, earthworks, papermache, collage and reclaimed materials such as wood and metal.
An introspective search into my own life growing up and an exploration of the trauma I experienced led to different creative ideas. The emergence of the series “This House, This Home”, came to me after many uneasy months and years of constantly moving my home and studio. The work allowed me to explore the idea about what does the word “home” mean as well as inviting the audience to evaluate their own relationship to the word and meaning of “home”.
My interest in healing trauma, not only in my life, but in other people’s lives has been the center of my work in recent years. The work “Memento Vivere” meaning remember to live, came after my first encounter with the death and my own experience with sexual assault. The book sculptures were a way for me to channel my grief, frustration, and anger. The book sculptures served as a medium to process the events that happened and to find solace in the experiences.
When the pandemic hit, it disrupted my entire life, I had to leave my job, move out of my house and studio. I moved back home to be with my family but there was this sense that I had lost everything that I had worked for, which lingered for months. I found peace in the art of meditative wrapping, as a self-soothing way to ground myself to the earth as well as all the flora and fauna in the environment. I began wrapping trees with rope as a visual representation of the connection between all living beings.
With all the political unrest in the recent years, the new media installation “Euphony” was an interactive experience of finding peace in chaos. With more than 100 speakers and special software to turn sampled drum beats into generative rhythms produced from the movement within the space, inviting viewers to find how they impact the world around them.
I’m constantly observing the world around me and learning more about what it means to be a spiritual being having a human experience. When I’m taking a break from introspective & creative work, one may find me reading palms/cards, or ecstatically dancing.