About Me
Gio Swaby was born and raised in Nassau, The Bahamas and is currently based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
She is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of Blackness and womanhood. Swaby's mother, Judy Carey-Swaby, taught her to sew as a young girl and she now creates portraits using a range of textile-based techniques.
Swaby’s work is included in collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Canada, the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas and more.
Image by Anthony Gebrehiwot
Artist Statement
I learned to sew as a young girl from my mother. We bonded through shared ritual and curiosity, inhabiting a space of profound tenderness. I am drawn to textiles in my work because it is where I first understood making as a practice and expression of love.
Through the painstaking labour of rendering in thread and fabric, my approach to portraiture is built upon this foundation. It prioritizes the autonomy of the sitter and is anchored in a deep exchange between us. In self-portraits, there is an internal process of uncovering, an exploration of the effects of living. Through the tilt of a head, the bend of a finger, each physical body holds memory and generates a distinctly indescribable essence of who we are, in that moment. With continuously renewing reverence, I am engaging with the challenge to replicate presence.
Alongside the body itself, I am equally interested in how we choose to present it. My practice frames personal style as a form of self-authorship, using it as a basis to understand how identity is constructed, articulated and perceived. I am both documenting and celebrating the multifaceted aesthetics of contemporary Black womanhood. Clothing, jewelry, hairstyle, all become parts of a story, unique to the individual while also denoting a collective history. This work is an inquiry into what we keep and hold across distance and time.