DYANA GRAVIDA

She/They is/are an interdisciplinary artist, independent curator, activist, mover and community builder. She is the founding director of Procreate Project, a pioneering arts organisation dedicated to womxn and non-binary artists who are (m)others. Currently MA in 'Gender Sexuality and Culture' at Birkbeck University.

Her/Their artistic and curatorial practices are interested in feminisms, migration, and body politics manifesting in a transdisciplinary body of work that combines movement, actions, photography, video, and text. Using somatic movement as a research method; the body as material. She/they use both autobiographical and collective knowledge to challenge the perception of the self under social constructions and cultural environments and redefine and deconstruct univocal notions of the 'female'.

“In my recent work, I revisit my upbringing in a small town in the south of Italy and I often choose ‘tights’, a garment associated with specific imagery and standards of ‘femininity’ and sensuality, to reconnect and tell stories of women from working class and disadvantaged socio-political background. Those women were my mother, my grandmothers, and my ancestors. I remember their torn tights, their body hair, and the unapologetic living in their bodies (which I was ashamed of because of the general context and the peers surrounding me). I am finding my way back to those identities to review and re-shape my own, reframing ‘tights’ as a significant meaning for sacrifice, rebellion, and movement.”

Dyana Gravina, “(M)oral hygiene,” 2022. Action to camera and digital photography performed at Domus Artist Residency. Part of the overarching research My mom’s torn tights.