Interdisciplinary artist Gina Goico utilizes weaves and embroiders in a variety of mediums to create installations, performances, collages and photography where she dissects ideas of Dominicanness, womanhood and community.
Loving SUITS is a developing project which encompasses soft weighted sculptures and multimedia documentation of Dominican women’s narratives around family dynamics, love and self-love. The soft weighted hand sculptures, made out of soft fabric, are filled with plastic beads and plush, and anointed with lavender and frankincense. These vary in sizes and weight, but always have the shape of hands at the ends, simulating connecting limbs that can be molded into an “embrace”. The design of each sculpture takes into account pressure points in the upper body to soothe tension and provide comfort. Women interviewed have access to the sculptures and get to interact with the soft weighted sculptures.
Gina Goico, Loving SUITS, 2020, soft sculptures
The hand sculptures in Loving SUITS are informed by the notions tactility, touch, and softness, sensations that greatly speak to visitors after experiencing lockdown during quarantine due to COVID-19, a time where many are denied these tactile sensations and need the feelings healing and connectivity.
Baila, Mami (2014-2015)
Mami performs in:
Mami Tours (2015)
Baila, Mami (2014-2015)
Mami Tours is a response to tourism, the romantic idea of the first founded city of America and the ridicule of the concept behind the existence of women as an object in the Dominican Republic. Through caricaturizing the expected under the stereotypes, Mami Tours criticizes the incongruity of praising the colonizer and continue the colonialist ideas on contemporary times.
Baila, Mami was created while the artist wrote her senior thesis, which explored violence experienced by women in the Dominican Republic and the perceptions around her identity and art in New York City. Dancing to a series of Dominican songs which contain aggressions while looking as what is stereotyped of a Latina woman, Mami narrates Dominican women's histories on survival and sexual violence.