JOICE Gabriela

Lives and works in Las Vegas, NV

Artist statement

My practice begins with materials that carry traces of place: river stones, sand, shells, crystals, glass, mineral pigments, and layered resin. Rather than illustrating landscapes, I use matter itself to construct sculptural wall reliefs where geological formations become metaphors for memory, migration, and transformation. I grew up in Crixas, a Brazilian mining town, where minerals were both part of the land and part of everyday life. After living across several countries and rebuilding my life in the United States, I began to understand stone, water, and sediment as records of passage. In my work, crystals gather like pressure points, resin preserves movement, glass redirects light, and raw surfaces interrupt polished ones. These material tensions - fragility and permanence, rupture and repair, weight and translucency - mirror the instability of belonging and the ongoing process of becoming. Each relief develops through accumulation rather than a fixed image. I respond to the direction of a stone, the density of sand, or the way light moves through resin, allowing the materials to shape the composition. The works occupy a space between painting and sculpture: they remain wall-based, yet project physically into the viewer's space and shift as light changes. Through these material environments, I explore how people carry places within them. The work asks what remains after displacement, what is transformed by pressure, and how new forms of belonging can emerge from...

Artwork