Opening Reception: Saturday, July 19, 4 – 6 pm

Vielmetter Los Angeles is excited to present How We Go, an exhibition of new works by Gio Swaby, marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. The exhibition will be on view from July 19th through August 30th, 2025.

Originally from The Bahamas and currently based in Toronto, Swaby is known for her intricate textile portraits of Black women and femmes in her community. Swaby begins by photographing the sitters and translates these images into textured and tactile expressions of identity. Swaby’s Bahamian upbringing inspires the title How We Go, and is an affirming, intuitive expression of identity and shared understanding. Taken from the colloquial phrase “you know how we go”, the phrase is a description of the essence of a person, it is that which is simply known without having to be explained.

Swaby states about this new body of work:

“This work is rooted in the exploration of duality — how identity is both held within and reflected outward. I am exploring the complexity of Black femme identity, the layered, shifting intersections of who we are, how we’re seen, and how we choose to present ourselves. I am investigating the construction of identity, not as a fixed truth, but as an evolving narrative shaped by our lived experiences, cultures, and community.

Personal style holds a central role in this exploration. I am interested in how we use adornment to build soft, protective places or use it to create space for presence and power and as a means of being deeply seen. Clothing becomes a language, serving as both resistance and affirmation. Style is a mirror and a map; It holds space for contradiction and cohesion, for both the bold and the tender.

This work is a celebration of each person represented, rooted in love, deep reverence, and gratitude. It honors the beauty in complexity alongside the intimate truth of the simple. My work seeks to hold these tensions in harmony, offering a visual vocabulary for coming into one’s own—fully, unapologetically, and in continuous unfolding.”

Gio Swaby (born 1991) was born and raised in The Bahamas and is currently based in Toronto, Canada. Swaby was recently the subject of her first solo museum exhibition in 2023, Gio Swaby: Fresh Up, at the Art Institute of Chicago.  The exhibition, co-organized by Katherine Pill, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg and Melinda Watt, Chair and Christa C. Mayer Thurman Curator of Textiles, Art Institute of Chicago, it traveled to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. Swaby’s work has been included in group exhibitions at Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL; Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; African American Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN;  Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO; Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA; National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Nassau, Bahamas; Kunsthaus Alte Mühle, Schmallenberg, Germany; among others. Swaby’s work is included in collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum; the Speed Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; among others.