Beading in Progess, 2023, Tulle, Glass Beads
Underpainting, 2023, Acrylic on Stretched Canvas Panel
Palette, 2023, Hopes and Dreams
Altarpiece is inspired by historical practices of devotional painting and religious iconography, an oil-painted triptych that explores the artist’s complex relationship to faith, divinity, lesbian/femme gender identity and what it means to hold something as sacred and holy. The artist approaches painting as an inherent act of worship, and the intentional choice of installing the paintings in the context of an altar - an act of veneration in itself. The triptych depicts the artist and her muses, in a high fantasy/medieval setting inspired by Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau depictions of women, myth, and biblical figures of sentiment. All pictured subjects are people of significance to the artist and rendered tenderly as a tribute to their personhood, individual queer, as well as collective community identities.
Accompanying the triptych is a hand-sewn and beaded veil, which is a repeated motif within the paintings themselves, and a reference to the artist’s own spiritual practice that incorporates veiling as an act of protection. This veil mirrors the motif of the sword, which is included as a symbol of the historical prioritisation of mutual protection within butch and femme gender roles/community
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Gabriella Grubišić is contemporary painter and textile artist whose work explores the intersection between faith, culture, and manifestations of lesbian/gender identity within the historic subculture of “”Butch”” and “”Femme”“. Gabriella’s practice involves subverting traditionally gendered Biblical iconography and Slavic folk motifs to depict scenes of desire, intimacy and kinship, drawing on her own experience as a High-Femme navigating what it means to be truly embraced within community.