Gian Spina (Gigi) is a visual artist, writer and researcher whose work investigates and reimagines narratives, exploring their erasures, and silences and the malleability of historical accounts. He has taught at the Arab-Latina Research Group, the International Art Academy Palestine, Escola da Cidade in São Paulo, the Ionion Center for Arts and Culture and the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CILAS), where he co-organised the Alexandria Art School - CILAS. He has participated in residency programs including Capacete and Documenta 14, Athens; the MMAG Foundation, Amman; GEGENWARTE/PRESENCES, Chemnitz, Germany; and Al-Balad, Jeddah. He has presented his work in institutions including the Sharjah Art Foundation, Mercosul Biennial, Sheffield Film Festival, Les Rencontres d’Arles and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, among others. His writing has been published in outlets such as Mada Masr, Arts Everywhere and the World Policy Institute. In 2024, he released his first book, Horses Floating on the Nile.

Residency Project

During the residency program in Kalba, I continued developing the ongoing project Arab–Latina Research Group, which investigates the relations, commonalities and points of convergence between Latin America and Arabic-speaking countries. The research unfolds through cultural, historical and poetic intersections, tracing shared narratives across geographies. In this phase, the project took the form of translating my book of poetry, Cavalos boiando no Nilo [Horses floating on the Nile], written between 2016 and 2023, from Portuguese to English. Becoming both a methodological and conceptual tool, the translation process resulted in an artist-made book that recontextualises the original text within a trans-regional framework.

Alongside this work, I developed the text ‘Art in Times of War’, reflecting on the ethical and perceptual conditions of producing art amidst conflict. The writing emerges from lived experience during the residency and situates artistic practice within broader political and existential urgencies.

During the second month of the residency, I also produced a series of 18 paintings in response to the war unfolding at the time. These works originated from writings developed during the residency and were subsequently translated into visual compositions, forming a body of work that navigates the tension between language and image. In parallel to the studio work, I initiated a film club within the residency context, creating a collective space for screening and discussion. It functioned as an extension of the research, fostering dialogue with the other artists around cinema, politics and shared cultural references.

The outcomes of this process—including the publication, writings, paintings, and film club—are documented on my Instagram account.