Beya Gille Gacha
Biography
Photo credit: Alun Be
BEYA GILLE GACHA WAS BORN IN PARIS IN 1990, THE SON OF A CAMEROONIAN MOTHER AND A FRENCH FATHER. SHE LIVES AND WORKS BETWEEN BAFOUSSAM AND PARIS.
Beya Gille Gacha is a self-taught artist whose work is principally characterised by anthropomorphic sculptures whose skin is made of seed beads, a personal reinvention of the traditional Bamiléké (Cameroon) beading technique. By using pearls, symbols of wealth, like skin, she aims to defend the fact that every human being has value. And she sees her sculptures as magical doubles of their models, somewhere between art objects, sacred fetish and transitional objects.
Magic plays a vital role in Beya Gille Gacha's work. The body is a total subject, a metaphor encompassing the spirit. Committed to an intersectional perspective, her approach is a play of light and shadow, and her work is a bridge between different sensibilities (intellectual, intimate, societal, philosophical, political, ecological and spiritual). Her universe takes the form of poetics, an uncompromising quest for the surface of the mirror: where trees meet, where the essence of life is hidden.
Beya Gille Gacha's work is part of the collections of the Smithsonian Museum, the WorldBank in Washington, the Fenix Museum in Rotterdam, and private collections such as the Léridon Collection (Cape Town, Paris), Imago Mundi - Luciano Benetton (Treviso) and The Bunker Artspace (Miami).
She has also exhibited at international events such as 1-54 New York (United States), AKAA (France), the Dakar Biennial (Senegal) in 2022, the Ouagadougou Biennial in 2019 (Burkina Faso), where she won 1st Prize (Leridon Prize), as well as at emblematic venues such as the Galleria Nazionale in Rome, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, the Musée National du Cameroun, the MAIF Social Club in Paris and the Tropiques Atrium - Scène Nationale in Fort-de-France.
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