bioARTIST VANNIEGAMA
Vannie Gama (Vannie Aurin Pavelski da Gama) is a Brazilian interdisciplinary non-binary visual artist and theorist, born in São Paulo, São Paulo State, 1997. They/he is known for painting, installation and written pieces born out completely or partially from scientific research in ecology (mostly rain-forest but also from other biomes) , social sciences (with a focus on queer expression) and studies of tecnology (philosophy, critical, sociohistorical approach). He/they hold an interdisciplinary master in human and social sciences at University of Campinas (UNICAMP)research in the Faculty of Applied Sciences (2022-2024) – Their 300-page-memoire counts with an ecossytemic interpretation of technology, a fundamental role of digital art and contemporary art in the participatory bones of Brazilian democracy with a consistent link to contemporary geopolitics, tropical ecology, queer theory, sociodiversity integrated to actor-network theory, and environmental history. The dissertation also contains the ”Organic Manifesto” and several artworks, lately published as a book of the same name, ”Sociedade Tecnológica”, in 2025.
More recently, Gama was one of the selected artists for the 2024/2025 edition of the ”The looking Glass” Art Residency program in Paris, France, resulting in the series ”Platidudinous Bizarreness – Dreaming with Memory”, the collective artwork ”Echoes of The Self” also in Paris and in the art fiction book ”Leão e o Unicórnio” (Editora Libertinagem, 2025). Also in 2025, Vannie Gama was the holder of a scientific journalism scholarship by FAPESP at CEPID – Neuromat, Centro de Pesquisa, Inovação e Difusão Científica em Neuromatemática, Estatística, localizado no IME – Instituto de Matemática e Estatística da USP – Universidade de São Paulo. During his stay, 27 texts (Blog Traço de Ciência) were writen under a scientific visualization/ilustration project with a 6-month lenght, and the series ”Behind Time” (Atrás do Tempo) was created and donated to the IME-USP Library. In the end of the same year, Gama started another theoretical work, his/their thesis in Futurism Studies through literature and cinema with contextual analysis between the XX century to nowadays at the PhD interdisciplinary program of studies in semiotics at Université du Québec à Montréal (2025-2028 – The last series of the year by Vannie Gama are: ”Les Gestes” and ”Astropoética” , including three new articles in art theory.
At the age of 22, founded VYSlab (2019), their atelier for contemporary art focused interdisciplinary art, scientific communication, and social-technological research development, Gama started creating consistently also in theory-branches. Their first book was ”Le cultiver des images” (2022) (”O Cultivar das Imagens”, disponível gratuitamente online) with an interdisciplinary approach of the creative process during pandemics with critics under politics, human rights and the connections between art, nature, technology and society during the years of 2020 and 2021 (unfortunately most of the written pieces are in Portuguese, but you can find translations of some papers, essays and books around) presented on the Festival International de Literatura da Mantiqueira, in 2022. 2020-2022 were also the years of the first series in fauna and flora of the artist.
They main media is painting (pigment specialist both in historical and practical frames), multimedia installations and writing (as research, and at times as poetry-image, profoundly inspired by Dada, Surrealism, Symbolism and Modern literature). Scientific communication through biodiversity illustrations (specially for tropical species and biomes) and paintings are known series of the artists since 2020, graduallyreframing environmental awareness into symbolic and critical pieces over the following years. They took part at the Art Residency from Syntropy States art project during 2021-2024 creating digital art with different musicians such as Luca D’Alessandro and Nya Yoshi, as part of an intergration of new media such sound-image and generative digital art. Their work was also part of the VI International Nude Art Biennial at Montenegro, 2024, with the artwork ”Intersexself” (in which received an commendation by the biennial committee). Moreover, still during 2024, the artwork ”The Heat of Creation” was part of the The Fox Yard Gallery collective exhibition, ”The Bizarre”, during July of that year.
Before 2019, the environmental and human rights activist received their bachelor with honors in Visual Arts at the Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho (UNESP) from 2015-2020; while in the Visual Arts course, lectures in physics, psychology and computer science were taken, and two interdisciplinary scientific projects with national and state scholarships were developed on sensible perception field with focus on colour, natural sciences, neurophisiology and phenomenology – Knoledged later on applied during the period on CEPID – Neuromat (2025). Before entering master studies, Vannie studied chemistry at the Technology Faculty of Campinas during 2021 lockdown. Studying image perception, philosophy of art and the relations between nature, art and technology for contemporary society since 2017, their interdisciplinary studies are translated into expanded paintings, kinetic artworks, sound-image installations, and theoretical works mostly known by being created in series and presented to public audience one or two times an year by individual exhibitions – For access to the writings, essays and books you can access ”writings” on this webside, and for the paintings, ”https://vanniegama.art/vyslab-2021/”.
During the year of 2023, several articles in art theory and interdisciplinary research were published, as well as the second solo exhibition of the artist, ”Prólogos para Observações Orgânicas” , series of artworks presented in the cities of São José dos Campos and Santos in São Paulo State at the same year. The artists debud exhibition happened in 2019, with the series ”Afigurations of Time”; since 2017 Gama’s work takes part into several collective exhibitions as well in different countries.
Gama is also one of the youngests artists to be part of the auction for brazilian art Tableau Artes e Leilões located in São Paulo, Brazil – Their work takes part yearly since 2017 at the Tableau catalogues. The creation of the artist is mainly based on a structure of: yearly-biennial artworks series and/or books/articles on a main topic inside the atelier; and for a living, the sale of works of art parallel to the main research takes place through auctions and through projects/commissions directly with the artist (with a creation time between 3 months and an year, depending on the need for research and immersion in the topic and independently from the destination of the artwork [globally]).
Other important mention is that the artists commonly collaborates with biologists, philosophers and other artists, such as in projects as ”New Flanerie” (2022) (UNICAMP) (work of art with a hybrid process, expanded painting), ”Iridophores” (2023) (Private collector’s collection, research on Octopus Vulgaris) and ”Dentro do quarto estado” (reinterpretation of the work ”Il quarto stato”, by G. P da Volpedo, 1901) (2024). Since 2024 Gama decided to quit main social media as a boycott of the censorship of the queer and trans community, so you won’t find updated pages as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter (X), the closest updated social media is TikTok, but even then, it’s not constantly updated. For formal updates, please be part of the newsletter of the website and also, you are invited to visit here, the website monthly or every two months to check new artworks and the creative processes of longer series, book releases, article releases, upcoming exhibitions, residencies, events, etc.
Finally, the artist is not signed with any gallery currently, preferring to work independently or in collaborations only (such as with institutes, museums, universities, punctual events with galleries, cultural houses and festivals) – although he did hold in the past open-contracts, new proposals are carefully studied nowadays since the priority of their creations is not quantity, but quality, although he does rely on artwork sales and research due to fulltime commitment to the atelier and academic activities. Rarely more than 18 pieces an year and rarely more than 4 projects an year despite year-round projects of exhbitions and research) are created per year.
Hence,considering the delicate global moment we are in, spaces are also studied in terms of social openess and responsability, and ecological awareness (no contracts from oil, wood or agro, gas or mine companhies founding will be accepted, as well as from known exploratory labour brands/companhies including the ones having discriminatory policies or those who express support and propaganda of the same kind; brands, companhies or people associate/affiliate with weapon development [or sales]/military departments of any level will be declined as part of an effort for peace, equality, ecological and democratic values, part of the ethics of the artist).
Welcome to a Mutable website! It changes constantly, since 2018, like a whole organism.
You can download my official portfolio-book clicking here , where you will be redirect to a google drive PDF file. You can also find it online in my Academia account, clicking here.
For the Artistic CV (not the academic-focused one), click here to download the PDF. This file is not available online in other platforms/addresses.
interview
art chat as a result of the art residency from Syntropy States, Relax section, with the project founder allie Joy, talking about contemporary art during pandemics, and the creative process of the digital sound-image artwork ”Inspirar” with Luca D’Alessandro.
As a quick ”How to use this website”: If you’d like to see all paintings you can click on the ”Paintings” tab, for contemporary, click on ”Contemporary Art tab” directly. Both of them contains a mnimosine gallery of the most important paintings and artworks of mine. For specific artworks you can pass your mouse over the tabs and select the inside tabs for example for series and drawings. The same for writings and all tabs (the general contains everything, the insides, specific selections).