About
Gilliam de la Torre (Gigi) is a visual artist that navigates between Photography and Cinematography as main creative mediums. She holds a bachelor in cinematography from University of the Arts (ISA) in Havana, Cuba and completed DP workshops at EICTV San Antonio de los Baños and documentary studies at TISCH NYU. She was awarded a fellowship for the Flaherty Documentary Seminar in 2012. Furthermore she has a background of drama playwriting studies in college.
Her photographic work dives in two main directions. One emerges from a performative self and constructed scenarios, presenting new realities by de-contextualizing the human body and the use of quotidian objects. Another body of work is derived from the intersectional space between documentary and conceptual perceiving the human footprint in daily, almost banal scenes. The atypical within the common in a subtle way that, combined with her poetic writing, in a mix of Spanish and English (owning a defense of Spanglish writing as a latina migrant) bestows a personal meaning to the images that come into view as a collective imaginary. She works with memory and fixation, experiences of migration, human communication, concepts of femininity and social representation as main subjects.
Her photographs have been published by Shots Magazine (USA), Theater Geist (Germany), Parálisis (Mexico) and Tablas (Cuba) magazines. Furthermore she has been highlighted at Lensculture, Fotógrafas LATAM, The Luupe and Fototeca de Cuba platforms. She has been invited as lecturer at University of Connecticut and NYU New York.
Her cinematography career has been centered on her passion for documentaries, working as DP in features like “Cuban Food Stories” (premiered at Berlinale Film Festival, exhibited in a dozen of festivals including FICG, Guadalajara, Seattle, Newport… featured on Amazon Prime, iTunes, DVD and Delta Airlines), “Meeting Jim” (premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival and exhibited in several festivals around the globe including Odessa, HOF, SEMINCI Valladolid, Central Scotland Documentary Fest, Krakow, Parnu Film Fest… Winner of the Best Documentary Award at Boston Turkish Film Festival 2020. Broadcasted on prime time by BBC Scotland and the rest of the UK and also on BLU TV in Turkey). “Me Japanese” (in post, winner of the Wave Maker Grant by Cannonball and Andy Warhol Foundation), “Garage Rendezvous” on the closure of the oldest flea market in Manhattan, NY and “Call me Lucky” (sponsored by Women Make Movies). Furthermore, she has developed two other feature length documentaries with Mambo Panda Productions for CGTN America aired in 2022. Her first feature length film as DP, “Febrero”, premiered at the 43th Miami Film Festival last March 2023 and won the main Award of the Festival. She has been a cinematographer collaborator for Vice Media winning an Emmy award in 2023 for the piece: “Insight Rights: Teenagers discuss abortion”.
Additional film work includes mixed media collaborations videos with several artists like the videos for the piece “The Dance of Anger” from multidisciplinary artist Javier Castro, premiered at Dakar Biennale 2022. Frequent documentations like “The Poem” for Raul Cordero at Times Square and “Once Broken” for Kate Gorney; experimental pieces like “Trinity of Selves” for composer Nina Fukuoka, “Story of O” and “Derrotero” with dancer Gabriela Burdsall and director William Ruiz. Her experimental video “Flushing Feelings” has been recently acquired by the Hemispheric Institute of New York as part of its Digital Video Library.
Gigi is currently at work on healing and migration for the production of the video installation titled “Primavera Adentro", curating and post producing her photographic series “Cuando sea grande no voy a hablar de mis problemas” and the development of her visual Book “A Way of Leaving”. She resides between Brooklyn, NY and Havana, Cuba.