Giulia Essyad

Bluebot

Video for LED screen 432 x 384 cm, sound, loop, 9'10'', 2021.

IN ORDER TO COMMIT TO REDUCING OUR ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION TOGETHER, THE VIDEO WORKS OF THE MIRE PROGRAMME ARE BROADCAST ONLY DURING PEAK HOURS, FROM 7AM TO 9.30AM, FROM 12PM TO 2.30PM AND FROM 5.30PM TO 8PM. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND HAVE A NICE TRIP.

With Bluebot, Giulia Essyad presents a feminist science-fiction about a matriarchal community assisted by emotionally intelligent robots : the Bluebot dolls. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where women, who created these devices, are the sole survivors. At once childlike, sensual and life-like, the doll suggests a variation of the artist’s own body: it is she who gives her memory, insight to serve the other protagonists of the story, and life – artificial, of course, but one that escapes its creator thanks to independent thought.

Bluebot travels in search of her own history in a partially devastated world that she will wander through. She explores her surroundings with both joy and melancholy. The story is very fragmented and enigmatic, and feels as decomposed as the dismembered dollbot. A common thread emerges, however: that of an emotional charge tied to the concepts of loss and reconstruction of the past.

Inspired by video games aesthetic, Essyad’s practice mixes real views, computer-generated visuals and miniature animations (3D, stop motion). The soundtrack, written by the artist, plays a central role in this work, which will be further developed in musical, textual and performative forms. The visual variety of Bluebot is part of what Essyad calls a ‘compost of images’. She states: “I don’t want to eliminate disorder from my work, I think that mistakes make it more precise. The work speaks of the world, and the world is disorder”.

Coproduction Fonds cantonal d'art contemporain, Geneva and Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, for the MIRE programme and the Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement (the BIM is supported by the Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville et du canton de Genève)

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Giulia Essyad, born in 1992, lives and works in Geneva. In 2020, she obtained a Master’s degree in Visual Arts at HEAD – Haute école d’art et de design de Genève, in the cross-disciplinary “Work.Master“ programme. This curriculum has helped her to develop a very versatile practice. Featured in many exhibitions, she was noticed during her studies and received the New Heads 2020 prize. Invited by the contemporary art centre Fri Art in 2021, she presented her first institutional solo show, A Selene Blues, in which she presented the fantasy world of a cyber-futuristic and feminist saga of which she is both author and character.

Essyad’s language is a combination of visual arts, performance, sculpture, poetry and video art, and is concerned with the power of representation, the vocabulary of marketing and the questioning of female archetypes. She regularly stages her own body and – in a positive and non-discriminatory spirit – develops practical tools (workshops, texts, works, on- and offline) to reflect on the production and reception of images that portray the body in its most tangible form.