Gabriela (Gabi) Tahsuda is a disabled Indigenous/Latine artist and emerging art therapist whose practice mixes bead work, wearable art, and whatever else feels right to explore disability, identity, and resilience. Materials and story are used to examine how personal and cultural ways of being are kept alive through creative practice, and to document the quiet labor of sustaining oneself and one’s community. Gabi’s work centers storytelling as a tool for connection, reflection, and survivance, inviting viewers to consider embodiment and belonging as relational practices.
Untitled Process Photo of "Wayfinding or 'that doesn't look right'", 2025, Playing with beadwork placement
Untitled Process Photo, 2025, Outside of copper arm
“Wayfinding” or “that doesn’t look right” explores stabilizing my confidence and sustaining myself as I move through my last year of grad school. It reflects how I am perceived in the world; the times of hyper-visibility and invisibility. The arm reaches out for connection; it looks solitary, but is not in the moment before it clasps the next hand in its journey. The copper sculpture and beadwork are both beautiful and odd. Although the arm looks strong, the intersections of copper and beads are less solid than they appear, and need to be handled with care. The eyes look out at the viewer, flipping the gaze from internal to external. It is a declaration of existence, of taking up space.