Gabby Da Silva’s work begins with love—sometimes simmering slowly, like the stew she prepares for her audience. And sometimes unfolding through gestures as simple and intimate as feeding others by hand.
A multidisciplinary artist based in Saskatoon, Da Silva is one of the current participants in Remai Modern’s RBC Sustained Artist Mentorship program. Her practice spans performance, video, installation, and community-based work, often shaped by her own lived experiences as a disabled artist of Portuguese descent.
A Performance Rooted in Ancestry
Da Silva’s most recent work, Nourishment Becomes Us, is an act of both generosity and reclamation. It was first performed in March 2025 in a unique project space in a derelict house called the “cannibal lot”. Cannibal lot is the inaugural project of Devious Plot, a ritual of architectural deconstruction that honours a 100-year-old home by transforming its materials and memories into a future-focused, community-rooted structure.
Da Silva’s performance blends food, family, and collective care. At its debut, an audience was invited to sit around a table and served a home-cooked stew, ladled out by Da Silva herself.
The title, she explains, is about “the idea of the home, heritage… growing up, I found gardening, planting beans, planting greens, cooking dinner meals, baking pies. These are the kind of things that I learned from my grandparents, my aunts.”
For Da Silva, nourishment is more than sustenance. It’s a way of honouring lineage and imagining what it means to nurture the future. “I want to be a mother one day maybe… I want to teach love, positivity, growth. And so, Nourishment Becomes Us is all about that, about love, about loving towards other people, towards people that are important to you.”
Disability as a Catalyst, Not a Limitation
Though she identifies as a disabled artist, Da Silva resists letting that aspect define her work.
“Disability was so sudden into my life, it just happened so sporadically,” she said, referencing her 2019 diagnosis with a neurological disorder. “I could’ve stopped, I could’ve given up. But the thing is, I have good people that support me and back me up.”
She has spoken candidly about the challenges of being seen and believed as a disabled person. “Lots of times, I was turned away or ignored… they thought I was lying or faking being sick… but I was not, and I’m still not faking anything.”
Her art is a medium to push back against erasure, advocating for greater visibility and understanding. “If you’re not standing up for yourself, then who will?”
Finding Space to Grow
Participation in the RBC Sustained Artist Mentorship program offered Da Silva support to expand her practice. She applied with the hope of investigating more site-specific and performance-based works—forms not frequently explored in Saskatoon—in a local setting.
“Saskatoon is such a small location… it’s not very common in town here. So, if they have an opportunity to say, do you want to try it out? Just take a chance, I guess.”
The mentorship helped her reconnect with personal memories through new projects, like a video piece showing her gardening, harvesting, and cooking in homage to her childhood.
“I made a video planting my garden, picking it, harvesting it, boiling it, and baking it, just like my grandparents used to do… it was almost like I was nostalgic for my childhood.”
Exploring the Poetic Possibilities of the Mundane
Looking ahead, Da Silva imagines future performances in stairwells and courtyards, exploring “very mundane tasks… something like picking beans or cutting tomatoes.” She’s drawn to gestures that may seem simple but carry the weight of memory and resilience.
“Sometimes things are hard. I can do those things, but sometimes I can’t… now I can do it again. It’s important to my own practice, rediscovering things that you thought were maybe boring, but… skills that you want to reclaim again.”
By cooking, feeding, and tending to both space and community, Da Silva invites us to sit down, slow down, and be nourished.
About the RBC Sustained Artists Mentorship Program
The RBC Sustained Artist Mentorship program at Remai Modern provides emerging and mid-career artists with access to mentorship, facilities, financial supports, and community resources. Each participant receives individualized feedback and opportunities to showcase or further develop their works. The ultimate goal is to nurture Saskatchewan’s vibrant creative community, supporting artists and forms of practice that resonate locally and beyond.