Giannina Coppiano Dwin lives and works in South Florida.  She has been the recipient of grants and awards such as the prestigious South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists funded in part by the National Endowment for the Art, the Women in the Visual Arts Award; as well as, several sponsorships and grants including research in Spain and Brazil.  Her work has been included in national and international exhibitions as part of solo and group shows.   Some of her more notable exhibitions include solo installations at the Fundacion Valdes-Salas in Asturias, Spain, Project Space in The Art and Culture Center in Hollywood, the contemporary wing of the Museo Municipal de Guayaquil, Ecuador; Ornare, Miami, as a collateral event during Art Basel; the Coral Springs Museum of Art, Coral Springs; Illegal Gallery, Florence, Italy.   Selected group shows include venues such as the ArtHill, Gallery, London, UK., University Galleries, Boca Raton; Whitespace at the Mordes Collection, The Box Gallery in WPB, 18 Rabbit Gallery, Ft. Lauderdale, Duncan Gallery, St. Petersburg, Armory Art Center, Palm Beach; Cornell Museum, Delray Beach; Casa De Espanha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She was invited by the government of Ecuador to jury the prominent Salon de Julio along with Gerardo Mosquera, Curator for the New Museum in New York.  Coppiano Dwin has also curated exhibitions such as Contemporary Ceramics and Textiles at the Coral Springs Museum, Corporal at the Schmidt Galleries, Fabricated, at FC Gallery among others.  She has completed a public art sculpture commissioned by the Broward County Cultural Council and the Broward County Main Library in Ft. Lauderdale.  Some of her past public works include an outdoor sculpture for the Cultural Loop at Pineapple Grove in Delray Beach and an Office Depot commission to design and execute their Visionary Women Award in bronze.  Giannina works on installations, sculpture, ceramics, photography, and performance. 

Like the Vanitas paintings of the seventeenth century, which reflect upon the transient nature of all material things, my work presents attractive, sensuous images and forms which may evoke youth, sexuality, pleasure, finery, beauty. They are mostly made of non-durable materials such as sugar, flour, spices and other non-traditional materials. Upon first look, the forms are easily understood, however, it is only when the simple, inexpensive materials that make up the work and the apparent intensive labor put into them begin to disclose themselves to the viewer, that the process of the work and it’s ephemeral nature become apparent revealing the concept implicit in the pieces.

Many of the forms address the female body alluding to sexuality and the dichotomy of natural aging but living to media standards of eternal youth. The ordinary materials are elevated into “preciousness” by the complexity of the design, which very often resemble very fine lace or delicate, expensive cloth. It is also a nod to women’s craftwork through the ages and to the history of lace. The food materials are symbolic of nourishment. The daily meals served and shared, the food/meal as a bond making ritual and a social connector, the communal table. When spices, are used, they engage more than the visual sense. Certain scents oblige the viewer to connect with the work through the sense of smell. Weather working with sugar, or flour or spices, all the work is imbued with an inviting tactile quality to create a desire to touch, to feel the work. The implication of sight, smell, touch, trigger in the viewer the sensorial memory.

To reinforce the impermanence of the pieces and their fragility, a performance to destroy or transform the work is implemented at the end of each exhibition. The performative intervention is made to accelerate the inevitability of change, decay, and transformation. The performances take a variety of modes, from sweeping, to using water, or burying the design.

My work is not in any way morally related in purpose to the concerns of the after-life or judgment. It merely hopes to elicit analysis of the transient nature of the human condition and comments on gender issues and the fragility of life in general. It is a sort of contemporary Memento Mori.