Gina DeCagna is an emerging American cultural producer currently based in London, UK. She code-switches between being a visual artist, writer, editor, and independent publisher, with an overarching interest in playing with both material and language. No matter what medium she is working in, she is frequently interested in ways to connect both personal stories and interpersonal relationships with larger ideas from sociology and notions of communities, cultures, and nations.

Why do we cherish certain stories and works of art? What makes us hold onto them? How do we use works of art to shape narratives of our lives and the wider world in which we live?

DeCagna is passionate about working in and around contemporary art—a field that’s continually unexpected and being redefined through a variety of cultural actors. While art has historically been sectioned off for the elite, she has been especially fascinated by art that can truly be public itself, or placed into more public-facing capacities. It is exciting when everyone can feel comfortable discovering a work of art, because art is what truly makes us human.

Art is one of the ways we ascribe value to and document the narratives that have defined our different personal and cultural experiences.

Some of DeCagna’s other ongoing interests and concerns are around:

• The status of contemporary art as social currency among broader cultural activity and how it entangles with global geopolitics.

• Intersections of literature, writing, text, and other storytelling formats (especially language, poetics, and rhetoric) with visual art.

• Debates of originality, authenticity, innovation, creativity, and genius.

• Publishing formats through books and other print or digital media.

DeCagna earned her BA in English and Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania (2016) in Philadelphia, PA, USA. There, she focused on contemporary poetry and poetics and the intersection with contemporary art practices. At UPenn, she also founded, edited, and directed a publication and community of over four hundred collaborating artists and writers known as Symbiosis (2012–2016).

Later, she went on to complete her MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London (2020), where she continued to develop her creative work and cultural interests in a more globalized, international context, and she has become immersed in London’s global hub of art and culture. In 2024, from London, she founded Palimpsest Projects, a new intergenerational, international group devoted to rewriting narratives of art and literature.

So far in her career, she has also worked in public engagement positions and fellowships in the US and UK, and her own visual art projects have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in the cities of London, Philadelphia, and New York.