Gema Polanco

Gema Polanco (Valencia, 1992) is a visual artist whose practice spans installation, textiles, and drawing. Through recurring symbols, materials, and gestures, she constructs emotional and symbolic landscapes that explore identity, care, desire, and transformation. Her work draws on punk and rock & roll aesthetics—traditionally male-coded spaces—while combining them with the domestic, the mystical, and the surreal, questioning inherited cultural frameworks that have historically confined and categorised the feminine. Within this context, she creates spaces of possibility, alter egos, and emotional refuges from which to imagine more open, honest, and non-normative forms of care.

Alongside her artistic practice, she works as an art director, film director, curator, and stylist within the music industry. She is the founder of Navaja Automática, an ongoing DIY project launched in 2017 that translates music visual culture into fashion, print, and zines. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in major institutional collections.