Giana De Dier is a contemporary collage artist whose work centers the experiences and heritage of Afro-Caribbean people who migrated to Panama during the construction of the Panama Canal in the early 1900s. Her art places particular emphasis on the experiences of Afro-Caribbean women, highlighting the ways they navigated and occupied space, formed relationships and built communities. In her collages, De Dier combines layers of paper, fabric, personal and archival records and photographs, to ignite conversations on memory, migration, family history, identity, and representation. Her collages re-envision and explore the possibilities of what might be absent from photographic and historical archives. Her work challenges the erasure and misrepresentation of Afro-Caribbean women in historical narratives, offering alternative perspectives that honor their contributions and histories.
De Dier studied visual arts at the University of Panama. Her collages have been exhibited at the Art Gallery of the IDB Employees Association, Washington; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama; the 58th. Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA; the 60th International Art Exhibition, Venice; the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín, Colombia; and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London, UK. Her collages are part of the collections of the Panama Canal Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the Houston Museum of African American Culture and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Washington. She has participated in art residencies at the Panama Canal Museum and Delfina Foundation in London.
De Dier lives and works in Panama City, Panama.