Gab Bois: You can reinvent the wheel – but first, you need to understand the wheel

Gab Bois makes work that disrupts the familiar. Rhubarb leaves become a handbag. A lasagna sheet, a hair bow. A scrabble tile reworked into a dress. Her images and objects are built from everyday materials, but their effect is often strange, sometimes unsettling, and always deliberate.

Raised in Montréal, Bois grew up around art, watching her father paint and spending time building small worlds out of household objects. She began posting her work on Instagram in her early twenties, developing a practice that now spans photography, sculpture, design and installation. Though much of her work circulates online, it often begins with something tactile – an object observed closely, taken apart, and reassembled on new terms.

Here, she reflects on how she sees the world, what it means to make work in a culture of speed and short attention spans, and the value of looking closely.

In a world increasingly built on digital and synthetic experiences, I think we’re losing something essential in our connection to the natural world. This digital revolution has brought a lot of great things, but it’s also changed how we relate – to each other and nature – in ways that aren’t always positive. Nature is grounding. It offers a kind of quietness and presence that the online world can’t replicate, no matter how much we try to simulate it.

I feel grateful to live in a city where I can walk to a park and spend time in nature, away from my phone. During the pandemic, that connection became even more important. When we couldn’t gather in cities or social spaces, we found ourselves returning to nature – and for many people, that became a source of comfort and clarity. I think that revealed just how essential that connection is.

Nature shows up in my work as inspiration, as material, and as something more. It’s not just something to observe or be separate from – you can embody it, and it shapes you, often without you even realising. The moon’s cycle, the presence of sunlight, the changing seasons – these forces influence how we feel, think, and move through the world. And in turn, we affect nature too. It’s a living, evolving relationship.

There’s definitely an interplay in my work between the natural and the artificial, and I think that contrast reflects something very real about how we live today. I’ve always felt this push and pull in my own life – between polar opposites like function and aesthetic, natural and artificial, enticing and repulsing. I’m drawn to creating work that sits at the intersection of these tensions because it mirrors the human experience. We live in a world where nature and consumer culture constantly overlap, and I find beauty in both. That’s probably why I’m so interested in moments where those two worlds collide – like a tree trunk growing through a fence, or a table designed to look like a boulder. Those juxtapositions tell us something about how we relate to our environment now: messy, layered, and constantly evolving.

"The Flower Bed we made in collaboration with Studio Sveja can be a representation of nature’s essence: a well of knowledge, beauty and serenity."

That way of seeing – of finding meaning in the everyday – comes from my childhood. My dad taught me that you can always find inspiration through the art of curiosity and play. He’d arrange the food on my plate into surprising tableaus and encourage me to build worlds in our backyard. I’ve carried that childlike perspective with me throughout my life and creative practice.

A more recent shift in how I see things came from a movement I’ve noticed in the wider culture – people like Virgil Abloh, among many others, have shown us that you can be an expert in any field, and that you’re allowed to wear several hats and still be taken seriously. What I love most about being a creative right now is that the landscape is having its walls torn down. Industries are overlapping, everything feels more fluid—and your craziest ideas have room to flourish.

But with that openness comes new challenges. The way we interact with objects and trends has shifted with fast fashion, disposable culture, and digital aesthetics. I think this change brings real challenges – but also new opportunities. It’s more important than ever to be able to work at a fast pace, for better or worse. Luckily, I’ve always worked at two speeds: quickly for Instagram, and more slowly for larger personal projects and client work. Balancing long-term processes with quick-turnaround output keeps my creative muscles strong and my practice fulfilling. It also helps me stay in step with the pace of digital culture while continuing to develop more complex ideas.

Another challenge artists face today is an audience with a very limited attention span. I’m not especially interested in going out of my way to grab people’s attention – I’d rather just make what I want to make. I know it’s rare for someone to see a photo online and return to it later. That’s one reason I’ve been moving toward creating work in physical spaces – through installations, events, or even products that can be collected and experienced more slowly. I’m fascinated by objects, and I love that they can live entire lives and form relationships with us, unlike an Instagram photo that might only hold a second of your mental space.

"The Lasagna Bow is an example of a work that took minutes to create and share on social media, let alone one that I didn’t expect to reach such a large audience, but I ended up loving it in its simplicity and directness."

We’re constantly bombarded with content – endlessly repackaged and presented as something new, when really, nothing has changed. In this environment of fast-paced consumerism, true innovation feels increasingly rare, because the focus is more on marketing than creativity. I think what helps us create better is a shift in context and perspective – something that forces us to see things differently.

To create better, I love spending time at home or going on walks – just observing and reflecting. The everyday objects and scenes we often overlook become the raw materials for my work and the fuel for my inspiration. I believe that if you spend time with your objects and take the time to understand them first, then you can be innovative. You can reinvent the wheel if you want – but first, you need to understand the wheel. If that makes sense.

What I’ve come to learn is that once you share your work online, you can’t predict who it will resonate with – or how. Social media opens up your audience far beyond the formal boundaries of the art world, like galleries or museums. It’s a much wider and more diverse space, which means the response is often surprising.

A lot of the images that blew up on Instagram were unexpected. They take on a life of their own and often circulate in ways I don’t even realise. Early in my practice, my work started popping up in memes – used out of context, reinterpreted, reshared. I find it fun that my images can be read in so many different ways.

One example is the orange bra I shared in 2020 – it ended up being licensed for a print spread in an article about breast implants. That kind of crossover into unexpected spaces has become part of what makes sharing work online so interesting to me.

"Vitamin C-Cup"

Written by Gab Bois for The Skylark in March 2025, and edited and condensed for clarity.