Lisa Gambey

Ground Floor is a philosophical musical produced by Orkater in the Netherlands. I collaborated with Johanna Trudzinski on the costumes and hair.

text: Maartje Wortel - composition: Annelinde Bruijs - directing: Suze Milius & Marijn Alexander De Jong - performing: Romy Vreden, Helene Vrijdag, Silyan El Kattabi, Annelinde Bruijs, Saskia Mees, Reinout Scholten Van Aschat - set design: Janne Sterke
costumes: Johanna Trudzinski & Lisa Gambey - lightdesign: Marijn Alexander De Jong - sounddesign & production: Robbert Klein - technical support: Jasper de Groot & Guido Van Den Hof - produced by Orkater / Wieke ten Cate - photos by Bas de Brouwer

In 2023, I designed costumes, accessories and hand sculptures for Vera Tussing in Un-Staging Tactility.

In this promenade performance incorporating dance, immersive choreography, sculpture and sound art, Vera Tussing and collaborators ask: What comes before touch? 

Our sense of touch is interwoven with desire, fear, disgust, comfort, pleasure, danger. Tactility is by definition a complex phenomenon, defining our relations with each other and the world but it is so often left unexamined. Because it is so loaded with meaning, touch requires careful negotiation. And because everyone comes with their own history of touch – which can include training, practice, memory, and trauma – the ‘before’ of touch needs to be always lived afresh, carefully considered and reconsidered with each new encounter. 

In a show consisting of four different parts, three dancers (Helen D’Haenens, Raphael Philipe Damasceno Ferreira de Moura, Christine Sollie) & Vera Tussing invite the audience to explore who we are in movement, in dance, at the point before touch? What memories of past touches do we carry within us? What possible touches precede any immediate touch? Does touch only happen when we notice it – when we actively reach for the other’s hand? What touches do we never even notice at all? 

Find the credits at the bottom of the gallery.

This work started as a technical research, and found a life of its own as an approach to fashion. The fabric rectangle is charged with warm feelings, it reminds me of home, where it is worn casually both inside and outside, wrapped around the waist as a skirt. Everybody there has one in their closet and on their wall. The color treatment is very much inspired by domestic life textiles in the South Pacific, bright blues washed out by the sunlight.

Photographs were taken by my dear friend Elina Belou.


What happens to you when you live away from your roots?
How do I call back all the sensations that I miss? What is mine?


My research is fuelled by these questions. I am trying to go home, after realising quite late that, indeed, I am very far from home.
 Home is not where I currently live, in Northern Europe.
Home is New Caledonia, an archipelago in Melanesia. 


In the South Pacific, flowery textile is part of daily life. It can be
 domestic and practical : tied around the waist or worn on the
 head, laid on the ground for a nap. It can also be symbolic and emotional. When used for ritual practice, it can symbolise respect, togetherness, compassion, joy. The clashing colours are an insolent celebration of terrestrial and physical life, outshining the greens of a lush vegetation.



COME HOME! is an intimate textile research, part of which was exhibited at Hae, Maastricht, in the summer of 2022. 
Five panels of silk appliqué on silk are attached on a simple structure. Inside, the visitor finds a mirror and a series of hand painted silk scarves that they may touch or put on.

Here the structure and the scarves will first be shown individually. Pictures of the installation at Hae are at the bottom of the page. Photographs at Enci Maastricht and in studio by talented David Hummelen.

Video clip for Hi Hawaii.

Hand sculpted shoes featured in a photoshoot for Patchworkers.

Patchworkers is an experimental participatory design workshop for the upcycling of textiles, and socio-professional rehabilitation. It was founded by textile designer Zoé Nehlig in 2019. The workshop is located in Strasbourg, France.

This is the SS21 collection shoot. Beside the shoes, I also did the styling of the pictures, the campaign was shot by Atelier Gilbert.

Le Tailleur is a work produced in collaboration with artist and friend Zoé Nehlig , during FRICHE, an artist’s residency in Brussels.

The small collection is entirely hand sewn using scraps of precious fabrics, and is using textile manipulation techniques such as shibori-inspired dyeing, and embroidery.

This work is celebrating a candid and joyful approach to garment making, disregarding expertise, trends and of course functionality.

They do it for a reason is a CD-book made in collaboration with Jens Maurits Orchestra. The music is composed by Jens Bouttery and the story written by Daan Milius. It contains a collection of images that I gathered through my numerous internet explorations.

This visual research is an attempt to observe our relationship to animals, and the way we project feelings and intentions onto them.

GET IT HERE