Shapeshifting Between Worlds - Inside GAB SAFA's "CHAMELEON"

"CHAMELEON" is a cinematic dance EP accompanied by a short film, but calling it a “release” almost feels beside the point. It’s closer to an environment and is something you step into rather than consume.

Across its three part structure and accompanying dance version radio edit, the music moves with a steady and hypnotic pulse, creating space for the body and the mind to wander.

GAB's vocals are what command this track. Her voice is very much embedded in the track itself, as if it is emerging from within the rhythm and it gives a grounded, embodied quality.

This is music for movement that doesn’t have to just be seen.

The short film, written and directed by SAFA, deepens that feeling. Rather than serving as only a visual explanation of the song, the film operates on its own emotional logic.

The camera stays close, sometimes uncomfortably so, lingering on faces, skin, and breath. Light shifts between soft and severe. Choreography feels instinctive, almost animal at times, as if the body is responding before language catches up. There is no traditional storyline as such but there is a progression from tension to fragmentation, and from searching to release.

Much of CHAMELEON is shaped by SAFA's experience growing up as a third culture individual, constantly moving between places without fully belonging to any one of them. Themes of diaspora, identity and displacement are fully present. There is a feeling also here of being slightly out of sync, of reaching for something familiar that remains just out of reach.

“So much of my life has been defined by the in-between — between cultures, countries, versions of myself. My creative expression has always been the place where all those pieces finally get to sit at the same table and speak freely.

I’ve learned that belonging isn’t something you wait to be given with a perfect bow on top; it’s something you have to build for yourself. My self expression is a step toward constructing a world where I fit on my own terms.”

What stands out is how the project treats “home” not as a physical place, but as an emotional condition.

There’s an arc running throughout CHAMELEON. It’s the arc of becoming, of learning how to carry multiple selves without needing to resolve them. The film offers permission to do so.

Knowing that Safa envisioned the film before the music makes sense. The project seems reverse engineered from image and movement outward, with sound acting as both anchor and amplifier.

Watching the film first changes how the music lands afterward; the dance-version radio edit feels heavier with memory, more charged with intention. Together, the elements work together.

Overall, CHAMELEON is about transformation. It’s about the quiet, ongoing act of shapeshifting required to survive in the spaces between identities.

It trusts the audience enough not to explain itself, to create room for something rare. A personal connection that is not forced.

About The Artist

GABS SAFA is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and musician who works with sound, movement and visual storytelling.

Moving fluidly between acting, writing, directing, producing and songwriting, GABS approaches creativity as a single, evolving language rather than a set of separate disciplines.

Raised as a third culture individual, her work is deeply shaped by experiences of displacement, identity and emotional in-betweenness.

Through immersive, cinematic projects like CHAMELEON, GABS creates spaces that feel intimate, lived-in and emotionally honest. Inviting audiences to step inside and find pieces of themselves reflected back.

Follow GABS SAFA on her Website