As an interdisciplinary artist I investigate personal histories, popular culture and racial currents through my lens as a biracial woman navigating unsettling American realities.

I insert myself into the work by mining my experiences, implementing soft color palettes, humor and domesticity. My goal is to create environments and experiences that awaken critical thinking and offer a shift in perspective. Activating spaces with haunting nostalgia for America's past-as-present, I beckon viewers to dig into the imperfect relationship between our inner worlds, public lives, and modern events.

Each of the mediums I work with is a conduit for introspection. My photographs are staged self-portraits presenting a spectrum of invented yet recognizable "selves," which undermine social hierarchies and beauty standards. Vintage wallpaper is a motif throughout my collage, sculpture, and installation work. This material, a childhood sentiment, serves as an accent or backdrop to the found objects and images I use to assemble my work. In collages, I embrace xerography, a meditation of sifting through historical news media, magazines, and portraiture. Through sculpture and installation, I showcase antique furniture, decor and figurines reimagined into unexplored psychological spaces. Installation is my channel to create imagined domestic environments as sites of sanctuary and resistance. In doing so, I expand on the vernacular of found objects and settings found in my photography and collages. Sculpture allows me to reanimate the personifications of society's deference to Whiteness into symbols of objection. The scope of my work is an ensemble of visual renderings that affirms Black livelihood and provokes reflection on the often hostile realities of the outside world.


Homepage: Ladybirds (I'm a Canary), 2019, Chromogenic Print, 30 x 22.5 in



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About

Genevieve Gaignard (b.1981) is a multidisciplinary artist that splits her time between her hometown in Massachusetts and Los Angeles. Her work elicits dialogue around class, race and cultural identity. Last year she presented two solo exhibitions: To Whom it May Concern with Rowan University Art Gallery and Strange Fruit with Vielmetter Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including The Nerman Museum, Overland Park, KS; Rennie Museum, Vancouver, CA; The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA; The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AR; The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY. In July 2022, Gaignard partnered with Orange Barrel Media on Look At Them Look At Us: a permanent, site-specific public art installation in downtown Atlanta. Gaignard received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and her MFA from Yale University.

Selected Press


Contact

Sales + Loan Inquiries
info@vielmetter.com ︎︎︎

Press
jessie@jcpr-c.com ︎︎︎

Studio
GGaignardstudio@gmail.com ︎︎︎