Genevieve Gaignard (b.1981) is a multidisciplinary artist who uses self-portraiture, collage, sculpture and installation to elicit dialogue around the intricacies of race, beauty and cultural identity. Referencing regional and historical events as well as a personal archive as a biracial woman, Gaignard creates environments and performances that teeter between symbolic and autobiographical realms. She cleverly interrogates notions of skin privilege while challenging viewers to look more closely at racial realities. In recent work, Gaignard renders unsettling and violent stories, imagery, and trends of American culture into provocative objects of various mediums, including sound. The ensemble of her work shatters viewers' perceptions of culture and race, compelling them to piece together novel ways of perceiving the world and their place in it.
Since 2019, Gaignard has debuted six solo exhibitions and participated in numerous countrywide group shows. Her most recent solo exhibition, "Strange Fruit," opened with Vielmetter Los Angeles in March 2022 and marks her most ambitious body of work to date, both in scale and subject matter. Gaignard's work has appeared at: The Broad, CA; Stephen Friedman Gallery, UK; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX; The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; The Getty Center, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, MA; and Prospect.4, LA. Gaignard received her BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and her MFA in Photography from Yale University. She splits her time between her hometown of Orange, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles.
