{"id":51128,"date":"2017-01-10T02:24:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T02:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=51128"},"modified":"2017-01-10T02:25:11","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T02:25:11","slug":"an-artist-reinvents-herself-to-mine-the-fictions-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=51128","title":{"rendered":"An Artist Reinvents Herself to Mine the Fictions of America"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Artist Reinvents Herself to Mine the Fictions of America<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Hyperallergic<\/a>
\n2017-01-09<\/p>\n

Alicia Eler<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Genevieve Gaignard<\/a> makes the personal political while also creating new American mythologies.<\/em><\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES<\/a> \u2014 In the lead-up to a Trump<\/a> presidency, the worst possible outcome for an America that has come so far in the past 100 years in terms of social progress and civil rights, it\u2019s not insane to think that conservatives could take us back to a pre\u2013Roe v. Wade<\/em><\/a> era, to a time when all race-based hate crimes were labeled as basically normal. Not to mention that the environment and the economy will go to hell. This is not our country, and this is not the new normal \u2014 this is a time for refusal<\/a>, a time to resist\u00a0rather than to\u00a0hallucinate into some sort of feeble complacency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The election was certainly on my mind when I saw LA<\/a> artist Genevieve Gaignard\u2019s<\/a> exhibition Smell the Roses<\/em><\/a> at the California African American Museum<\/a>. The characterizations that she creates in her work mine the intersections of race, class, and gender, portraying some of the vulnerable Americans who will be most affected by the next four years (or fewer, if Trump gets impeached<\/a>\u00a0like Michael Moore<\/a> is predicting!).<\/p>\n

This is Gaignard\u2019s\u00a0first solo museum show, which follows her solo exhibition Us Only<\/em><\/a>\u00a0last year at Shulamit Nazarin Gallery<\/a> in Venice, California<\/a>. Here, Gaignard continues her exploration of the space between performance and the reality of race, class, and gender through different personas or avatars, domestic spaces, and collections of Americana kitsch and knickknacks, toeing the line between high and low culture, between fiction and personal history. As the fair-skinned daughter of a black father and a white mother, her work speaks to being mixed race, discussing issues of\u00a0visibility and invisibility. She mixes highbrow and lowbrow aesthetics \u2014 a major influence is John Waters<\/a>, who similarly indulges in camp and kitsch. Gaignard\u2019s arrangements of\u00a0objects ranging from books and records to family photographs mix the familial and the political in a way that\u2019s reminiscent of Rashid Johnson\u2019s<\/a> post-minimalist, cold domestic \u201cshelves.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The difference is that in Gaignard\u2019s work, every object emanates warmth. It\u2019s fitting that her exhibition\u00a0deals heavily with the emotional experience of loss on both a personal and political level…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Artist Reinvents Herself to Mine the Fictions of America Hyperallergic 2017-01-09 Alicia Eler Genevieve Gaignard makes the personal political while also creating new American mythologies. LOS ANGELES \u2014 In the lead-up to a Trump presidency, the worst possible outcome for an America that has come so far in the past 100 years in terms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,125,8,20,25],"tags":[25956,455,22811,16281,787],"class_list":["post-51128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-alicia-eler","tag-california","tag-genevieve-gaignard","tag-hyperallergic","tag-los-angeles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51132,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51128\/revisions\/51132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}