“I’m trying to show that blackness comes in many different shades.”

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2018-08-04 01:31Z by Steven

“I’m trying to show that blackness comes in many different shades,” [Genevieve] Gaignard explained to artnet News during a tour of her current exhibition, “Genevieve Gaignard: Counterfeit Currency,” her first in New York, at the FLAG Art Foundation.

Sarah Cascone, “‘There’s Enough Damsels in Distress’: Artist Genevieve Gaignard Wants to Undermine Your Assumptions About Beauty and Blackness,” artnet News, August 3, 2018. https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/genevieve-gaignard-counterfeit-currency-1327343.

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‘There’s Enough Damsels in Distress’: Artist Genevieve Gaignard Wants to Undermine Your Assumptions About Beauty and Blackness

Posted in Articles, Arts, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States on 2018-08-04 01:17Z by Steven

‘There’s Enough Damsels in Distress’: Artist Genevieve Gaignard Wants to Undermine Your Assumptions About Beauty and Blackness

artnet News
2018-08-03

Sarah Cascone, Associate Editor

Genevieve Gaignard, You’ve Wronged, Now Make it Right (2018). Photo courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles/the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; ©Genevieve Gaignard.
Genevieve Gaignard, You’ve Wronged, Now Make it Right (2018). Photo courtesy of Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles/the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; ©Genevieve Gaignard.

In her first New York show, the artist creates unexpected characters that defy stereotypes.

Genevieve Gaignard’s work is deceptive—and that’s no accident. Her pleasingly arranged collages, heavily knick-knacked installations of cozy-looking domestic interiors, and well-lit, cheerfully colorful portrait photography draw the viewer in, belying her willingness to confront the sensitive issues of race, stereotypes, beauty standards, consumption, and identity.

Each photograph features Gaignard herself, transformed by wigs and costumes into a variety of characters. The artist is a fair-skinned mixed-race woman of color who can take on vastly disparate identities, casting herself one moment as a prim blonde housewife and the next as a young woman with hoop earrings and a shirt that reads “Hoodrat Thangs.”

“I’m trying to show that blackness comes in many different shades,” Gaignard explained to artnet News during a tour of her current exhibition, “Genevieve Gaignard: Counterfeit Currency,” her first in New York, at the FLAG Art Foundation

Read the entire article here.

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