After a family death, Genevieve Gaignard escapes with a colourful cast of alter egos
Just as Genevieve Gaignard was being hailed the toast of New York's Spring/Break Art Show last March for her immersive (and impressive) photographic installations, the artist received the tragic news that her eight-year-old niece had died in a house fire back in her hometown of Orange, Massachusetts.
'This has been a way for me to process that,' says Gaignard as she walks me through 'Smell The Roses', perhaps her hardest-hitting installation to date, freshly opened at the California African American Museum. Upon entering the space, visitors are immediately met with two houses. To the right, a shotgun house (graffiti-tagged 'Katrina X') harks back to the New Orleans home where her father was raised, featuring a kitchen/family room setting; on the left, a New England-style abode evokes her niece's bedroom, complete with a pink shag carpet and vinyl wallpapered bedroom/bathroom scene.
The public/private 'psychological spaces' are filled with vintage furniture, household and feminine hygiene products, images of black pop icons, and old family photographs depicting both sides of her bi-racial family, as well as collaged canvases wrapped with the vintage wallpapers that Gaignard treated with chemicals and foodstuffs. 'I wanted [the installation] to go beyond personal loss,' she says. 'I wanted it to reference loss on a larger scale.'
That scale is fraught with the residuals of Hurricane Katrina – the devastating aftermath still resonates with her family to this day, as does the recent escalation of police shootings against African-American communities across America. The latter is being addressed in a back-room 'garden' installation where Gaignard is screening a video of her singing Diana Ross' Missing You, spliced with radio traffic from the police killings. This sits opposite a wallpaper collage with cut-outs of roses covering a discarded shooting target (sourced from a local gun range in downtown LA) – the black paper figure's chest has been ripped open with bullet holes.
'I've been hanging on to [Ross'] song for a while before my niece passed and before the shootings. I was driving around LA one day and just kept playing it. I knew it was going to get worked into something,' says Gaignard, who shot the video in a gold-sequinned dress and a black wig on the basement stage of Echo Park's Machine Project. The flowers are meant to serve as metaphors for the division within the American public, she says. 'Some roses are getting watered and some aren't.'
The space between the environments is where Gaignard has installed new self-portraits in which she plays any number of her characters. These camp, stereotypes-on-steroids alter-egos were all shot in natural light at various outdoor locations around Los Angeles, New Orleans and Massachusetts. The exteriority of her selfies, especially at CAAM, amplify the interiority of her psychological installations.
To wit, the 'nerd' in this show wears a purple sweater and pants (while eating cheeseballs from an oversized plastic tub) to match a similarly lilac-hued house near where she grew up in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, the 'hick' portraits feature her sitting atop the hood of a friend's beat-up car, parked beside the Salvation Army where she bought most of her outfits, or leaning against an ice chest outside of a convenient store with a pack of Newports tucked under her bra strap and a bag of Funyuns in her hands. 'A lot the characters are eating,' says the artist. 'And I think of food as this thing people use when they're mourning.'
Two of the most enticing new characters were both shot near her Jefferson Park studio in LA. One is a red-haired (a nod to the artist's Instagram handle, @creativecurvyginger) disco diva brandishing bikini tan lines. The other, a vampy vixen donning acid-wash jeans, unbuttoned to reveal a red-and-white-striped bathing suit.
'We have this notion of what the ideal is – maybe [it's being] skinny or [having] lots of money,' says Gaignard, who works with what she has to appear in this mindset. While the exhibition's preview was competing against the highly-anticipated third presidential debate, the artist was confident that what she was offering some kind of relief from election anxiety.
'I feel like people will get more from this experience than [the debate] – this will be addressing real issues when that doesn't,' she adds. Judging from the heaving crowds at the opening, she wasn't alone in that opinion.
INFORMATION
’Smell the Roses’ is on view until 19 February 2017. For more information, visit the California African American Museum website
ADDRESS
California African American Museum
600 State Dr
Los Angeles CA 90037
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox
-
Inside The Met’s magical ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ exhibition
On the evening of the Met Gala 2024, Wallpaper* takes a tour of The Met’s latest Costume Institute exhibition, ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’, a multi-sensory journey of sight, smell and touch
By Tilly Macalister-Smith Published
-
Olympic Torch Relay Cauldron by Mathieu Lehanneur: 'the object which unites our energies'
Mathieu Lehanneur unveiled his design for the Olympic Torch Relay Cauldron for Paris 2024 as the Torch Relay prepares to make its debut in Marseille on 8 May
By Rosa Bertoli Published
-
Alternate worlds and end of days: Pierre Huyghe in Venice
Pierre Huyghe delves into dystopia with 'Liminal', at Palazzo Grassi’s Punta della Dogana in Venice
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Calling NYC grads! Sarabande Foundation invites you to an industry masterclass to pave way into the creative world
‘What Now?’ by Sarabande Foundation is a post-college guide to support graduates in making their next steps, with advice from the likes of Burberry, Thom Browne, and more
By Tianna Williams Published
-
An avant-garde Korean art movement resurfaces in LA
LA's Hammer Museum gets its teeth into avant-garde Korean art with ‘Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s’
By Anne Soward Published
-
The New York art exhibitions to see now
From MoMA to the smaller spaces, here are the best New York art exhibitions to catch in May 2024
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Surreal, uncanny, seductive: step into Graham Little’s world
Scottish artist Graham Little presents his first US retrospective at The FLAG Art Foundation in New York
By Hannah Silver Published
-
The cosmos meets art history in Vivian Greven’s New York exhibition
Vivian Greven’s ‘When the Sun Hits the Moon’, at Perrotin in New York City, is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the USA
By Emily McDermott Published
-
The Met’s ‘The Real Thing: Unpacking Product Photography’ dissects the avant-garde in early advertising
A new exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York explores the role of product photography and advertising in shaping the visual language of modernism
By Zoe Whitfield Published
-
Detroit Institute of Arts celebrates Black cinema
‘Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971’ at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) brings lost or forgotten films, filmmakers and performers to a contemporary audience
By Anne Soward Published
-
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s LA-made work goes on show at Gagosian
‘Made on Market Street’ at Gagosian in Beverly Hills is the first show to present works made by the young artist between 1982 and 1984
By Hunter Drohojowska-Philp Published