Genevieve Gaignard

Genevieve Gaignard (b. 1981) is a multidisciplinary artist who divides her time between Massachusetts, the Bronx, and Los Angeles. Her practice investigates personal histories, popular culture, and racial dynamics through the lens of lived experience, examining the complexities of American identity from her perspective as a biracial woman. Gaignard’s work is rooted in self-insertion and performance, using soft color palettes, humor, and domestic imagery to construct environments that invite critical reflection. Her compositions often evoke a haunting nostalgia, positioning America’s past as an ever-present force. Through these layered visual narratives, she probes the tensions between private identity, public life, and contemporary social realities.

Working across photography, collage, sculpture, and installation, Gaignard treats each medium as a site of introspection. Her staged photographic self-portraits present a range of invented yet familiar personas that challenge social hierarchies and conventional beauty standards. Vintage wallpaper—drawn from childhood memory—recurs throughout her practice as both surface and symbol, activating collages, sculptures, and installations composed of found objects and archival imagery. Through xerographic collage, she engages historical media as a process of excavation and reinterpretation. In sculpture and installation, antique furniture, décor, and figurines are reconfigured into psychologically charged spaces that transform domestic environments into sites of sanctuary and resistance. Across these forms, Gaignard reclaims and subverts visual languages historically tied to whiteness, repositioning them as tools of critique and affirmation. Her work prompts ongoing dialogue around class, race, and cultural identity.

In recent years, Gaignard presented the solo exhibition Thinking Out Loud at Vielmetter Los Angeles and curated the group exhibition Stop and Stare at UTA Artist Space in Atlanta. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS), Rennie Museum (Vancouver, BC), The Broad (Los Angeles, CA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), San José Museum of Art (San José, CA), Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX), The Getty Center (Los Angeles, CA), the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY) and The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (Durham, NC).