Further exploring her collage practice, Gaignard’s new works bring together a variety of vintage imagery against a backdrop of vintage wallpaper. Rather than having a singular didactic purpose, Gaignard’s collages weave a web of associations pertaining to race, gender, Americana, systems of power, signifiers of culture, and nostalgia. With no easy answers or single “punchline,” Gaignard’s collages encourage the viewer to bring their own associations to table, while considering the innumerable connections between her chosen symbols.

Any Way You Slice It focuses chiefly on glamorous Black women taken from vintage Virginia Slims (cigarette) advertisements, plucked from the pages of magazines such as Ebony and Jet, periodicals specifically targeted for Black audiences. Gaignard commented that the cigarettes serve as an object metaphor for systems of control—a silent killer, imposing control through addiction, the cigarettes are like a parallel for white supremacy or colonialism casting a shadow over seemingly liberated Black spaces. While the models are glamorous and styled with Black audiences in mind, the existence of the ads in the mid-20th century is ultimately a cynical appeal by discriminatory tobacco corporations to seize Black audiences, rather than any kind of sincere commitment to celebrating Blackness or representing diversity.

"I insert myself into the work by mining my experiences, implementing soft color palettes, humor and domesticity. My goal is to create environments and experiences that awaken critical thinking and offer a shift in perspective. Activating spaces with haunting nostalgia for America's past-as-present, I beckon viewers to dig into the imperfect relationship between our inner worlds, public lives, and modern events.

Each of the mediums I work with is a conduit for introspection. My photographs are staged self-portraits presenting a spectrum of invented yet recognizable "selves," which undermine social hierarchies and beauty standards. Vintage wallpaper is a motif throughout my collage, sculpture, and installation work. This material, a childhood sentiment, serves as an accent or backdrop to the found objects and images I use to assemble my work. In collages, I embrace xerography, a meditation of sifting through historical news media, magazines, and portraiture. Through sculpture and installation, I showcase antique furniture, decor and figurines reimagined into unexplored psychological spaces. Installation is my channel to create imagined domestic environments as sites of sanctuary and resistance. In doing so, I expand on the vernacular of found objects and settings found in my photography and collages. Sculpture allows me to reanimate the personifications of society's deference to Whiteness into symbols of objection. The scope of my work is an ensemble of visual renderings that affirms Black livelihood and provokes reflection on the often hostile realities of the outside world." - Gaignard