March 5 — Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara to present ‘Bloom Projects: Genevieve Gaignard, Outside Looking In’

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of artist Genevieve Gaignard, entitled Outside Looking In, on view in MCASB’s Main Space from
March 5 – May 31, 2020.

Genevieve Gaignard is a mixed media artist whose work addresses stereotypes of race, class, gender, and beauty through self-portraiture, installation, sculpture, and collage. Gaignard, born to a black father and a white mother in a small and predominantly white town, was faced with imposing feelings of not knowing how she fit in, or where she belonged. Gaignard reflects her experience and identity utilizing persona, popular culture, historical imagery, selfie culture, and humor to portray contrasting and blended realities. Outside Looking In brings together several bodies of work that confront antiquated ideas pertaining to intersections where blackness, whiteness, femininity, and class collide and examine the complexities of self-presentation.

This exhibition is curated by Alexandra Terry, Associate Curator, MCASB.

About the Artist
Genevieve Gaignard (b. 1981, Orange, Massachusetts, USA) is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work focuses on installation, sculpture, and photographic self-portraiture to explore race, femininity, and class. As a biracial woman in America, Gaignard investigates the aesthetic and cultural divide between black and white, a chasm as palpable as it is “invisible.” She interrogates notions of “passing” by positioning her own female body as the chief site of exploration – challenging viewers to navigate the powers and anxieties of intersectional identity. More >>>