Artist Talk — Genevieve Gaignard — Hidden Fences — Mona Bismarck American Center — Meeting — Slash Paris

Past: Wednesday, March 14, 2018 7 PM → 9 PM

Genevieve Gaignard — Galerie Praz-Delavallade La galerie Praz-Delavallade nous propose, du 17 mars au 28 avril, une plongée dans une Amérique profonde avec pour guide Genevieve ... 2 - Bien Critique

WITH AMI BARAK, INDEPENDENT CURATOR AND ART CRITIC

Doors open at 6 P.M.

The Mona Bismarck American Center in partnership with the gallery Praz Delavallade will host an exceptional artist talk with Genevieve Gaignard. She will be in conversation with Ami Barak, independent curator and art critic based in Paris.

Born and raised in a Massachusetts mill town to a white mother and black father, Gaignard grew up between two cultures. While enrolled at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, she experimented with photography and collage, investigating racial dynamics through composed environments and fabricated characters. Following her graduation from Massachusetts College of Art in 2007, she was accepted to the prestigious Master of Fine Arts program at Yale University. Over the next two years Gaignard continued to explore notions of identity through parafictional photographic self portraiture, video, sculptural elements and installations.

Influenced by the soulful sounds of Billy Stewart (a singer and pianist from North Carolina who was prominent in the 60s), the kitschy aesthetic of John Waters and the provocative artifice of drag culture, Gaignard uses low-brow pop sensibilities to craft dynamic visual narratives. She blends humor, persona and popular culture to reveal the ways in which the mixing contrasting realities can feel much like displacement. Gaignard positions her own female body as the chief site of exploration — challenging viewers to navigate the powers and anxieties of intersectional identity. Gaignard mines social media culture for cues to stage her photographs, transforming herself as various archetypes of women. Her work is often displayed in equally camp installations; environments laden with objects and signifiers that express an intimate portrayal of race and gender.

“Art is a powerful tool for social change” confirms Gaignard, having said that she wishes we didn’t have to rely on things like art to understand that black lives matter. However this is not the reality that we live in, she says, “I hope to create a visual language that is both accessible and unforgiving in articulating the importance of black identity. With my light skin comes privilege and I am committed to not getting complacent with that privilege”.

Ami Barak was the director of the “Frac (regional collection of contemporary art) Languedoc-Roussillon” and of the “International Association of Contemporary Art Curators — IKT”. He was also the former Head of the Visual Art Department at the City Council of Paris (2003-2008). During this function, he was the artistic director and coordinator of the 2003 and 2004 editions of the Nuit Blanche — the “Sleepless Night”, a contemporary art festival in Paris. He also initiated the public commissioning program Art for the Tram. Over the past twenty years, he has curated numerous international exhibitions. His most recent major curatorial project was Art for the World [the Expo]: the City of Forking Paths, the Sculpture Project of the Expo Boulevard at the World Expo Shanghai 2010 featuring twenty monumental sculptures of Chinese and International artists. He is currently a lecturer at the Paris Sorbonne I University, an art advisor and a permanent collaborator for the magazine IDEA arts+society.

The event will launch Genevieve Gaignard’s first exhibition in Paris at the gallery Praz Delavallade, Hidden fences from March 17th to April 28th 2018.

Inscription obligatoire : rsvp@monabismarck.org — The talk will be in English with no translation.