“Unpacking My Identity”: Genevieve Gaignard on Race in America and the Impossibility of Home

In this episode Caroline Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Genevieve Gaignard, a Los Angeles-based artist whose mixed-media practice explores the intersections of race, class, and femininity within the United States. While thinking through the notion of home as an impossible or privileged construct, Genevieve reflects on her experience moving back to rural Massachusetts for a residency at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and how her practice fits within the predominately white demographic of the Berkshires compared to her diverse creative community in LA. Genevieve discusses her 2020 exhibition A Long Way From Home and contemplates the ways in which her collages and photographic self-portraits grapple with racial and class stereotypes, particularly in the polarized contemporary political landscape.