Mixed Race Studies

Genevieve Gaignard tackles race, class and identity at the California African American Museum

The Los Angeles Times
2016-11-17

Deborah Vankin, Contact Reporter

Genevieve Gaignard’s identity-bending “Extra Value (After Venus)” (2016). (Genevieve Gaignard / Shulamit Nazarian)

Growing up in the working-class mill town of Orange, Mass., Genevieve Gaignard wrestled with her identity. She was the fair-skinned daughter of a black father and white mother. She was the proverbial middle child. She struggled with body issues. Often, she says, she felt misunderstood, if not invisible.

Now 35 and living in Los Angeles, Gaignard has a strong sense of herself and her place in the world as a multidisciplinary artist. In “Smell the Roses,” the artist’s first museum show in Los Angeles, Gaignard tackles the big issues of race, class and, especially, identity.

The exhibition at the California African American Museum includes photography, video and assemblage works, but the nine large photographs, all richly colored performative self-portraits, are standouts. Like the artist Carrie Mae Weems, Gaignard uses the medium to explore the contemporary African American experience; like Cindy Sherman, she dons wigs and heavy makeup to create female caricatures that humorously embody societal stereotypes. The women she portrays are both anonymous and familiar — individuals steeped in aesthetics from pop culture, drag queen hyper-femininity, the working class, ’70s chic à la Netflix’s “The Get Down,” TV news and street fashion, among other influences…

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When a master class with ballerina Misty Copeland becomes a San Pedro homecoming

The Los Angeles Times
2015-12-23

Deborah Vankin, Contact Reporter

Ascendant ballerina Misty Copeland leads a master class during Monday’s celebration in San Pedro. (Christina House/For The Times)

The crowd of about 200 huddled in the parking lot of San Pedro City Ballet, ensconced in fog and drizzle. Restless and excited, they might have been awaiting the arrival of a rock legend. Some rubbed their palms together to keep warm on the chilly Monday afternoon; others stretched their necks, peering down Pacific Avenue in anticipation. Neighbors crouched on the roof of a small bungalow next door to get a glimpse of the action.

When at last a gray SUV rolled up, smartphones and tablets shot into the air and the chanting began: “Misty, Misty, Misty.”

San Pedro’s ballet prodigy was home.

A populist ballerina if ever there was one, Misty Copeland has become a pioneering hero not just to dance hopefuls but to a generation of young women looking for inspiring, boundary-breaking athletic and artistic role models. Earlier this year, the American Ballet Theatre soloist was promoted to principal dancer; she is the New York company’s first African American woman to hold that title. And she was the first African American woman to dance the lead in an ABT “Swan Lake” production. It’s partly why Copeland landed on the cover of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” issue this spring…

Read the entire article here.