Overview
Pilar Corrias is delighted to present new paintings by Gisela McDaniel at booth 410 at The Armory Show 2023. Gisela McDaniel (b. 1995, Bellevue, Nebraska) is a diasporic, Indigenous CHamoru artist who explores the effects of displacement and colonisation through portraiture and oral histories. Working primarily with BIPOC women and non-binary people, her work disrupts the systemic silencing of marginalised subjects in fine art, politics and popular culture.
Since her relocation from Detroit last year, McDaniel has brought her distinct method to New York, collaborating with the city’s residents, many of whom share multicultural histories of migration. The artist’s presentation at The Armory builds
upon her ongoing commitment to expanding the discipline of painting into a form of social practice, producing portraits that preserve a subject’s cultural history and personal agency.
McDaniel interweaves audio interviews, assemblage and oil painting in order to subvert the traditional power relations of artist and sitter. By incorporating her sitters’ voices and giving them control over their representation – when, historically, such marginalised groups have been exoticised or depicted as anonymous, solemn, and without biography – McDaniel critiques art historical traditions that privilege the artist’s perspective.
The new series sees McDaniel placing several of her subjects in front of a background evocative of Guam’s sacred jungles, producing an environment that serves as a protective shroud from the harsh ‘urban jungle’ of New York City. Precious objects gifted to the artist by her collaborators are embedded into their portraits – an exchange the artist describes as a ‘consensual artefact’ that challenges historical museological practices of pillage, extraction and cultural appropriation. Such items include wedding flowers, wisdom teeth, and items of jewellery: objects that hold intimate memories known only to the subject.
Invoking the power of indigenous traditions of oral storytelling, the artist begins her multistage process by asking her subjects questions such as ‘What special wisdom was passed onto you outside of school?’ and ‘What does a safe world look like?’. Several of the female and queer sitters seen in this series recounted experiences of being disbelieved in medical spaces, a reminder that a sense of safety and bodily autonomy are privileges many do not regularly experience. Exhibiting the audio elements alongside the canvases, McDaniel’s subjects are able to speak for themselves, whichever room they go into.
