Pilar Corrias is delighted to present new paintings by Gisela McDaniel at booth 410 at The Armory Show 2023. 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 excoticised or depicted as anonymous, solem, and without biography - McDaniel critiques art historical traditions that privelige the artist's perspective.
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.
Bigger than me, the largest piece in the series presents a subject-participant, doubled, set against greenery and a sunset from Guåhan, pieces of McDaniel that find their way into her paintings. The act of doubling recalls code-switching, which for people of color can be an important survival strategy. In Bigger than me, the subject-participant seems to express the same self in two ways, rather than a private and public persona. At left, she’s fully covered in a purple jumpsuit, at right, smiling subtly, she’s nude but for a blanket. She wears pleasers, or heels made for pole dancing, that reflect the light around her. The world that McDaniel creates in these paintings is vibrant yet calming, inviting sitters and subjects to express themselves fully.
Born for it, is a warm pink and lushly green portrait of an Indigenous Ecuadorian woman, regally draped in flowing fabrics around her waist. Dotted with palo santo and supporting a shell at the top left, Born for it, like its title, suggests the deep roots of connection to one’s Indigenous culture and homeland and the necessity of practicing one’s culture and living in accordance with its principles. The subject-participant’s earrings also speak to her heritage, wearing cascading feathers from Ecuador on her ears.
According to McDaniel, “The way we treat women and femme bodies is the way that we treat the earth.” McDaniel’s practice of painting and sound installation is a caring reaction to continued environmental degradation in the name of capitalism and violence against BIPOC femme and queer people. She meets the historical lack of care for people and the earth with loving depictions and the opportunity to share one’s story as well as one’s image.
— Marina Tyquiengco, Ellyn McColgan Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Born 1995 in Bellevue, Nebraska. Lives and works in New York.
Gisela McDaniel is a diasporic, Indigenous CHamoru artist who explores the effects of trauma, displacement and colonisation through portraiture and oral histories. Interweaving audio interviews, assemblage and oil painting, she intentionally incorporates the portrait sitters' voices in order to subvert the traditional power relations of artist and sitter. Working primarily with women and non-binary people who identify as Black, Micronesian, Indigenous to Turtle Island, Asian, Latinx, and/or mixed-race, her work disrupts and responds to the systemic silencing of subjects in fine art, politics and popular culture.
Works in Public Collections:
Aïshti Foundation, Beirut Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD Blenheim Art Foundation, Woodstock Christen Sveaas Art Collection, Oslo Elie Khouri Art Foundation, Dubai Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL Kadist, San Francisco, CA Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles, CA Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka The Mer Collection, Madrid The Perimeter, London University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), MI.
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