Holier Than Thou

Genevieve Gaignard brazenly remixes kitsch aesthetics in her evocative self-portraits. Transforming herself into 1960s housewives, selfie-taking Instagrammers, and self-identified hoodrats, her work explores the boundaries between black and white identities. Gaignard’s cast of characters—many styled to appear as though they belong on a John Waters movie set—become multiple lenses through which she can articulate and complicate her own personal background as a biracial woman who often passes for white. In Holier Than Thou, Gaignard humorously adopts religious imagery to send up the assumed whiteness of Christian icons and the “very strange” (in her words) optics of black worshippers praying to a white god. The link between race and religion is signaled by the bottles of “White Rain” bath products in the foreground, while the use of a photographer’s light reflector as a halo—which makes Gaignard look like an Art Nouveau goddess—refers us back to the artist’s chosen medium and the role it has played, and continues to play, in the construction of identity.