Please join us for a special exhibition walkthrough with the artist.

Navigating the intersections of race, gender, age, and religion, The Powder Room builds upon Gaignard’s practice of character-driven self-portraiture in photography as she introduces a new cast of women, each played by her.

Continuing the concepts embedded in her recent solo exhibition, Smell the Roses at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, Gaignard’s new body of work employs exaggeration and camp to explore social constructions that relate to her identity as a biracial woman. The Powder Room alludes to a confessional space where the artist is alone with her own image, a place to compose the self and reflect on its performance. Through this lens, Gaignard—the performer and the person—challenges notions of beauty as a tool in the construction and presentation of self.