Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to announce Genevieve Gaignard: "Us Only," the artist's second solo show in Los Angeles and her first exhibition with the gallery. Gaignard, a 2014 graduate of Yale University School of Art with an MFA in Photography, creates site-specific installations dominated by the photographic medium to evoke a nostalgia of place and identity that recall specific geographies and histories. In this new body of work, Gaignard uses video, collage, photography and ready-made objects to build upon her practice of character based self-portraiture and explore the complexities of race and gender.

For "Us Only," the artist has created three new characters that stand in for exaggerated fragments of herself. Photographed and pictured in exterior, public settings, the three characters have interior "rooms" within the gallery, in which Gaignard reveals the private domestic space and mental interiority of the personas. Splayed out and detailed for the audience, the viewer assesses and judges the complex characters. This process is parallel to Gaignard's own sense of self, wherein she navigates life through the eyes of others-in particular as it relates to her blackness. With its investigation of racial dynamics and preconceptions, the work is in part a physical reimagining of works such as Self-Portrait Exaggerating my Negroid Features (1981) by Adrian Piper and touches upon issues brought up in Piper's 1992 essay "Passing for White, Passing for Black."

Central to the installation is a water fountain, a reference to Jim Crow-era segregationist policies. But, as the title suggests, the fountain is for "Us Only."