GISELA MCDANIEL

McDaniel (b. Bellevue, Nebraska, 1995) is a diasporic, indigenous CHamoru artist. Her work draws on healing from her own sexual trauma and the healing of womxn and non-binary people who have survived sexual trauma and violence. For each portrait, McDaniel collaborates closely with her subjects, incorporating audio elements and personal objects connected to them. Through her portraits, McDaniel documents and pays tribute to her subjects’ strength and resilience, while also serving to amplify the realities of marginalised individuals and to enable both individual and collective healing.

Working primarily with womxn and non-binary people who identify as Black, Micronesian, Indigenous to Turtle Island, Asian, Latinx/e, and/or mixed-race, who statistically experience much higher rates of violence and murder, McDaniel disrupts and responds to historical and contemporary patterns of silencing in visual art and popular culture. Politically charged, her work often reflects on the destructive impact of colonisation, both historical and present, seen through the prism of her own Indigenous heritage.

For this new body of work, McDaniel has made portraits of CHamoru Famaloa’an (women) and non-binary people from US territories in the Pacific, including Guam and American Samoa. Each portrait is accompanied by a recorded interview with the painting’s subjects, which were conducted throughout 2021. The use of immersive audio elements requires viewers to engage each subjects’ definition of themselves, the historicity of their experiences, and thus the agency they wield over and in conversation with their portraits.

McDaniel’s work takes on sculptural properties through the addition of personal items belonging to her subjects, as well as donated or found objects. The artist adorns her paintings with these objects, which can include pieces of clothing and recycled or broken jewellery, imbuing them with new life and creating an additional layer between the subject and the viewer.