Rising art star, Genevieve Gaignard, comes to the Art Gallery at Black Studies’ (AGBS) Christian-Green Gallery on January 31st, 2019, at the University of Texas at Austin. Gaignard’s AGBS exhibition, In Passing, features her self-portraits and lively installations of domestic interiors. Influenced by the aesthetics of pop and drag culture, and her own mixed-race identity, the artist photographs herself performing an array of characters that question stereotypical notions of identity. From a blonde housewife to a “ghetto girl” holding McDonald’s fast-food, Gaignard’s personas highlight society’s often layered understanding of race, class, and gender in contemporary culture. Gaignard’s work unveils how social identity is often understood through clothing and environment, asking audiences to investigate the judgments that we make about others, in passing. Guest-curator Ashlyn Davis, Executive Director and Curator of the Houston Center for Photography, says, “My hope is that Genevieve's fun, colorful aesthetic grabs viewers in an unexpected way and allows them to have a deeper internal dialog…about identity and the limiting categories that we often create around it.”