Are you watching?

Gisela McDaniel redresses portraiture traditions with luminous paintings that foreground overlooked voices and provide sites for collective healing.

Are you watching?, a self portrait, layers an archival pigment print with 4 silkscreen layers and raised varnish details. Drawing on techniques and materials used throughout the artist’s practice, each print will be embellished by hand with shells, beads and neon pink acrylic paint.

“When I’m doing self portraiture, it’s a moment to check in with myself. Sometimes I’m also able to talk about things that I wouldn’t with somebody else’s painting – I have a little more leeway to tell my own story.”

Similarly to the artist’s original canvases, each print is accompanied by an audio work – in this case accessed via a QR code printed on the accompanying certificate of authenticity.

Inner Visions
McDaniel’s prints will be released alongside hand-finished editions by Khari Turner and Patrick Quarm in the third instalment of curator Larry Ossei-Mensah’s series, Inner Visions.

“For this launch, I was drawn to artists that push past a painting being ‘just a picture.’ The use of audio in Gisela’s work makes it impossible to overlook the depth and nuance of her sitters’ stories. Her edition is a self portrait, so in this case the story is her own.” - Larry Ossei-Mensah