GISELA MCDANIEL + MARTHA MYSKO

Self Portraits In: Self portraiture in surrounding, in landscape, in DNA, in objects, in material, in eyes, in stories, in images, in the present, in the past, in plastic, in the familiar, 2021
Mixed media installation

Gisela McDaniel: Americans in the Midwest clink beer bottles at fake “luas” decorated with garish, shiny green or plastic palm fronds while kids sip “pop” through straws out of plastic coconuts.

ENGINEER-turned-BATHING SUIT designer debuts a tiny two-piece after nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. L. Réard dubbed his creation “the Bikini” four days after the mushroom cloud left the atoll uninhabitable. Boogaloo Boys wearing “Hawaiian Shirts” and White Nationalists carrying “Tiki torches” in Charlottesville chant: “Jews Will Not Replace Us” and “Blood and Soil”. …who feels out of place & questions my identity, authenticity as a CHamoru? A Rust Belt Palm Tree on a deserted Island, scrap metal from an old van door… made in Detroit. Made in America? #PrutehiLiteykan

Martha Mysko: An exploration of self-portraiture and the complexities of value through cultural debris and ubiquitous materials and objects I have inhabited, worn, felt, consumed, desired, held, or known. Fragments of the familiar and the personal become abstracted through painterly action and digital manipulation, acting as a record of my physical presence, actions, and gestures. This work takes the form of an assemblage box that functions as a fractured personal mirror through representations of my body and self via images, clothing, objects, copies, domestic materials, and sculptural casts.