Gisela McDaniel
What She Saw/Where She Went
2019
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Gisela McDaniel
What She Saw/Where She Went
2019
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas with found objects, flowers, photograph, resin, and recorded sound, 45 × 45 × 5 in. (114.3 × 114.3 × 12.7 cm.)
Credit Line
Purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Object Number
2021.162
What She Saw/Where She Went unfolds a polyphonic story of three generations of Navajo women: a grandmother, a daughter, and a granddaughter. The work is collaged with found objects, including a photograph of Grandmother, beaded jewelry, and resin-dipped dried lilies symbolizing life’s cycles. Listen closely to the accompanying audio, where you can hear Grandmother speak of her life, which began on a Navajo reservation, before she was recruited by Catholic missionaries to attend secretarial school in Cleveland. As an Elder living with dementia, Grandmother interacted with Daughter and Granddaughter to help reconstruct her journey and experiences from the Reservation to Cleveland.
All three women’s narratives are interwoven and reveal continuities and distinct challenges as Indigenous women of different generations. Simulated textures of velvet, plant fronds, and woodgrain offset the trio, compelling us to contemplate their expressions, faces, ages, and postures and gestures communicating kinship and connection.
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