Racial Impersonation: Cindy Sherman, Genevieve Gaignard, and the BlackFishing Phenomenon

Racial impersonation is highly controversial within the field of contemporary performance photography. The accomplished artist Cindy Sherman depicted herself as five Black individuals in her 1976 Bus Riders​ work. Genevieve Gaignard is a bi-racial contemporary artist who utilizes a practice similar to Sherman’s to negotiate her own position as a white-passing Black woman. Emma Hallberg is a white Instagram influencer and model who was accused of dressing in Blackface when she darkened her skin and styled her clothing to appear mixed-race. This paper addresses what these performances reveal about the historical and political moments in which they occur. With an emphasis on the modes of operation, this text assesses how these performances manipulate signs such as clothing, stylization, behavior, actions, and aesthetic to negotiate their temporary identity. Gaignard’s performances prove that racial impersonation can spark positive, informative discourse around the complexities of race whereas Sherman and Hallberg’s impersonations perpetuate the Blackface minstrelsy’s circulation of Black bodies and caricatures as a form of commerce.