Senalka McDonald

b. 1983

Biography
Artist Statement

A visual artist of Panamanian descent, Senalka McDonald received her M.F.A. from California College of the Arts in 2012, along with a B.F.A. and a B.A. in cultural geography from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006. McDonald is the recipient of various awards, including Graduate Merit and Diversity Fellowships, the Eliza Prize Grant, and the Murphy Cadogan Fellowship. She has participated in residencies including The Core Program (Houston) 2012-2014, the Austin Project (Austin) in 2009 and 2008, as well as ROOTED (Austin) in 2007. Recent exhibitions include Young Latina Artist 19: Y, Qué? (Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin), in my hair: a group show (Medialia Gallery, New York), Selfless (Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art, San Francisco), John Baldessari: Class Assignments (Optional) (Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco), and Queer State(s) (Visual Arts Center - UT Austin, Austin). McDonald is currently based in San Francisco, California.

Senalka McDonald is a self-identified geographer-slash-artist investigating themes of social transgression, identity play, and imagined spaces. Using performative gestures and utterances, she examines the perceived role of an-other, focusing on the very real trauma of being taught one’s “place.” That “place,” embodied physically, lives internally, practically in our subconscious, at the edge of social breakdown.

Simultaneously comic and tragic, the work engages two spheres of reality: the outer, where you look at her, and the inner, where she looks at herself. In this liminal space, fantasies, half-truths, and lies are one and the same, exposing a game of identity play that is filled with unsure substitutions and willing stagnation. The work divulges the resulting transgressive games, ultimately, moving us closer to the source of implied truth with the final mark of the happening in any of the following: video, photography, textiles, drawing, and/or live performance.