Cynthia Daignault investigates concepts of monument, memory, and the shifting experience of the natural world in a contemporary response to the genre of history painting. For Daignault, landscape is witness. Throughout her practice, she draws parallels between the environmental setting and the mechanical act of seeing. This investigation into optics acts as a metaphor for the polarities at the heart of American life and the reverberations of historical trauma.

History painting, for Daignault, is an act of poetry. In this, her approach recalls the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who engaged with political history through the creation of quiet, specific and powerful metaphors. Her paintings are often installed in series, a prominent example of which includes Light Atlas (2016), a collection of 360 paintings from the artist’s travels across the continental US. Daignault’s first exhibition at Kasmin, As I Lay Dying, opened at Kasmin in November 2021. The exhibition expanded upon themes from Light Atlas but at the specific site of Gettysburg, PA, as the artist asks us to walk with her in order to learn how, or from which vantage point, we might better understand the past. Daignault’s work was included in the New Museum Triennial in 2021.