Throughout her career, Danielle Mckinney has made space for herself. That is, of course, if you think her works are self-portraits or something of an autobiographical body of work. I don’t even know if that is important. The space is right there in front of you. This character has made her room, she is listening to her music, sitting on her bed, her sofa, she is in her nightwear, smoking her cigarette. It is cinema, but not a blockbuster. It's a subtle narrative with major implications: A woman and her space.
For the past half-decade, Mckinney has been crafting, refining, re-examining this space through multiple series of small-scale oil on linen works. Many of the works appear as if we are voyeurs in the most intimate and private moments in this woman’ day. You can almost hear the soundtrack come off the linen. You can smell the smoke. There is an ease but also some sort of distant turmoil in the works. This room is an escape.
A few years ago, I had Mckinney on my podcast. I remember having this thought in our conversation: Whether it was a fantasy or a dream, Mckinney's work is a powerful reminder that the art of protest can come in unexpected ways, that sound can reverberate from the quietest of moments and just how much rest and the act of being seen resonates so deeply.
In her new show, Forest for the Trees, on view at Boesky Gallery in New York and coinciding with Mckinney’s museum show, Shelter, on view at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach through October 4, 2026, there is an uncertainty to the work, but also an openness.
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