about a moment – in a moment

“Connection is my main goal as an artist. I want you to enter the work, take a seat, and call it home. The work is not my personal story, so it allows a bridge to form where one can project and/or become the muse. I believe that this is why art is so important for society. It connects us emotionally, socially and physically to one another.“ -Danielle Joy Mckinney

Danielle Mckinneys works are so deeply personal that they encompass all feelings. Through her art, she contributes to the development of an individual’s emotional, cognitive, and social skills—a kind of calibration and maintenance of our empathetic abilities. We become better at life. Everything around us that we call society, culture, or context. We simply become better at understanding differences and what divides us because, through Danielle’s works, we are struck and overwhelmed by a single emotion that unites us.

Danielle Mckinneys works can be seen as a narrative of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social and cultural heritage—everything that shapes the modern human’s identity and potential. The works reveal it all bare, honestly and equal. They don’t dissolve into grand scenes overflown with symbols—she limits herself to one tale about a single person in a moment. She paints an atmosphere that settles as a feeling in everyone that looks at the woman in the painting. I recognize that moment. She paints exactly how I felt. How I am—sometimes.

Danielle Mckinney reminds us what it means to be human, rooted in self-awareness and understanding. That is why she is the perfect artist to inaugurate Kunsthal n—a place meant to include, embrace and tell the story of “us humans”. The understanding of our diversity begins in a tiny moment.

Kunsthal n has borrowed 28 works, each depicting a woman who defies the stereotypical portrayals in art history. Here is a Black woman, who has her own space, her own inner life, and her own freedom. It is precisely in the woman’s most intimate moment that we can recognize her. It’s not about who or where, but about the connection to a moment.

Danielle Mckinney (b. 1981, Montgomery, Alabama) lives and works in Jersey City, New York, USA. The exhibition about a moment – in a moment presents works in oil and acrylic from 2021-2023 and is the artists largest solo-exhibition to date in Northen Europe.

Exhibition Documentation: David Stjernholm