Chamorro artist Gisela McDaniel depicts Native American and mixed-race women from the USA’s former, as well as current, Pacific territories. In the process of making the works she interviews the sitters about their experiences, often of abuse, or the experience of life in these territories. What results is a critique of the continuing act of colonisation. The process of painting and talking is somewhat healing, allowing the women to be valued and heard. As an indigenous Pacific Islander herself McDaniel is interested in exploring connections between nature, displacement and violence against women, asserting that these factors are not only deeply entwined but can also serve as a key to healing. Her portraits nod knowingly towards the work of nineteenth century artists and in that aspect offer a critique of their exploitative, exotic art. In her words her goal is to “question and decolonise visual representations of the Pacific and to locate myself in that history as a working fine artist/activist.” She often combines painting with found objects, stating that the addition of objects lends the paintings the immediacy of lived experience. While viewing the painting the viewer has the opportunity to hear edited extracts from the conversations that took place between sitter and painter about the traumas that are embedded in their experience of life. This permits the viewer to witness the effect of these traumas. This necessarily conditions or alters the viewer’s response to the paintings. McDaniel gives a voice to the women who, traditionally, are the silent victims not only of violence and racial harassment but of the male depictions of the female body.