YTO BARRADA
Born Paris, 1971
Lives and works in Tangier, Morocco
Yto Barrada takes an oblique and dispassionate approach to presenting the realities of life in Morocco. The Belt, Step 1 to 9 (2006) details the regimen of an elderly woman who routinely moves contraband fabrics into Tangier from Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city at the northern tip of Morocco. To transport these goods through border checkpoints, she conceals the contraband fabrics—expertly wrapped and tied around her body—beneath her full blue djellaba. Over the course of a sequence of nine color photographs, she methodically removes each layer, maintaining the same expressionless gaze. Ceuta's economy depends in large part on the sale of such smuggled goods, and border guards usually turn a blind eye to the contraband flowing into Morocco. Because of this, and for reasons of respect for her gender and age, she is rarely searched by customs officers. Barrada's presentation elucidates a daily struggle in descriptive rather than dramatic terms, where clothing becomes both a metaphor for concealment and a means to render visible a largely invisible reality.
Yto Barrada
The Belt, Step 1 to 9, from the series The Smugglers, Tangier, 2006
© Yto Barrada
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Polaris, Paris
VALÉRIE BELIN
Born Boulogne-Billancourt, France, 1964
Lives and works in Paris
Since the mid-1990s, Valérie Belin has photographed an unusually wide range of subjects, including ornate Venetian mirrors and the metallic aftermath of car crashes. In a 2003 series devoted to strikingly realistic shop mannequins, Belin infused her subjects with vitality through her expert manipulations of pose and lighting. In a 2006 series that marked her first foray into color photography, Belin reversed the terms of her mannequin pictures by transforming living models into seemingly synthetic creatures. Selected from the pages of an agency catalogue, several models were posed, nude from the shoulders up, against black backgrounds. Each stares blankly out of the picture frame, lips slightly parted. Belin enhances each model's appearance with a flawless application of powder and remarkably precise lighting that all but eliminates shadows, creating a uniform envelope of skin. With their uneasy mixture of physical perfection and psychological vacancy, Belin's subjects suggest the point at which our cultural obsession with youth and physical perfection reaches its eerie limits.
Valérie Belin
Untitled, 2006
© Valérie Belin
Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
THORSTEN BRINKMANN
Born Herne, Germany, 1971
Lives and works in Berlin
A self-described "serial collector," German artist Thorsten Brinkmann photographs himself in extraordinary costumes that he creates from castoff clothing and household objects salvaged from the street or from flea markets. While the resulting images echo the formal conventions of classical portraiture, the bizarre costumes, invariably masking his face, disrupt our expectations. In fact, the most disconcerting element of these images is Brinkmann's persistent withholding of the human face, which is replaced by objects ranging from flowerpots to lampshades, purses, or tennis-racket covers. These discordant elements confuse the distinctions between body and object, giving rise to fantastical figures that are at once stately and monstrous. For the Triennial, Brinkman has installed his photographs in a self-designed room composed of found materials—a three-dimensional environment that intentionally blurs the line between sculpture and photography.
Thorsten Brinkmann
Drune Quoll, 2007
© Thorsten Brinkmann
Courtesy Galerie Kunstagenten, Berlin
CAO FEI
Born Guangzhou, China, 1978
Lives and works in Beijing
Since rising to prominence on the strength of her compelling films and videos, Cao Fei has become deeply involved in Second Life, an online interactive environment where more than a million participants have shed their earthly identities and assumed new ones. She appears in this parallel world as China Tracy, a striking Chinese woman who often wears shiny body armor. In 2008, Cao Fei and a team of young web designers created RMB City, a metropolis inside Second Life that brings together various ancient and modern Chinese landmarks. Among the recent events in RMB City was a fashion shoot commissioned by Modern Weekly, a leading Chinese lifestyle magazine. For this project, a Second Life programmer modified numerous real-world runway looks—by Alexander McQueen, and Hussein Chalayan, among others—to fit the measurements of China Tracy's virtual body. The resulting screenshots subsequently appeared as an editorial spread in Modern Weekly. For the ICP Triennial, Cao Fei has installed this group of fashion photographs on billboards throughout RMB City. By maneuvering an avatar on the nearby computer, visitors can explore RMB City and discover Cao Fei's images.
Cao Fei
The Fashions of China Tracy, commissioned by Modern Weekly magazine, 2009
© Cao Fei and RMB City, 2009
RMB City Project developed by Cao Fei and Vitamin Creative Space
Facilitator: Uli Sigg
OLGA CHERNYSHEVA
Born Moscow, 1962
Lives and works in Moscow
Much of Olga Chernysheva's work considers the redefinition and reorientation of Russian society in the post-Soviet era. Documenting everyday happenstance, she highlights a pervasive sense of loneliness, as well as moments of humor and beauty. In her series On Duty (2007), Chernysheva continues her investigation of alienation in the wake of social collapse. In large-scale black-and-white photographs, she portrays uniformed workers of the Moscow metro system as they stare blankly from within the confines of their workstation. Seemingly idle and bored, these workers communicate an image that stands in stark contrast to that familiar from Socialist Realist propaganda, which emphasized confidence, productivity, and ingenuity. The military-style uniforms of the metro workers signal that the trappings of the old Soviet state still linger in the new Russia. Yet their expressions are aimless and lost in personal reverie as they gaze at surveillance monitors located just outside the frame of the image.
Olga Chernysheva
On Duty, 2007
© Olga Chernysheva
Courtesy Foxy Production, New York
NATHALIE DJURBERG
Born Lysekil, Sweden, 1978
Lives and works in Berlin
In her provocative claymation videos, Nathalie Djurberg constructs fantastical and sometimes disturbing worlds. Inspired by elements from fairy tales and her own dreams, Djurberg's narratives are imbued with dark overtones. New Movements in Fashion presents a group of five female characters who race through frantic outfit changes, each new outfit producing an instant personality transformation. Shifting power dynamics are also evident, with vulnerable "outsiders" being constantly redefined. At one moment, women wearing androgynous suits demean those clad in girlish ensembles; at another, naughty schoolgirls mock the gentle ballerinas. As these dramatic episodes unfold, hand-drawn graffiti appears in the background. Statements like "loosen up" and "whatever she can do, I can do better" add to the pervasive air of tension. Although the scenario recalls a frenzied fashion shoot and the empty phrases of encouragement tossed out by fashion photographers, Djurberg's unexpected twists leave one wondering who is really pulling the strings.
Nathalie Djurberg
New Movements in Fashion, 2006
© Nathalie Djurberg
Courtesy Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, and Gio Marconi, Milan
STAN DOUGLAS
Born Vancouver, Canada, 1960
Lives and works in Vancouver
Most of the works in Stan Douglas's recent series Humor, Irony, and the Law re-create historic moments of public unrest involving workers and law enforcement in Douglas’s native Vancouver: a 1912 free speech demonstration, a labor strike in 1935, the aftermath of a drug protest in 1971. Hastings Park, a crowd scene set at a 1950s racetrack, is more ambiguous. The period costumes contain subtle indicators of the kinds of attire specific to the working class in mid-1950s Vancouver. These indicators, while difficult to discern today, were highly legible in the postwar period, when increased purchasing power and ready-to-wear garments reinforced rather than loosened the dress codes that distinguished different social classes. Meticulously rendered, using a tonal palette that recalls the color film technology of the time, this photograph of spectators chatting in the stands is seamlessly composed from thirty separate shots. Caught unawares between takes, the models casually talk, smoke, read, or stare off into space, conjuring up an air of offhanded naturalness.
Stan Douglas
Hastings Park, 16 July 1955, 2008
© Stan Douglas
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery, New York
KOTA EZAWA
Born Cologne, Germany, 1969
Lives and works in San Francisco
Since 2001, Ezawa has regularly transformed images lifted from various sources (television, cinema, commercial advertising, and the history of photography) into lightbox transparencies, animated films, and videos. Typically he employs digital means to reduce his source images into schematic expanses of color. In his IKEA series (2008–present), Ezawa creates large-scale works based on imagery found in the IKEA catalogue. While Ezawa has produced lightbox works before, the IKEA series makes particular use of the connection between illuminated transparencies and commercial advertising. As in his other projects, elements of the original image are reduced to flat blocks of pastel color, but here Ezawa also retains select textual elements from the advertisements: price tags and slogans appear in the same typeface as the original. Relying on the viewer's familiarity with the language of commercial advertising and the ubiquitous IKEA brand, Ezawa comments ironically on the notional disjunct between the promise of a unique style and the prefabricated, mass-produced products.
Kota Ezawa
NEW! ($2.99/ea), 2007
© Kota Ezawa
Courtesy Murray Guy, New York
JACQUELINE HASSINK
Born Cologne, Germany, 1969
Lives and works in San Francisco
For more than a decade, Dutch artist Jacqueline Hassink has been examining the manner in which fashion and style are employed by the corporate world. In her project Car Girls (2002–07), Hassink explores the world of the car shows held every year in major cities around the world. "Car girls"—elegant and fashionable young women who stand by the vehicles on display—are an indispensable component of these shows. Their job is to underscore the car's allure and intensify its glamour. Realized in photographs, videos, and a website, Hassink's project is an insightful look at the way that beauty and desire are mobilized to sell luxury goods. Her video BMW Car Girls (2004) wryly follows a group of car girls in action at a BMW show in Paris. Visibly drawn to these attractive women, the male customers clearly regard the erotic charge of the car girls as indistinguishable from the aura of the vehicle itself.
Jacqueline Hassink
BMW Car Girls, 2004
© Jacqueline Hassink
Courtesy Amador Gallery, New York
HU YANG
Born Shanghai, China, 1959
Lives and works in Shanghai
In his photographic series Shanghai Living, Chinese artist Hu Yang documents individuals and families from all social classes in their Shanghai homes. Ranging from poor migrants to wealthy businesspeople, the subjects of these photographs reflect the astonishingly diverse human fabric of China’s largest city. To produce the 500 photographs that make up the series, Hu Yang persuaded people to open their homes to him—a difficult task in a culture that values personal privacy. To better understand his subjects, he asked them three questions prior to making their portrait: What is your current living situation? What is your greatest ambition? What do you fear most? The responses provide further insight into the lives of those depicted. Honest and forthright, the images and captions encapsulate the hopes, hardships, and anxieties of these often-isolated urban dwellers. They bring to light the unique personalities of Shanghai—those who exist beyond the fabricated glamour and carefully constructed facades that usually characterize this sprawling metropolis.
Hu Yang
Jin Xing (Beijingnese, Dancer), from the series Shanghai Living, 2005
© Hu Yang
Courtesy ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
MIYAKO ISHIUCHI
Born Gunma, Japan, 1947
Lives and works in Tokyo
A child of postwar Japan, Miyako Ishiuchi first began photographing as a means to express what it meant to be a Japanese woman at a time of protest, rebellion, and burgeoning feminism. Ishiuchi's production over the past three decades is notable for its emotionally direct approach, even when dealing with personally or politically fraught subject matter. One of these subjects was her mother, whom Ishiuchi began photographing in 2000. When her mother died unexpectedly, Ishiuchi shifted her attention to the objects her mother left behind. In the series Mother's, delicate slips, shoes, a pair of threadbare gloves, old lipsticks, and cosmetics are all treated as extensions of her mother's body. Images of these objects are interspersed with photographs of her mother's scarred flesh, the result of a burn accident many years before. With moving intimacy, the fragile patterns of her mother's scars and lace undergarments evoke the decay and ultimate disappearance of the body.
Miyako Ishiuchi
mother's #49, 2002
© Miyako Ishiuchi
Courtesy Sepia International, New York
KIMSOOJA
Born Taegu, Korea, 1957
Lives and works in New York
Fabric has long played a key role in Kimsooja's art. For the video installation Mumbai: A Laundry Field, she traveled to Mumbai to capture a unique perspective on the prevalence of textiles in the Indian cityscape. Each of the four ten-minute videos concentrates on a different environment in which fabrics are somehow present. In the first, the camera advances down an alleyway in the slums of Mumbai, taking in the brilliantly colored laundry that lines the narrow passages. In the second, we witness the strenuous process of manual laundering in the quarter of Dhobighat. The third shows ancient commuter trains as they make their way into the city, packed with passengers clad in a remarkable variety of intensely hued garments. The final video, shot from a car moving slowly along a Mumbai street as night turns to daybreak, shifts our attention to the unutilized scraps of textiles and clothing that are strewn around in abundance. All four videos grapple with an inherent contradiction. They acknowledge on the one hand the immense poverty and difficulty endured by many residents of Mumbai, yet on the other hand they revel in a city animated by the unstoppable rhythms of life.
Kimsooja
Mumbai: A Laundry Field, 2007–2008
© Kimsooja
Courtesy the artist
SILVIA KOLBOWSKI
Born Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1953
Lives and works in New York
Since the 1980s, Silvia Kolbowski has examined the correlations between fashion, consumerism, and power. Her current project, After Atlas, demonstrates the collapsing boundaries between art and fashion. The work brings together tear sheets of advertising and editorial layouts—culled over a period of years from fashion magazines—that indicate this increasing slippage. According to Kolbowski, "the fashion magazine is the purveyor of this activity, whether it's by setting up fake backdrops to evoke a particular art period that coincides with a given designer's line, or by placing the fashion inside the spaces of art—the studio, the museum." In a reference to Gerhard Richter's Atlas, in which the German artist presents the source materials for his paintings, Kolbowski arranges the tear sheets in an orderly grid within frames. Some of the magazine pages are distressed or destroyed, a reference to Richter's strategy of blurring images. By abutting the tear sheets, she signals the lack of distance or breathing room between the ostensibly distinct realms of art and fashion.
Silvia Kolbowski
After Atlas, 1966–present
© Silvia Kolbowski
Courtesy the artist
JEREMY KOST
Born Corpus Christi, Texas, 1977
Lives and works in New York
An intrepid and tireless nightcrawler since moving to New York in 2003, Jeremy Kost has become a regular fixture at art openings, premiere parties, and the city's trendiest bars and clubs, where he photographs his subjects less as quarry than as fellow travelers. The unguarded intimacy that characterizes much of Kost's work is heightened by his use of a Polaroid camera. Perhaps due to its relative bulk, this obsolescent device can seem less furtive than today's digital cameras, and may also disarm people with its promise of an immediately tangible picture. Perusing these Polaroids, we are sometimes confronted by surprisingly candid shots of Courtney Love, Paris Hilton, or Chloë Sevigny, but just as often we gaze upon unfamiliar but no less glamorous drag queens and club kids. Kost's photographs provide a remarkable chronicle of the collective sequined striving that has fueled the city's nightlife for decades.
Jeremy Kost
Amanda Backstage at Heatherette, from the series Private Pageantry, 2005–present
© Jeremy Kost
Courtesy the artist
BARBARA KRUGER
Born Newark, New Jersey, 1945
Lives and works in New York and Los Angeles
Barbara Kruger is known for a distinctive, boldly graphic style that juxtaposes images lifted from magazines, old photographic annuals, and behavioral instruction manuals with pointed statements and questions. Kruger appropriates the coercive methods of advertising and ideological broadcast to make sharp commentaries on how gender, sexuality, consumerism, and power disparities are created, transmitted, and reinforced. The work presented here, Untitled (Want Me), debuts a new medium for Kruger. Screen-printed onto luxurious satin, a closely cropped image of a 1950s Hollywood starlet beams out at the viewer. Her imploring gaze, perfect features, and gentle smile speak to the absurd relationship media images have cultivated of female beauty. The words "want me" which beseech—or command—the viewer are printed onto a translucent layer of turquoise mesh fabric, revealing the illustrated, classic beauty beneath. Both begging and commanding desire, Kruger’s new work is simultaneously critical and ambivalent about our relationship to such desires, and how they are developed, maintained, and sold.
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Want Me), 2009
© Barbara Kruger
Courtesy the artist and Mary Boone Gallery, New York
RICHARD LEAROYD
Born Lancashire, England, 1966
Lives and works in London
Richard Learoyd's large-scale portraits create an intensely seductive visual experience. Using a room-sized camera obscura and a powerful flash, Learoyd creates images of extraordinary visual clarity. To make these one-of-a-kind photographs, he uses two adjacent rooms: one lit (where the subject sits) and one completely dark (which holds the photographic paper). Through a lens installed in the wall connecting the two rooms, the images are recorded onto the direct-positive photographic paper without an intermediary negative. The resulting photographs display extreme optical detail, a trait recalling nineteenth-century daguerreotypes. His subjects—still lifes, portraits, and nudes—all receive the same careful, deliberate treatment, resulting in simple compositions that belie the unusual procedure of their production. In Agnes, Red Dress, the young sitter's flesh is rendered with startling precision, such that her pores, beauty spots, freckles, eyebrows, and soft facial hair are individually discernible. The creased red fabric of the sitter's dress sets off the luminous glow of her flesh against Learoyd's signature palette of blue- and purple-grays.
Richard Learoyd
Agnes, Red Dress, 2008
© Richard Learoyd
Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York
KALUP LINZY
Born Stuckey, Florida, 1977
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York
A truly multitasking artist, Kalup Linzy writes, directs, edits, and stars in his videos, dressing in drag to assume the roles of a set of recurring characters. Among Linzy's recent works is SweetBerry Sonnet, a collection of music videos that he wrote and recorded in 2008. In this suite of videos, Linzy appears as various members of the Braswell family, each of whom performs songs that somehow match their established personas. Taiwan, for example, who always wears a black leotard and tucks a large flower behind one ear, typically delivers soulful ballads that bitterly recount lost or unrequited loves. Labisha, by contrast, is a sassy diva garbed in a sequined minidress who raps and dances her way through upbeat tracks of electro-pop. In all cases, Linzy skewers the predictable narratives and false sincerity of most music videos, especially when his characters appear lost in thought while carefully mouthing song lyrics laced with expletives.
For his second music-video collection Linzy teamed up with fashion duo Proenza Schouler to create two music videos, Sampled and LeftOva and Fuck U, in conjunction with their Spring 2010 pre-collection presentation in Florence. In these videos, Taiwan has moved up in the world, and appears dressed in custom Proenza Schouler outfits. Linzy describes his first venture into the realm of high fashion as a kind of "playing around with clothes and history."
Kalup Linzy
SweetBerry Sonnet (Remixed), 2008
© Kalup Linzy
Courtesy Taxter & Spengemann, New York
TANYA MARCUSE
Born New York City, 1964
Lives and works in Barrytown, New York
For her series Undergarments and Armor, Marcuse traveled to costume collections and museums in the U.S. and Europe, photographing historical corsets, bustles, breastplates, and helmets, as well as the mannequins used for their display. Imagining how the human form once inhabited these objects, which date from the fourth century B.C. to the nineteenth century, this series explores more than the historic relationship between the body and clothes. Resisting easy categories of masculine versus feminine—hard, exterior, and aggressive in contrast to soft, interior, and vulnerable—Marcuse shows that both the male armor and the female undergarments were used to enhance the body, as much to define and sculpt as to conceal and protect. By including images of devices that variously flatten the chest, enlarge the rear, puff sleeves, and otherwise reshape the body in unexpected ways, Marcuse also points to the mutability of the body and to the astonishing variation in ideals of beauty between different historical periods.
Tanya Marcuse
Corset with Silk ribbon, 1880s, from the series Undergarments and Armor, 2002–2004
© Tanya Marcuse
Courtesy the artist and Julie Saul Gallery, New York
ANNE MORGENSTERN
Born Leipzig, Germany, 1976
Lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland
Exile is a recurring theme for Anne Morgenstern. In the Dry Run series, she worked with a group of young Palestinians who live in Jarmuk, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, that was established as a Palestinian refugee camp in 1948. Shooting in an abandoned lot in the center of town, Morgenstern asked her protagonists to move freely through the blasted space. The resulting photographs capture the young men and women in a variety of frozen actions; they jog down rocky ledges, stumble and fall on the sandy ground, or simply stand still in the bright sunlight. One searches for a sense of purpose in these pictures, a coherent storyline to explain the various gestures and movements. But the governing trope of this series is aimlessness, which Morgenstern effectively stages to evoke her subjects' essential state of dislocation. The Dry Run photographs ironically combine the calculated realism of contemporary fashion photography with tropes familiar from photojournalistic coverage of the Middle East.
Anne Morgenstern
Trockenuebung / Dry Run, 2008
© Anne Morgenstern
Courtesy the artist
WANGECHI MUTU
Born Nairobi, Kenya, 1972
Lives and works in New York
Trained as a sculptor but working in a range of media, Wangechi Mutu frequently incorporates drawn and painted elements into her collage work. In The Ark Collection (2006), she appropriates images of African women from a postcard-format book entitled Women of the African Ark and layers them with others taken from fashion, pornography, hip hop, and men’s magazines. The result is to reveal that the same narrow tropes of women's sexuality and sexual availability are deeply entrenched within each genre. Displayed in museum vitrines, Mutu’s collages directly invoke postcards of young African women taken and distributed by nineteenth-century European photographers, and underscore the connection between seeing, knowing, and possessing.
Wangechi Mutu
The Ark Collection (detail), 2006
© Wangechi Mutu
Courtesy Susanne Vielmetter Projects, Los Angeles
GRACE NDIRITU
Born in Birmingham, England, 1976
Lives and works in London
Grace Ndiritu's succinct, straightforward works generally consist of self-recorded solo performances that she defines as "hand-crafted videos," as they are devoid of high-level production elements. Although Ndiritu is the sole actor, the videos are not self-portraits, but rather "human portraits" that express broader social themes. The black-and-white video My Blood Self: Artificial Beauty (The Mask) features a close-up of Ndiritu wearing a black felt mask that covers all but her eyes and mouth. For the duration of the work, the viewer follows her movements as she smoothes out the already even surface of the mask, her fingers moving along her forehead, down her nose, around her cheekbones, and across her chin. Save for one moment where her face moves out of the frame, Ndiritu's gaze bores directly into the lens. The mask here becomes a symbol of the desire to attain an idealized image—a generic result that conceals the unique visage of the individual.
Grace Ndiritu
My Blood Self: Artificial Beauty (The Mask), 2006-2007
© Grace Ndiritu
Courtesy of LUX, London
ALICE O'MALLEY
Lives and works in New York
Born Buffalo, New York, 1962
Alice O'Malley moved to New York City in 1990 to immerse herself in the city's vibrant downtown culture. A self-taught photographer who cites the influence of portraitists Romaine Brooks, E. J. Bellocq, and particularly Peter Hujar, she has photographed the poets, musicians, and artists of that scene. O'Malley's resulting body of work, Community of Elsewheres, presents an intimate portrait of a creative stronghold that today finds itself facing the onslaught of gentrification. Delegating styling to her sitters, O'Malley produces portraits that present her subjects costumed in gorgeously eccentric assemblages or altogether nude. Most of O'Malley's sitters are queer, and her interest in expressions of alternative gender—through clothing, makeup, or body modification—is apparent in her portraits. "The idea of women or men is passé in this body of work," says the artist. "Maybe we could say that I'm most comfortable photographing both, at the same time, in the same person."
Alice O'Malley
Tabboo! NYC 2008, from the series Community of Elsewheres, 2000–present
© Alice O'Malley
Courtesy the artist and Isis Gallery, London
DAVID ROSETZKY
Born Melbourne, Australia, 1970
Lives and works in Melbourne
In 2008, David Rosetzky was commissioned to create a video portrait of Cate Blanchett for the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Collaborating with a choreographer, a composer, and the award-winning actress, Rosetzky shot this portrait inside the cavernous set-design workshop of the Sydney Theatre Company. The gesticulating hands that fill the opening frames belong to Blanchett, who soon appears without makeup and dressed down in gray trousers and a black tank top. Our view of the actress is repeatedly frustrated by Rosetzky's lens, which shifts in and out of focus while Blanchett moves her chair to the back of the room. As she gradually recedes from the camera's gaze, Blanchett discusses the challenges of acting in a voice-over that articulates the "constant pull between wanting to be seen and not wanting to be seen." Through its nimble orchestration of camera work, choreography, and introspective voice-over, Rosetzky's video pays fitting tribute to Blanchett and her vocation, while reminding us of the staged and collaborative nature of all portraiture.
David Rosetzky
Portrait of Cate Blanchett, 2008
© David Rosetzky
Courtesy The National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia
MARTHA ROSLER
Born Brooklyn, New York, 1953
Lives and works in Brooklyn
In the late 1960s, Rosler began her series of photomontages Bringing the War Home as a response to the escalating mayhem of the Vietnam War, inserting photographs of American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians into benign pictures of U.S. domestic interiors culled from advertisements. In the wake of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Rosler chose to update this series. The backdrop for Invasion is a fiery explosion, out of which rumble several tanks and an army of neatly coiffed male models in Dolce & Gabbana suits. As in Rosler's earlier photomontages, the seamless integration of these ostensibly incongruous elements can be read as an analogue to the interdependency of the military and commercial sectors. The art world, of course, is hardly exempt from Rosler's critique. Until recently, the ongoing war in Iraq coincided with a period of spectacular growth in the markets for art and other luxury goods. With this context in mind, the beautiful and oblivious models in Rosler's photomontage may represent the seductive conflation of money, art, fashion, and power.
Martha Rosler
Invasion, 2008
© Martha Rosler
Courtesy the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
JULIKA RUDELIUS
Born Cologne, Germany, 1968
Lives in New York and Amsterdam
The video installations of Julika Rudelius often examine the dynamics of group identities. For Tagged, Rudelius asked several young men of Moroccan or Turkish descent who live in the Netherlands to bring suitcases full of their own clothing to a hotel room and try on various outfits. While dressing and undressing in front of the camera, they explain the importance of their clothing choices and the impressions they are seeking to produce. Rudelius occasionally disrupts this skeletal narrative with tightly synchronized montages wherein the young men identify the designer labels of their clothing and the exact prices they paid for them. Through their obsessive concern with fashion and appearance, they demonstrate a preening narcissism that is more commonly ascribed to women. But Rudelius captures other revealing aspects of her subjects, especially when they discuss their Muslim backgrounds and their desire to win respect through the clothes they wear. For these immigrant teenagers, fashion appears to be crucial to assimilation—a means to fend off disdain and suspicion.
Julika Rudelius
Tagged, 2003
© Julika Rudelius
Courtesy the artist
CINDY SHERMAN
Born Glen Ridge, New Jersey, 1951
Lives and works in New York
In 2007, Cindy Sherman produced a suite of fashion images that appeared in Paris Vogue. Modeling clothes designed by Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga, Sherman assumed the guises of various characters we have come to associate with the rarefied and sometimes grotesque world of high fashion. Some of the playful caricatures from the Paris Vogue editorial reappear in a group of large-scale, multifigure works that suggest scenes of fashionista revelry. In one of these pictures Sherman appears twice, as a pair of bobbed, bespectacled, and Balenciaga-clad women standing in front of a graffiti-covered wall, and seems to skewer the fashion world's patronizing appreciation of downtown grit and seediness. In another, she plays the parts of four different women who raise plastic beverage cups and vamp for the camera. That we notice only minor distinctions among their makeup, hairstyles, and outfits speaks less to Sherman's ongoing reliance on herself as model, and more to the herd mentality that ironically pervades an industry celebrating individuality and personal style.
Cindy Sherman
Untitled, 2007-2008
© Cindy Sherman
Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
LAURIE SIMMONS
Born New York, 1949
Lives and works in New York
Over the course of her career, Laurie Simmons has made photographs of miniature stage sets using dolls, dollhouses, and toy furniture, to create pictures that combine a nostalgic evocation of the past with a knowing interrogation of its stereotypes and fictions. Arranging the female figures in domestic interiors, she plays with scale, juxtaposition, light, and perspective to generate dreamlike, sometimes funny images that commented on the constructed nature of gender roles and the way memory shapes even mundane perception.
In 2005 Laurie Simmons purchased a group of miniature stage sets—a library, art gallery, and ballroom—that were constructed in the 1940s by an obscure Latvian artist and set designer named Ardis Vinklers. Simmons photographed each of them as empty set pieces and then populated the sets with photographs and drawings of glamorous women that she cut from the pages of old magazines, along with a token plastic male observer. The most spectacular scene in this series takes place in the so-called ballroom, which Simmons tricked out with a dappling of spotlights and the suggestion of a starry cityscape beyond a picture window. Through the charming staginess that characterizes much of her work, Simmons reminds us that nostalgia for a better time is often a paper-thin gloss on reality.
Laurie Simmons
The Boxes (Ardis Vinklers), Ballroom II, 2005
© Laurie Simmons
Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York
LORNA SIMPSON
Born Brooklyn, New York, 1960
Lives and works in Brooklyn
Over the past two decades, much of Lorna Simpson's work has considered dress, costume, and personal adornment as markers of identity. In the past year, Simpson has created a number of works using found black-and-white photo-booth images of anonymous African- American subjects from the 1940s to the 1970s, arranged into groupings of men, women, and couples. A time of critical transition for African-Americans, the period bracketed by these photographs also coincides with the enormous popularity of the photobooth. Invented in 1925 but not widely popular until the 1940s, the photobooth was more affordable than a studio portrait and gave the subject control over his or her own image. Within the intimate space of the booth, curtain pulled shut, individuals could interact with the camera as though it were a private mirror in which they constructed their self-presentation.
Each photograph or strip of photographs is individually framed and then arranged in a loose cluster on the wall. While the accumulation of photographs seems more important than the individual components, the work encourages close inspection, revealing particularized details of expression, pose, and dress. Interspersed among the photographs are a handful of similarly sized abstract ink drawings, which open up a range of associations having to do with voids, absences, and the fragility of memory.
Lorna Simpson
Please remind me of who I am, 2009
© Lorna Simpson
Courtesy Salon94, New York
HANK WILLIS THOMAS
Born Plainfield, New Jersey, 1976
Lives and works in New York
Working primarily with appropriated photographs and print materials, Hank Willis Thomas explores the intersection of race and the language of advertising. In his series Unbranded, Thomas digitally removed all text from print ads targeted at African American audiences between 1968 and 2008—from the death of Martin Luther King Jr. to the election of Barack Obama. Thomas retouches and frames only the airbrushed images themselves, which become pointed commentaries on the commodification of the black subject. By removing references to the products being sold, Thomas unveils the changing stereotypes used to portray African American culture: a group of African American boys holding classic soda bottles in their hands sit on the stoop of a building and harmonize; a wealthy black couple shares an intimate moment listening to records and sipping cocktails. By turns humorous and absurd, these images confirm the ceaseless cooptation of African- American styles for commercial ends.
Hank Willis Thomas
Kama Mama, Kama Binti (like mother like daughter) 1971/2008, 2008
© Hank Willis Thomas
Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
MICKALENE THOMAS
Born Camden, New York, 1971
Lives and works in Brooklyn
Best known as a painter, Mickalene Thomas channels the looks found in 1970s pop-culture Blaxploitation films, combined with influences as varied as Henri Matisse's odalisques and Seydou Keïta's lushly patterned portraits, to create erotically charged color photographs of powerful, confident African American women. Posed in domestic interiors where faux wood paneling, animal print rugs, and patterned textiles compete for the viewer’s attention, Thomas’s photographs foreground aspects of performance and role-play where models reappear in different guises and a limited number of furnishings are continually rearranged to suggest distinct domestic environments. Such visual cues underscore the constructed, provisional nature of these tableaux, inviting the viewer to read the photographs as contemporary explorations of black womanhood, wherein archetypes from the past are both celebrated and critiqued.
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Qusuquzah, 2008
© Mickalene Thomas
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York
MILAGROS DE LA TORRE
Born Lima, Peru, 1965
Lives and works in New York and Mexico City
Throughout her career, Milagros de la Torre has explored the traces of hidden and often violent narratives to reveal their broader social and political implications, particularly within Latin America. Her most recent series, Bulletproof (2008) reflects her fascination with objects that reveal histories of violence and power. Beguiling in their apparent simplicity, these photographs use a straightforward approach to record what appear to be everyday articles of clothing—a t-shirt, blouse, or sports jacket. These are in fact armor-plated designer garments sold in luxury boutiques in Bogotá and Mexico City , whose purpose is to inconspicuously protect the wearer from gunshot wounds. Photographed on their hangers against a blank background and printed at life-size, these disembodied garments float in the frame as though awaiting the viewer to claim them. Small clues reveal their true function: a hint of the armored breastplate is just discernible under the light blouse, the small zipper on the t-shirt’s hemline provides a clue as to how the armor plate is inserted and removed, the "platinum" garment labels indicate the level of protection provided. Currently worn by politicians (including, allegedly, President Obama on Inauguration Day) and the rich and famous, such bulletproof clothing caters to an elite clientele that has come to expect the discrete protection offered by these armor-plated garments.
Milagros de la Torre
Bulletproof (Chamarral/Jacket), 2008
© Milagros de la Torre
Courtesy the artist
JANAINA TSCHÄPE
Born Munich, Germany, 1973
Lives and works in New York and Rio de Janeiro
Janaina Tschäpe is known for her multimedia works depicting lavishly costumed female figures whose costumed appendages are constructed by the artist from inflatable balloons, latex tubing, brightly colored fabrics, and organic matter. Typically set in luscious natural landscapes, these works mix the poetic and the bizarre. In Lacrimacorpus (2004), Tschäpe engages instead with a specific architectural site, the castle of Ettersburg near Weimar, Germany, which was once a summer residence of the celebrated German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; it later overlooked the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald. Tschäpe conflates these two historical moments, using dress to evoke history and memory. In the photographs, a woman wearing a costume from Goethe's Faust wanders the building and grounds, lost in reverie. A cluster of inflated balloons circles her face, suggesting a cascade of tears. The work's title, a composite of the Latin words for "tear" and "body," refers to the mythical creature described by Jorge Luis Borges that weeps constantly. In a related video, the woman is seen from the back as she gazes out a large parlor window to a garden below, or beyond, to what is now the Buchenwald Memorial. The mechanical winding of a child's music box is heard, and as the music chimes, she begins to spin in circles, slowly at first and then with increasing speed, before collapsing to the floor from dizziness and exhaustion.
Janaina Tschäpe
Lacrimacorpus (Zeitschneide), 2004
© Janaina Tschäpe
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
PINAR YOLACAN
Born Ankara, Turkey, 1981
Lives and works in Brooklyn
In 2007 Pinar Yolaçan visited the island of Itaparica off the coast of Brazil and invited a number of local Afro-Brazilian women to pose for her. Working from Polaroids taken during their first meeting, Yolaçan designed garments for them to model. Loosely based on historical Portuguese fashions and assembled from animal products and luxurious velvet and satin fabrics from local markets, the heavy garments lend an air of gravity to the images. By incorporating generous amounts of cow placenta and other organ meats into these designs, Yolaçan generates unexpectedly lovely passages of glossy, iridescent color that play against the fabrics. The material confusion between the luscious fabrics and the glistening animal innards is genuinely shocking. Equally confounding are her sitters' ambiguous expressions, by turns confident, proud, severe, suspicious, or serene. The powerful presence and dignified carriage of these women, who never fully embrace nor resist the audacious costumes, creates a memorable set of portraits.
Pinar Yolacana
Untitled (Maria), 2007
© Pinar Yolacan
Courtesy the artist
ZHOU TAO
Born Changsha, China, 1976
Lives and works in Guangzhou
Zhou Tao belongs to a generation of Chinese artists whose careers have coincided with a period of rapid urbanization and industrialization—changes that have been the subject of much of Zhou's work. His video 1–2–3–4 was shot in an area of central Shanghai known as People's Square. Zhou observed the early morning assemblies of the staff members of various stores, companies, restaurants, and hotels. These gatherings typically include the shouting of motivational chants that are meant to stir loyalties and enhance team spirit. 1–2–3–4 captures an array of these rituals, building from relatively simple scenes of employee head counts to more choreographed displays of workers clapping, marching in place, and jogging through the streets. One also takes note of the variety of matching uniforms that are evident, each outfit signifying a different vocation. But when worn by groups of energetic young people moving in lockstep formation, they conjure a much larger picture of China in transition, where a partial embrace of capitalist branding is yoked to older techniques of social discipline.
Zhou Tao
1-2-3-4, 2007–2008
© Zhou Tao
Courtesy Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou
