Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art

How artists have used clothing as a sculptural medium and a tool to explore gender, performance and more, from Louise Bourgeois to Andrea Zittel

Chronicling contemporary art’s engagement with costume, Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art shows how visual artists around the globe are using garments to examine issues of subjectivity, identity and difference. Featuring 35 international artists, Garmenting is organized around five interrelated themes: functionality, cultural difference, gender, activism and performance. Pioneered by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, garmenting as an artistic strategy emerged during the 1960s and ‘70s, and came to further prominence during the 1990s, with work by artists such as Nick Cave, Yinka Shonibare and Andrea Zittel, and has flourished in recent years. Artists include: Xenobia Bailey, Raphael Barontini, Sanford Biggers, Karina Bisch, Zoe Buckman, Nick Cave, Enoch Cheng, Sylvie Fleury, Jeffrey Gibson, Annette Messager, Mark Newport, Raul de Nieves, Wanda Raimundi Ortiz, Jacolby Satterwhite, Devan Shimoyama, Yinka Shonibare, Mary Sibande, Franz Erhard Walther and Saya Woolfalk.