Cindy Sherman

A master of transformation, Sherman has served as her own model for over five decades, producing and performing an array of invented roles that explore and subvert familiar tropes of female identity. Though the personas are fictional, the confrontation at the center of Fabric Matrons is, in part, with Sherman herself, stating: ‘It’s gone beyond beauty. I think it’s showing these characters’ neuroses—probably my own, and similar to many women my age.’ Working close to the camera, she found the process of aging startling to witness and links this to a double standard in which women are disproportionately measured against ideals of beauty and youth compared to men.

The tension between resisting and embracing the passage of time surfaces throughout the series in details of styling and mise-en-scène, offering differing takes on beauty, aging and femininity. Props, rarely used in the series, make a notable appearance in a photograph of a reclining figure, illustrating these competing attitudes. Beside her, a glossy magazine represents longstanding ideals of youth and beauty, while a book on physiognomy, or face reading, treats facial lines and wrinkles as natural, inherent features worthy of attention and study. Sherman further articulates this duality through make-up to create near-airbrushed appearances in some works while emulating signs of aging in others.

Sherman’s choices before the camera also point to the complex relationship between identity and visibility. In several photographs, the protagonists wear gloves that render their skin artificially flawless to hint at a tendency to hide one’s true self. Other characters are clothed in fabrics that blend into the backdrop, raising questions about who is afforded social recognition. Conceived as a group of distinct individuals rather than a narrative sequence, Sherman’s works invite viewers to recognize elements of themselves in her characters and, in doing so, to confront their own anxieties, choices and desires surrounding identity.