This autumn, Cindy Sherman debuts photographic works from her new Fabric Matrons series, which explores identity as a continual process of construction over a lifetime. Shaped by a visual vocabulary of elaborately draped fabrics, the protagonists in Sherman’s images appear to dissolve into their surroundings, heightening the tension between concealment and display to examine how women negotiate visibility across different phases of life. Sherman’s staged scenes, several of which incorporate elements drawn from Chanel’s archives, foreground the performance–and perception–of femininity and beauty, probing the societal expectations and enduring pressure to fashion and maintain a public image over time.
Cindy Sherman found a starting point for this new series within the pages of a giveaway magazine from a high- end store in the Hamptons, filled with smooth, airbrushed images of a well-known model of Sherman’s own generation, dripping in jewelry. Marking a sophisticated evolution in her engagement with fashion imagery, the artist began working with lengths of fabric as both styling and backdrop at once, establishing the series’ unmistakable visual language.