Clothing elicits impressions. It is a common way to project ourselves and understand others. It can convey social background, economic status and ethnicity. Most people have a specific style in the ways they dress. Some people change their style according to their moods, and some have no style at all. There are cultural trends, historic trends and fashion trends expressed by clothing. People not only express their senses of self through their choices, but also make assumptions about others based on theirs. Even blame and shame can be associated with it as with the scarlet letter or the yellow Star of David.

The artists in No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor use clothing to play with assumptions of materiality, cultural identity, relationships, and political issues. Some of the clothing is blown up, blown apart or minimized. Some take clothing and transform it completely as in the works using clothing from incarcerated individuals which has been turned into paper or used in a quilt. Of the several wedding dresses in the exhibit, one becomes a waterfall in a landscape, another is composed of Covid masks, and yet another is set ablaze in a series of photographs. There is also the extensive incorporation of text in the exhibition either as inspiration, as with the many novels which inspired and weigh down the diving suit “Women In The Water”, or in fact, as in the t-shirt stitched with the herbs which bring on a miscarriage or the painting “Thinking Cap”.

Being free of physicality, the works in No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor force us to confront our innate assumptions, as well as the ever-growing societal compartmentalization of people and behavior and the #socialmedia which increasingly rules our thinking. What does it mean when we deconstruct a garment by unraveling it or burning it or turning it into another material? What does clothing symbolize when there never was or will be a body inside?