Shirley Cullum

Shirley Cullum works with photography and print to examine female costume as a form of performance. Her Black Baroque diptych centres on the gloved hand as a signal of social status and wealth — historically the mark of a woman who did not engage in manual labour. Cullum interrogates how the trappings of fashion serve not only to signify privilege but also to physically restrict and reinforce rigid social mores. By isolating the glove, she makes visible the way that clothing has always done ideological as well as decorative work on women's bodies.