Since the late 1970's Cindy Sherman has donned an array of mid-century personas to explore how women are perceived and presented in Western culture.

Around 1987 her image-making pivoted towards the abstract, the abject, and the theatrical. Instead of her iconic archetypes and impressions of women, Sherman is barely present in her self-portraits. She is either at the margin of an image or obscured under layers of makeup, light, detritus, and prosthetics.

In a 2012 interview from her MoMA retrospective catalog, the artist considers interpretations of this period: “I was totally deconstructing myself, chopping myself up by getting smaller and smaller, and then finally disappearing… I was nervous that I was too dependent on myself, so I wanted to see if I could tell a story or make an image without including myself.”

This large-scale color photograph is a fantastic example of Sherman’s most audacious and experimental period of art-making. It presents a dark dream world, like looking into the depths of a snow globe.

In this pseudo-self portrait, the feminine figure appears peaceful yet flattened and frozen within the photographed environment, presenting a complicated representation of beauty and oppression. These are two consistent and recurring themes across Sherman’s critical practice.

The attention to set, costume and photographic technique blur the artist’s identity and illustrate the narrative power of photography. Sherman presents a work that is challenging, hypnotic, and far from decorative.

Condition--very good