No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor

September 20, 2024–January 26, 2025

Through bodiless artworks that reimagine and transform clothing, No Bodies offers a multitude of societal portraits and asks us to reconsider clothing as not merely attire but a dynamic expression of both personal and collective identities.

Photo by Steven Paneccasio.

Simply put, clothing is what we put on our bodies. We use it both to cover up and to reveal ourselves. It is also a tool we use to understand others. As an artistic medium, it embodies the tension between opposing forces—private experience and mass consumption, form and function, empowerment and vulnerability, personal expression and cultural expectation. Through bodiless artworks that reimagine and transform clothing, No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor offers a multitude of societal portraits and invites visitors to engage with the intimate narratives they evoke.

The artists in No Bodies use clothing to play with assumptions about materiality and cultural identity, and as a vehicle for social and political activism. In Shroud, a sea of suspended shirts, Rachel Breen asks us to stand in solidarity with garment workers. Inscribed on Patrick Carroll’s t-shirt, created in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, are the ingredients of historical abortifacients. Rose Deler points up the cruelty of immigration policy with children’s garments fashioned from the Mylar rescue blankets given to migrants at the U.S. border. In Jesse Krimes’s quilt Skyline, an inmate’s memories of wellbeing are retained in spite of the oppression of the prison-industrial complex. The beads in Erica Lord’s loom-woven burden strap replicate the pixel-like format of DNA analysis of diseases affecting Indigenous communities. And Karen Shaw transforms a sports jersey into a hoop shirt—a winking reference to a hoop skirt—that subverts gender norms and blends masculine and feminine elements.

No Bodies reveals how clothing can convey deeply personal stories while critiquing broader systems of production and regulation. Disrupting familiar clothing conventions, the artists illustrate how personal expression can reshape cultural and social norms. Their works unravel our presumptions about clothing, the stories it can carry, and the psychological weight it can bear. No Bodies asks us to reconsider clothing as not merely attire, or fashion, but a dynamic expression of both personal and collective identities.

 

Curated by independent curator Alva Greenberg.

At the Hudson River Museum, the exhibition is generously sponsored by The Coby Foundation, Ltd.

Additional support is provided by The O’Grady Foundation.

Exhibitions are made possible by assistance provided by the County of Westchester.

 

Featured Artists

Reginald Dwayne BettsJohn BooneMarsha BordenRachel BreenChris BurdenPatrick CarrollSusan ClinardHannah ConradtE.V. DayRose DelerLesley DillAnindita DuttaGiannina DwinCarlos EstévezKathryn FrundJonathan Herrera SotoJesse KrimesRobert KushnerRuth LingenErica LordWhitfield LovellAdriana MarmorekSenga NengudiCarol PaikSidney RussellBarbara SégalKaren ShawJaune Quick-to-See SmithMicki Watanabe SpillerCindy TowerCybèle Young

 

The Teaching Artist-in-Residence for No Bodies is Nancy Mendez. Learn more about the Residency Program here.

Video