Cindy Sherman’s Face-off at Hauser & Wirth

Cindy Sherman is a master of disguise. Her ‘anti-portrait’ portraits shroud her identity, transforming her beyond recognition through the use of make-up, wigs, prosthetics, and costumes.

It’s a strategy the New Jersey-born artist, who just turned 70, takes in a new direction in her latest exhibition at Hauser & Wirth‘s Wooster Street location in New York.

Digitally manipulating her photographs, Sherman constructs, deconstructs, and reconstructs her face. Isolating sections like her nose, eyes, and lips, she cuts them out and pastes them in place, drawing attention to her edits using a combination of full colour and black-and-white clippings.

The women on view pout and smirk, sneer and scowl. She plays with scale, making eyes too small for a face, or a nose disproportionately large and out of joint. The effect of these edits is both jarring and humorous, like seeing yourself in the warped mirrors of an amusement park.

Sherman’s portraits lay bare every pore, wrinkle, and blemish, inviting scrutiny—perhaps a nod to the experience of ageing as a woman. The close-up headshots capture twisted and awkward expressions, suggesting the subjects’ unhappiness about being snapped.

The 30 new works are currently on display in SoHo, Manhattan, the neighbourhood where Sherman first showed the series ‘Untitled Film Stills’ (1977–1980), which first gained her international recognition.

Cindy Sherman continues until 16 March 2024.