WSMGR (Women’s Suffrage Mobile Garment Rack), Cincinnati Art Museum

commissioned interactive artwork, garments, garment rack, info cards

WSMGR, is a roving, hands-on engagement piece within the galleries, highlighting hxstories of struggles for suffrage and civil rights within and beyond those commonly related to the US Women’s Suffrage movement. Visitors are be encouraged to touch, try on, and explore the garments and the accompanying texts within and inside the works.

October 12, 2019 – April 12, 2020 
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
Curated by Ainsley Cameron and commissioned in partnership with the Education Department

Presented in conjunction with the museum’s Women Breaking Boundaries exhibition, celebrating the 2020 centennial anniversary of women’s suffrage in the US. The exhibition, curated by Ainsley Cameron, pulls from the museum’s collection to highlight women-identified artists and encourage critical thinking about gender, inclusion, and museums.

WSMGR (Women’s Suffrage Mobile Garment Rack), 2019
Recycled American flag remnants, garment rack, six wearable unique garments, one eBay-purchased prison uniform affixed to hanger, information cards (see below to read the text from info cards)

Each garment holds and offers visitors a different set of hxstories that expand the conversation of suffrage. From the museum didactics:

O.H. Coat
This garment holds hxstories of regional LGBTQ+ struggles for civil rights. The lining is custom textile culled from the Ohio Lesbian Archives. Dinah was a long-running, local lesbian newsletter (1975-1997). The O.H. on the exterior of the jacket has a two-fold meaning. It honors Ohio (OH) as well as the recent Supreme Court case, Obergefell vs Hodges. The case was led by Cincinnati-based, Jim Obergefell, and led to the 2015 Marriage Equality Act that ensures equal marriage rights to LGBTQ+ couples.

The Sontag
A sontag is a historical garment from the late 19th - early 20th centuries and would have been known during the advent of suffrage movements in the US. Curiously, it shares its name with feminist scholar, Susan Sontag. The sontag was designed to provide additional warmth to women’s daily garments. The added metal studs in this remix-version are inspired by a buddha warrior on view in Gallery 138. The burgandy wool is deadstock from a local Cincinnati textile mill.

Pocket Poncho
This poncho is inspired by designer, Bonnie Cashin, and her reenvisioning of women's wear with pockets, comfort, utility, and ease of silhouettes. Cashin was a pioneer in American sportswear at the advent of Women’s Lib. The excess of pockets in this poncho adds some absurdity as well as a queering towards the senses of touch, eros, and holding. The message, or mantra, of “Wild Patience,” (look for the yellow and lavender bias tape at the inner neck) is meant for the wearer of the garment. It is culled from the title of Adrienne Rich’s 1981 collection of poems, and it speaks to the fortitude needed for a life lived in service to social justice.

The Saidiya Dress
This dress is a response to and inspired by Saidiya Hartman's recently published book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. In it Hartman blends archival research with invention to resuscitate some of the missing narratives of Black Americans from the period of the Great Migration. Following the abolition of slavery in the US, this period promised freedom for Black Americans and many moved North to start new lives. Hartman's book takes focus on intimacy: making visible the lives of Black women, queer-identified folx, academics, and artists that navigated a time of new possibilities and promised freedom. This dress is speculative, in the spirit of Hartman's project, and honors the private lives, parties, and wild bravery of young Black Americans that stepped out in style towards new freedoms.

Prison Uniform
You'll find that this garment is securely attached to its hanger, so as not to be worn. It is also the one garment on the rack that is not handmade but rather sourced from an online surplus sale. This garment is holding space for consideration and care for peoples disenfranchised from society by the US Prison Industrial Complex. The easily recognizable black and white horizontal striping is a historic motif of prison uniforms in the US meant to make incarcerated people more highly visible and differentiated from other populations. Recent years have seen an increase in campaigns for voting rights for incarcerated peoples as well as exposés of the systematic injustice and racism of the prison industrial complex.

Suffrage Flag Ponchos
These two flag "pinnies" are modeled after the flag of the US Suffrage movement. Alice Paul, one of the Suffragist leaders, is credited with bringing tactics from the UK Suffrage movement back to the US and translating their colors (green, white, and purple) to gold, white, and purple. As apparent in today's social movements, handmade visual communication strategies such as flags and protest signs are important to capturing popular attention and the spirit of a cause. Lucy Parsons, American anarchist and labor organizer, was also a master sewist and was likely responsible for many of the effective flags and banners of the early 20th century US labor movement.