For Paris Internationale 2024, Company presents works by Women’s History Museum, Troy Montes Michie, and Sixten Sandra Österberg whose artistic endeavors are all deeply rooted in meticulously curated aesthetic archives and the nuanced histories of fashion. Unlike the gendered notions perpetuated by the traditional avant-garde, which frequently disregards the empowering possibilities of craft and workmanship, these artists provide a sophisticated analysis from the perspective of the adorned and draped body.
In parallel with pioneering fashion/art collectives, such as Bernadette Corporation, and echoing the anti-corporate ethos of the Situationist Movement, Women’s History Museum employs commodity as a means of scrutinizing the commercialization of creativity. Founded in 2015, the duo challenges beauty standards by crafting innovative imagery spanning clothing, accessories, sculpture, photography, film, and performance. Their mission aims to capture the essence of fashion’s psychic reality while advocating for alternative inclusive methods of production.
Women’s History Museum was founded by Mattie Barringer (b. 1990) and Amanda McGowan (b. 1990). Solo exhibitions of note include those at Company Gallery, New York (2022), CCA, Berlin (2022), LUMA Westbau, Zurich (2018) and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York (2018). Women’s History Museum currently lives and works in New York.
Image: Women’s History Museum, Codependent City Women Dress, 2024
Cotton connected dresses, porcupine quill hair pieces by Sonny Molina, mannequins
Dimensions variable
Using collage as his primary methodology, Troy Montes Michie delves into the influence of print media on mass culture, disrupting historical patterns of consumption that tend to erase or fetishize specific communities. His work is marked by the stitch—a symbol with deep gendered social roots in craft and domesticity. Montes Michie harnesses the stitch’s dual nature as both a violent and healing act, utilizing it to explore masculinity, sexuality, and marginalized identities across metaphorical and geographical landscapes.
Montes Michie’s recent solo exhibitions include those at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2022) and at The California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2022). Other recent group exhibitions include those at the the Frist Art Museum, Nashville; ICA Los Angeles, Los Angeles; The Momentary, Arkansas; Philbrook Museum of Art, Oklahoma; Kunsthal KAdE, Netherlands; The MAC Belfast, Ireland; The Shed, New York; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; New Museum, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. His work was featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Michie was born 1985 in El Paso Texas and he lives and works in New York.
Image: Troy Montes Michie, Secret Window #2, 2023
Magazine pages, colored pencil, ink, polyester thread, graphite, and acrylic on paper
17 1/4 x 16 1/4 in
43.8 x 41.3 cm
Sixten Sandra Österberg challenges established notions of artistic value and perception in painterly compositions that hover between everyday life and visual fantasy. Seamlessly blending realistic depictions with bursts of abstract expressionism, she incorporates both classical and contemporary imagery and motifs from canonical Dutch Painting to studded jackets and tattoos. Each infused with symbolism, Österberg’s paintings maneuver through realistic and imaginative and between high art and kitsch.
Österberg’s recent solo exhibitions include those at Company Gallery, New York (2024), Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm (2023), Rörelser at Konstnärshuset, Stockholm (2021), and CF HILL, Stockholm (2021) as well as group shows at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Improper Walls, Vienna; and Accelerator, Stockholm. Österberg was born in 1990 in Stockholm, Sweden where she currently lives and works.
Image: Sixten Sandra Österberg, Home, quest, 2024
Oil on canvas
76 x 45 in
193 x 114.3 cm
For more information about the gallery click here.