Dirt

Show & Culture

They say you should never air your dirty laundry in public. Gabriela Muñoz makes quite a show of it. Buried under a mountain of clothes – lace, faded dresses, mismatched underwear – the Mexican clown runs her fingers over them, breathes them in, weighs them in her hands. Each one stirs a memory: tender, absurd, or shameful – the kind you thought you’d long since washed away. And instead of letting them go, she slips them on, piece by piece, until she’s wearing every woman she’s ever been. Without a word, a year after Julieta, Gabriela Muñoz turns this heap of fabric into a self-portrait – by turns wildly funny and disarmingly fragile. And beneath the layers we wrap ourselves in to face the world, what breaks through is the courage it sometimes takes to show who we already are.