Second Skin Exhibition Is an 'Opportunity to Share How Clothing Becomes a Living Archive'

At the center of Second Skin is not fashion as spectacle, but fashion as language, and at the center of that idea is curator Estrellita B. Brodsky. Long known for championing artists from Latin America and its diaspora, Brodsky brings a deeply intellectual, emotionally grounded perspective to the exhibition, which is on view at Southampton Arts Center through December 28. For her, clothing is never superficial. It is a second body, a social archive, and a site where identity, power, and memory are constantly negotiated

“I’m really thrilled to have been invited to curate this exhibition,” Brodsky said. “It’s an opportunity to share how clothing becomes a living archive, density, memory, and cultural expression.”

That concept drives every curatorial decision in Second Skin, which brings together artists who use dress not as decoration, but as material evidence of lived experience.

Brodsky’s approach resists the assumption that fashion is neutral. “We tend to think of fashion as self-propelling, just a form of expression,” she explained.

“But it really is something that can be manipulated and has been manipulated.” In Second Skin, artists expose how clothing shapes perception: how bodies are framed, protected, eroticized, racialized, or erased. Fashion becomes both armor and vulnerability.

The exhibition presents approximately 30 works from the early 1950s to the present, spanning photography, sculpture, textiles, wearable objects, and archival material. While the media vary, the throughline is consistent. Each work treats clothing as a charged surface, one that absorbs social pressure, political violence, cultural projection, and personal history.

Brodsky’s focus on artists from Latin America and its diaspora is intentional, not thematic shorthand. “My focus has historically been on works by artists from Latin America and the diaspora,” she said, noting that Second Skin places those voices within a broader international context.

By positioning them alongside artists addressing similar concerns from different cultural vantage points, the exhibition emphasizes resonance rather than separation.

Some artists in the exhibition create their own garments as a means of protection or protest, confronting political or sexual violence through materials that cut, shield, or constrict the body. Others appropriate commercial motifs, tropical prints, ethnic patterns, familiar silhouettes, to critique colonial narratives and the commodification of identity. In these works, fashion becomes a site of resistance rather than aspiration.

Brodsky’s criteria for selecting artists is rooted in both instinct and rigor. “The work has to resonate with me,” she said. “It has to convey an emotional or aesthetic response, and it has to articulate a concept that’s worth considering.” She is quick to distinguish this from ornamentation. “These works are not frivolous,” she said. “They’re not superficial decoration.” Even artists who began in the fashion world are included because they have reached a point in their practice where they are asking harder questions, about beauty, about power, about visibility.

That seriousness is evident in works that initially resemble everyday clothing but reveal something more unsettling upon closer inspection. Garments that appear wearable expose razor blades, bulletproof fabrics, or exaggerated forms that destabilize comfort and safety. “It does make you think,” Brodsky said, describing how innocence and danger often coexist in the same piece. The clothing lures viewers in, only to confront them with what lies beneath.

The exhibition’s conceptual framework comes to life most visibly on December 20, when Brodsky hosts a Toast to the Artists featuring a live participatory performance, Fashion Interventions, by Gabriela Galván to mark the last week of the exhibition. Originally developed in Soho in 2007, the performance invites visitors to bring in clothing they might otherwise discard. Galván transforms the garments on the spot, turning private decisions about waste and value into a public act of reimagining. Also in attendance, Felix Beaudry describes his impromptu artist intervention as a playful gender performance while activating a hyper-muscular suit.

“I call it a celebration,” Brodsky said, emphasizing that the event is not a closing, but a communal moment. The act of repurposing clothing becomes symbolic, a way of creating new identity from what has been rejected, and of sharing responsibility for how we consume and discard.

Importantly, the works in Second Skin are not for sale. “I would say it’s purely art,” Brodsky said. That distinction reinforces the exhibition’s intent: this is not about acquisition, but reflection. Still, the show inevitably provokes questions about desire and value in a culture accustomed to instant purchase. What does it mean to want something you cannot own? What does fashion communicate when it refuses commodification?

When asked what she hopes visitors take away, Brodsky returns to the idea of awareness. “I hope people start questioning concepts they feel are given,” she said. “Fashion is not a neutral space. It’s charged.” That charge can be used destructively or critically, and Second Skin insists on the latter.

Though unmistakably timely, Brodsky sees the exhibition as fundamentally enduring. “Good art is always timely,” she said. Referencing works that engage with media spectacle and collective fascination with disaster, she notes that these concerns recur across decades. Fashion, like history, repeats itself, unless we interrogate it.

After its Southampton run, Second Skin will travel to a nonprofit foundation space in New York City, ANOTHER SPACE, where it will expand and incorporate additional performance elements. For Brodsky, the exhibition is not fixed. It evolves, just as identity does.

Ultimately, Second Skin is a portrait of Brodsky’s curatorial philosophy: fashion as evidence, clothing as memory, and art as a means of asking better questions. What we wear, the exhibition suggests, is never just what we wear. It is who we are, who we’ve been, and who we are allowed to be.

For more information, please visit Southampton Arts Center's website or contact info@southamptoncenter.org.