ISOyoh
She the Fettered | 2025 | Photograph pigment inkjet print | ed. 1/5 | 120 x 80cm
Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2025 - Finalist
Image courtesy of the artist
Artist Statement
Defiance and nostalgia seep from the masked woman’s hands. Never mind that her feet - and freedom - have been sacrificed for f(fashion)’s sake.
Women grant plausible deniability to designers, complicit in a cycle of glamour and glory, punishment and pain. Cue vision of teetering, tottering fashionistas - infantilised and abased - wobbling down catwalks.
Women are held hostage in anticipation of the next season’s collection, before fast fashion rip-offs appear in chain stores.
Fashion is a frivolous and wasteful form of retail capitalism. From corsets to codpieces and poke bonnets to periwigs, fashion is absurd – just like her expensive, gilded, sabre-tipped and dangerously-impractical shoes.
Salvatore Ferragamo invented steel supports to lift a woman’s heel 10 cm higher than the balls of her feet - thus carrying her entire weight with only straps, chains and buckles over her toes and fetlocks for support.
Stockholm Syndrome? Just stop it.