Women's History Museum, the collaborative duo of Mattie Barringer and Amanda McGowan, presents their first institutional solo exhibition in the U.S., "Grisette à l'enfer," at Amant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The show reimagines the 17th-century French grisette—a working-class woman who was both a laborer and a style icon—through a blend of past video, fashion, and sculpture, staged as a re-creation of a shopping experience. Works like "For a Moment I Have No Pain" (2025) and "Lit Reliquaire de Mary Magdalene" (2025) explore femininity, desire, and the price of beauty, with references to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the artists' own history meeting at that site.
The exhibition matters because it connects historical labor and fashion to contemporary precarity, using the figure of the grisette to critique the fashion industry's amnesia about its social and material roots. By placing their work in a hellish, shop-like setting, Barringer and McGowan challenge viewers to consider how femininity and commerce intertwine, and how beauty can emerge from grief and injustice. The show also underscores the growing relevance of artist-run or collaborative practices that merge fashion, art, and social commentary, especially in a moment when fashion week itself is described as the "worst ever."