Dress Codes
The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video
October 2, 2009–January 17, 2010
International Center of Photography
New York

The Triennial is ICP's signature exhibition: a global survey of the most exciting and challenging new work in photography and video. The only recurring U.S. exhibition specializing in international contemporary photography and video, the Third Triennial marks the closing cycle of ICP's 2009 Year of Fashion, a series of projects that critically examine fashion and its relationship to art and other cultural and social phenomena.

Through the lens of fashion—in its broadest conception—the Triennial will look at the proliferation of photo-and video-based work exploring the uses of style, image, and personal presentation.

Of the 34 artists from 11 countries to be included in the global survey, 24 — or 70 percent — are women. So, 70 percent women? The number is shocking. Perhaps the tipped balance has something to do with the triennial's theme? Titled "Dress Codes," the exhibition is an exploration of fashion "as a form of social communication" in which artists "use costume, clothing, and disguise to created a rich visual language filled with specific references to history, culture, gender, and geography." (Not that fashion, long dominated by male designers and photographers, necessarily provides a progressive model.) The second triennial, in contrast, which bore the title "Ecotopia" and offered "new perspectives on humanity’s increasingly fraught relation to the natural world and to the planet that sustains us," included only 11 women among its 43 artists (some of which worked in collectives).

"We looked at work by hundreds of artists in the course of researching the exhibition and selected the most compelling new work dealing with fashion, style, and self-presentation," said associate curator Kristen Lubben, one of the exhibition's organizers, along with other ICP curators Christopher Phillips and Carol Squiers and photography critic Vince Aletti. "We did not set out with the intent to include a particular proportion of women artists. However, it is perhaps not surprising that some of the more interesting work being done on this theme is by women and queer artists, since it is raises issues of gender and identity."

Included in "Dress Codes" are a range of identity-exploring artists from American fixtures like Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman to newcomers like China's Cao Fei (born 1978); Sweden-born, Berlin-based Nathalie Djurberg (born 1978); and Turkish-born, Brooklyn based Pinar Yolaçan (born 1981). Standout men rounding out the program include Germany's Thorsten Brinkmann and American Kalup Linzy. Linzy, along with Alice O'Malley and Jeremy Kost, is notable for his explorations of gender identity — he often performs in drag.