Check Your Coat on the Floor, a mixed media installation, explores the historically sexualized body through the male gaze’s reframed lens, reinhabiting the female body’s assigned cropped perspective within a simple everyday object: a coat hanger. Hand-carved and sanded to resemble sprawling legs, these hangers are over twice the size of a standard coat hanger. They hang independently by the thread of a brittle wire hanger, retaining their uncanny formal design—any attempt to hang a formal suit coat results in it being dropped by the legs.
The outstretched, animated limbs posed in various sprawls imitate the ebb and flow of bodily autonomy historically afforded to women. This reality reconstructs the forced positions imposed by laws and regulations that separate women from the choices surrounding their bodies. The personified coat hangers confront viewers, highlighting the brutal reality of history repeating itself with metal coat hangers used in desperation to self-induce abortions.
