Shroud: The High Price Of Cheap Clothes

Rachel Breen, “Shroud” (2018) at the Perlman Teaching Museum
(Image:author for Hyperallergic)

The 1,281 garments represent the number of Bangladeshi garment workers killed in the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013, as well as the New Yorkers killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. Both incidents, which happened 102 years apart on different continents, illustrate the dangerous conditions workers who make cheap clothing have faced and continue to face.

Beneath the enormous shroud of clothes, which takes up the entire ceiling of the gallery of the Perlman Teaching Museum, benches are laid out in the center of the room. There, visitors feel the weight of the shroud hanging over them.

Rachel Breen and Alison Morse’s The Price of Our Clothes is on view through April 27 at the Perlman Teaching Museum (Weitz Center for Creativity, 320 Third Street, Northfield, Minnesota).

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