Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #96, from her critically acclaimed Centerfolds series, operates within a complex matrix of gaze, representation, and self-identity. This image, presenting Sherman herself in an ambiguous, almost adolescent pose, prostrate on the floor and clutching a classified ad, engages in a critical dialogue with the viewer. It challenges the very conventions of looking and the politics of representation that underpin them.
The composition, with its echoes of a centerfold yet distinctly lacking in overt sexualization, subverts the normative expectations of such imagery. Instead of yielding a commodified figure of female sexuality, Sherman presents a tableau of introspection, vulnerability, and perhaps longing. The subject’s averted gaze disrupts the traditional dynamic between viewer and viewed, undermining the passive role historically assigned to women in both art and popular culture.
In Untitled #96, the use of color and light is subtly manipulative, casting the scene in hues that suggest both the innocence and the ephemerality of youth. The spatial arrangement, with the figure isolated in the center of a cropped, almost oppressive, emptiness, amplifies a narrative of solitude and self-reflection. The titular suggestion of anti-sexuality is reflected even in the numerical reversal of “69” to “96.” It positions the subject within a narrative of self-reflection that is distinctly removed from the Piscean embrace of subject and object in 69.
Sherman’s work here is less about portraiture in the traditional sense and more about the deconstruction of identity. The ambiguity inherent in the scene opens a space for multiple readings, wherein each viewer is implicated in the act of meaning-making. Sherman, simultaneously the artist and the subject, orchestrates this interplay, crafting an identity that is both a performance and a challenge to the viewer’s interpretive frameworks.
Untitled #96 becomes a critical tool for examining the fluidity of identity and the performative aspects of gender. It underscores the constructed nature of femininity and critiques the societal and visual structures that shape our perception of it. In this work, Sherman adeptly navigates the terrain of modern identity politics, blurring the boundaries between art and life, image and self, and in doing so, compels a reconsideration of how identities are formed, performed, and perceived in contemporary culture.
