What do you wear that makes you feel powerful?

That is the question that the artist collaboration Two Girls Working have asked more than 600 women across the United States. For seven years, Tiffany Ludwig and Renee Piechocki gathered diverse groups women, at seventy-six interview sessions, in fifteen states. The women’s responses are the artwork Trappings.

The exhibition at MIA Gallery features ten women who participated in the project and were included in the book Trappings: Stories of Women, Power and Clothing. To develop the book, the artists reconnected with sixty women, taking additional photographs and asking them to expand on their original stories. The portraits in this exhibition were captured during those sessions. The texts and audio works are excerpts from the women’s interviews. The gallery includes an interactive component that allows visitors to respond to the question: what do you wear that makes you feel powerful?

Visitors to MIA are encouraged to ask themselves, or a friend, the project question and email their response and photo to MIA@twogirlsworking.com. The video projection at the front of the gallery is a live feed from the artists’ website.