Following Sherman’s long-term photographic investigation into the construction of identity and the nature of representation, these tapestries are based on pictures posted on the artist’s personal Instagram account, which she creates using widely available filters and face-altering apps. Impossible to print in large scale due to the low-resolution nature of the original Instagram images, they are transposed into woven textiles, which in turn resonate with the pixelation of the source material: Pixels, here, translate to the warp and weft of thread.

The transition from a pixelated image into a woven one allows for these characters to come to life through visually satisfying and tangible details. The materiality of tapestry creates a textural surface that no app or filter could truly recreate, and as a result, the surfaces of these works are saturated with physicality. The porousness of the purple, alien-like figure’s skin in Untitled (2020) is apparent with each tightly stitched tapestry thread; while the knit sweater worn by Sherman in Untitled (2019)—originally just an image of woolen fabric—turns into actual, vibrant textile whose softness is both visual and physical.

In Sherman’s tapestries, the interplay between character and background is as dynamic as ever. Earlier bodies of work feature distorted human figures, sometimes through the use of dramatic prostheses. In Untitled #157 (1986), for example, Sherman takes on a goat-like form, with horns and pointed ears. In a more recent body of work, developed from editorials she created for Harper’s Bazaar magazine, the backgrounds begin to replicate to dizzying effect and interweave with the figure through Sherman’s use of image-editing techniques.

Sherman’s attention throughout her practice both to drama and to fashion connects the work to the long history of tapestry—a medium that in centuries past was valued even more highly than painting. Sherman’s works are produced in Flanders, which saw its golden age of tapestry beginning in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when weavers developed new techniques that expanded their range of textures and visual effects, as well as the scale and intricacy of their compositions.

Sumptuous, and often woven with silk or gilded threads, tapestries connoted grandeur and wealth in the homes of those that could afford them. They also focused on evocative details such as setting, facial expressions and elegant fabrics and costumes.

Historically, each work began with a “cartoon” of the image to be woven; the workshop would then set to work transposing that image into thread. Sherman’s tapestries tap directly into this history: Instead of a hand-drawn or painted cartoon, she provides the digitally manipulated image straight from Instagram. Sherman’s tapestries also share the larger-than-life scale of these predecessors, and many include finer, more luxurious silken threads.