The new limited-edition Cindy SHERMAN skateboard art collection empowers refugee & at-risk youth in Athens
We have just dropped a pair of skateboard triptych editions (50 hand-signed of each) depicting two of the photographic artist Cindy SHERMAN’s most legendary artworks. Working closely with the artist, as well as Fondation Beyeler, 10% of all revenue will go towards Free Movement Skateboarding in Greece. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Photography, identity, community.
Cindy SHERMAN's hand-signed skateboard editions
Cindy SHERMAN’s (b.1954) ground-breaking photographs have interrogated themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades. Today, in collaboration with THE SKATEROOM, the artist is united with a community-focused social skate NGO, Free Movement Skateboarding, to empower and educate local at-risk and refugee youth in Athens, Greece.
The new collection, launched under THE SKATEROOM’s social impact model, comprises two very-limited triptych skateboard pieces (50 editions of each). The two artworks – Untitled Film Still #21, 1978 and Untitled #414, 2003 – are taken from two of Cindy Sherman’s most iconic series.
The Collection - Hand-Signed by Cindy SHERMAN
Untitled Film Stills
Her critically acclaimed Untitled Film Stills, a suite of 69 black and white portraits, sees Cindy Sherman impersonate a myriad of stereotypical female characters and caricatures inspired by Hollywood pictures, film noir, and B movies. Each of Sherman’s sixty-nine Untitled Film Stills (1977–80) presents a female heroine from a movie that feels familiar, as if we’ve seen it before. In this […]#21, we see the determined face of a young girl, setting out for her new career in a bustling metropolis. Sherman plays the role, dressing herself precisely to capture the familiarity of a scene we recognize, yet is undeniably novel. It is a fiction, but the truth of the piece peers through – questioning the role of femininity in postwar America – a period that defined Sherman as she grew up to become a definitive artist in contemporary culture.
Each of the 50 editions is hand-signed by Cindy Sherman.
The Clown series
For the second edition in the collection, Sherman’s Clown series takes center stage. In Untitled #414, 2003, we find Cindy Sherman disguised as a clown, wrapped in turquoise robe bedazzled in sequins – reminiscent of a Japanese kimono. Like so much of her work, this piece shows Cindy Sherman carefully manipulating her pose, gesture, costume and makeup, using lighting, and composition to create dramatic portraits of herself as a clown. Staged against backdrops of vivid color, Sherman’s Clowns series mixes the masquerade and the make believe, humor and horror. Is this image hysterical or unsettling? Is the character delighted or, beneath the makeup, deeply troubled?
Each of the 50 editions is hand-signed by Cindy Sherman.
Supporting Free Movement Skateboarding
Empowering refugees in Athens through skateboarding
10% of the revenue from the very-limited Cindy Sherman collection will go towards Greece-based NGO, Free Movement Skateboarding. This project, founded in 2016, supports and promotes the wellbeing, empowerment and social cohesion of youth in Athens, through skateboarding. In the past five years, over 7,000 participants have attended their sessions from 57 nationalities – 40% of these are girls.
Footage by Evan MARAGKOUDAKIS, Edit by Stijn ERNES
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