Hanging By A Thread is part of the Off The Canvas Collection.

ARTIST STATEMENT

With “Hanging by a Thread,” Ann Golumbuk asks the viewer to physically grapple with the issue of women’s mass incarceration. Women and girls represent the fastest growing populations in jails and prisons, and often their imprisonment is a result of being forced into prostitution and
trafficking or of committing offenses tied to escaping abuse.

This life-size jumpsuit that echoes Ann’s own iconic orange painter’s coveralls has been transformed to a corporeal image that is entirely devoid of an actual body. In covering the suit in mugshots and numbers, Ann speaks to the dehumanization of women who are often victims rather than perpetrators. Perhaps most poignantly, Ann places unnamed images of women in the back pocket, demonstrating how their abusers manipulate and constrict the lives of these women, leaving them hanging by a
single thread.