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DIY Grrrl: Constructing, Disrupting, and Reclaiming Girlhood in the 1990s

Sat Jan 17
12 am - 11:59 pm ET
-
Sat Mar 07
12 am - 11:59 pm ET
80 Washington Square East, New York, NY

DIY Grrrl: Constructing, Disrupting, and Reclaiming Girlhood in the 1990s
January 17–March 7, 2026
80WSE Gallery | Project Space
80 Washington Square East, New York, NY

Curated by New York University Costume Studies Master’s Candidates: Erika Airikh, Ariel Bleakley, Rebecca Kaufman, Sloan Mulloy, and Kai Sweeney, under the instruction of Keren Ben-Horin.

Often imagined as innocent or naïve, girlhood is a complex terrain where self-discovery and joy coexist with the pressures and restrictions of adolescence. DIY Grrrl: Constructing, Disrupting, and Reclaiming Girlhood in the 1990s examines how young women and girls in the last decade of the 20th century confronted dominant social expectations and redefined ideas of femininity through handcraft, community building, and a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach. With a new millennium on the horizon, girlhood became a landscape of possibility rather than a predetermined stage of life. 

DIY Grrrl reframes girlhood as a political condition concerned with issues of representation, bodily autonomy, and the right to self-definition. The term “girl” is understood as encompassing multiple possibilities across lines of gender, sexuality, race, and lived experience. Historical objects that pushed boundaries such as the works of Riot Grrl artist Tammy Rae Carland, the designs of Betsey Johnson, and an American Girl doll are placed in conversation with contemporary objects ranging from a home scrapbook to a SKIMS thong. Girlhood emerges in this exhibit not as nostalgia but as a contested and continually reconstructed space. 

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