Credit Default Swap (2012), Duratrans Film on Lightbox, Edition of 2 (Photo By Gail)

K8 Hardy’s work typically subverts common conceptions of fashion and consumerism, combining product close-ups, meticulous styling and staging. Her photographs and sculptures employee layering to confuse and undermine assumptions about class, economics, race and gender. She “teases out” the emotional meanings in everything – from clothes to figures in a landscape. “This blanket expression that you shouldn’t judge a person by their clothes is ridiculous to me,” she said. “Every article of clothing is so loaded with signifiers, I don’t know how you can help but make up stories about people and their desires based on what they wear.”