An Artist Has Created an Installation Examining Socialite Scammer Anna Delvey’s Courtroom Fashion

When “socialite scammer” Anna
Delvey went to trial earlier this
year, a lot of ink was spilled on what she wore in court, from
a basic beige H&M sweater and a lacy First Communion-style
dress to a sleek Miu Miu gown. One Instagram account, @annadelveycourtlooks, even chronicled her
clothes, which were, after all, selected by a celebrity stylist
recruited to work pro-bono by her lawyer.

A new London-based installation
by American artist Cynthia Talmadge flips the script, asking not
what the clothes say about Delvey, but what our “tabloid
fascination” with her fashion says about us.

Titled, “Four Courtroom Outfits of Anna
Delvey,” Talmadge’s public
installation occupies a storefront window in the Piccadilly Circus
underground station in London, used for public art installations by
her gallery, Soft Opening. Front and center is a dressing screen, the
panels of which are decorated with cornflower blue painted
ornaments, representing “invented heraldry” that tells the story of
Delvey’s rise and fall via symbols. Looking close, you will see
items ranging from a Henri Bendel shopping bag to a matchbook from a luxury resort hotel
in Morocco (where she infamously spend $65,000 while pretending to
be an heiress) to the building of the New York Criminal Court in
Manhattan where she was tried.

The real attraction is what goes on behind the screen however,
where a motorized device throws, successively, different Delvey
outfits briefly into view before whisking each one out of sight
again, one after another. Talmadge considers this spectacle a
kind of portrait of the elusive fake heiress: “These courtroom
outfits, presented in an infinite loop of ‘hysterical’ indecision,
represent the closest we can get to her inner reality,” a press
release explains.

Trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and based in New
York, Talmadge is known for art that walks a fine line between
kitsch and sincerity. In 2018 at 56 Henry, she presented a
critically acclaimed set of
paintings depicting a New York funeral home (Frank E. Campbell, the
“funeral home to the stars”) in a semi-ironic Pointillist style,
while also transforming the gallery itself into an installation
that evoked its interiors. At Halsey McKay, she
showed a suite of paintings recreating the opening images of soap
operas like As the World Turns and One Life to
Live.

Her interest in the symbolism of
the Anna Delvey case makes a lot of sense given her history of
finding pathos in the seemingly frivolous. “People are obsessed
with the case because it hits so close to home,” Talmadge
told the Art
Newspaper. “As
young women we constantly battle with feelings of fraudulence.
Anyone who is hustling in the creative industries can relate to
her.” 

“Cynthia Talmadge: Four
Courtroom Outfits of Anna Delvey” is on view through November 24,
2019 at Soft Opening.

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Socialite Scammer Anna Delvey’s Courtroom Fashion appeared
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