THE GILDED AGE

When it comes to earrings, more is more

Vanities/Accoutrements

"They just piled up," artist Doreen Garner says of her array of piercings, which total n across both ears and varyingly showcase delicate sets of hoops, heavy gold studs, and dangling sculptural pieces. Garner, whose first job was working at the front desk of a Philadelphia piercing shop, has long embraced what she calls a "more is better" approach to such ornamentation. Now style arbiters from Rihanna to Zoe Kravitz have solidified multiple piercings as a lasting red-carpet look, and celebrity piercers and jewelers like J. Colby Smith offer bedecked Instagram feeds of inspiration.

In her visceral work as a sculptor, Garner interrogates the medical industry's exploitation of black bodies. Her 2017 show "Purge," at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, exposed the damage done by the 19th-century doctor J. Marion Sims. Garner is interested in the interplay between "pain and power," she says. Her piercings, which she describes as a form of self-ownership and adornment, play a part in that conversation. And aesthetically, layering her preferred brass and roseand yellow-gold pieces (or the bejeweled collection seen here) allows for maximalism on a micro scale. Rather than choose which statement pieces to wear, she says, "I stack them all."

KEZIAH WEIR

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