The Unnerving Brilliance of Nancy Grossman’s Head Sculptures

Nancy Grossman’s head sculptures don’t sit quietly. Wrapped in leather, bound with straps, and often gagged, they hold their ground with an intensity that is hard to ignore. Their surfaces, stitched and pulled tight, give no clear emotional cues, offering little in the way of easy interpretation.

She began making them in the late 1960s, when artists were pulling apart ideas of identity, gender, and power. Some critics saw the bondage-like elements and latched onto BDSM as the obvious reference. Others framed them as statements on violence and control. Grossman shrugged off both theories. She called them self-portraits and let people deal with it however they wanted.

Each sculpture starts with a carved wooden core before being wrapped in leather, stitched with precision, and reinforced with zippers and buckles. The way the material stretches over the structure creates a skin-like surface, holding the features in place with an unsettling tightness. Some heads have their mouths strapped shut, others have eyes completely covered. Despite the restraint, they don’t look powerless. The craftsmanship is exact, almost surgical.

The assumption that these were depictions of men came up frequently. The heads have strong jawlines and pronounced brows, leading critics to believe they represented silenced masculinity. Grossman dismissed the idea outright. These were versions of herself. The assumption that strength or defiance automatically pointed to maleness wasn’t her concern.

She never set out to make delicate or ornamental objects. She trained in woodworking, understood machinery, and approached sculpture with a physical intensity that mirrored the energy she put into the work. The heads weren’t statements about gender or victimhood. They were manifestations of force—something neither purely autobiographical nor fully detached.

Encountering one of these sculptures in person is different from seeing them in photographs. The leather’s texture, the weight of the piece, the exactness of every strap and stitch—it all contributes to their undeniable presence.

Art history tends to like things that fit into neat categories. Grossman’s work doesn’t. The heads resist simple narratives. They exist somewhere between sculpture, performance, and psychological artifact. There is no singular way to understand them, which is what makes them impossible to forget.

Standing in front of one, the need for an explanation fades. The work isn’t there to be solved—it just looks back. And that’s enough.