In Decorative Protection, Bari Ziperstein collapses the female figure by creating connections between the urban environment and decoration, while simultaneously wishing to protect and exalt the role of decoration, in both the arts and society at large. Ziperstein examines how simple objects such as fences and iron window bars relate to the role of the female form in society -- how such objects are designed to seduce and repel, arm and disarm.  Ziperstein’s totemic ceramic sculptures and photographs are inspired by an '80s magazine ad for wrought iron window bars. The advertisement, which affirms “not prison looking bars,” navigates the uneasy relationship between domestic security while maintaining a facade of looking pretty.  Through form, decoration and outer displays and appearances, the artist examines how the shadow side of the female psyche is asserted.

The human scale sculptures in Decorative Protection  are suggestive of historic wooden totem poles, which were erected to represent the protective spirits of ancestors, record history, oral traditions and marks the boundaries of a village.  Historically the depicted totem animals (here replaced by figurative ladies) reveal supernatural animals or animal-human combinations, which can shape shift between human and animal worlds. This fragmented surrealism in Ziperstein’s sculptures allows a new mythic figure to emerge that has adapted and marks a new territory in our urban environment.