Bonnie Collura

Collura emerged in the later 1990s among artists responding to such issues as the disavowal of referentiality and narrative by modernism, postmodern information overload, and the collapse of various universal distinctions (e.g., organism and machine, human and animal).

[35][32][36][2] In her first solo exhibition, "To the Third" (Janice Guy, 1997), Collura fused the Greek underworld myth of Persephone and the story of Snow White into an ambitious sculptural installation exploring the neo-pagan Triple Goddess (Maiden/Mother/Crone) theme.

[8][32] The tableau of interlocking, almost melted-looking figural and landscape elements—semi-organic shrouded fragments, gesturing limbs and forms resembling theatrical props, prototypes or debris from children's games—was hand-carved from foam insulation and smoothly painted in a cartoon-like color scheme.

[32][8][37] Artforum's Jan Avgikos wrote that it "tapped into a cutting edge where comics, cartoons, and movies meet computer-generated models, animation, and special effects ... a virtual reality of mutability: everything is familiar, thoroughly generic, and constantly morphing.

[5][40][4][30] They melded barely recognizable human and animal forms, branches, classical drapery and commedia dell'arte costuming, seemingly embattled to materialize out of central, amorphous masses (e.g., Chain Reaction, 1999).

[5][41][6][4] Reviewers characterized these works as "dramatically abject"[6] portrayals of ecstasy or distress that suggested souls entrapped in terrestrial chaos or angels expelled into corporeality as monsters and twisted freaks of nature.

[4][30] New York Times critic Holland Cotter likened them to "multi-vehicle collisions ... Baroque sculpture, Disney animation and Butler's Lives of the Saints seem to have met at meltdown speed, leaving stray limbs and maimed myths protruding from the wreckage.

"[35] Guardian (2003) portrayed a 21st-century Madonna with a clown's nose and an erupting hand, while Death of a Virgin (2006–11) depicted a large-eared, shattered figure on its back atop a vertical mass, as if after a great fall.

[42][2] The project originated in Collura's interest in constructing a persona or surrogate self, à la the Pygmalion, Galatea and Frankenstein myths; as a female artist-creator, however, she reverses the traditional gender relationships of those stories.

[2][42] The sculptures and installations of the project's "Wicked" portion roughly trace the Prince character's evolution from a mythical Golem (a being made from inanimate matter like clay or mud) to its apotheosis as a heroic ideal pieced together from aspects of four male archetypes: Jesus, St. Sebastian, C-3PO and Abraham Lincoln.

[43][12][2] A unifying thread between those four figures is that each suffered an identifiable wound associated with martyrdom and fragility, holes that Collura has re-interpreted as portals or vaginal openings representing the potentially disruptive energy of women.