Shine

This assemblage of women's shoes forms the shape of a man's head -- intense and powerful with a strong jaw, heavy-lidded eyes, wide nose, and short hair knots. Piled heel-side up and without embellishment beyond what is on the shoes themselves, Cole imbues these inanimate objects with a human presence. The head's resemblance to nineteenth and twentieth century heads and masks from Cameroon is deliberate: "I want them to be links between worlds…. You live in the U.S. but here is a piece of art that looks like it is from another culture and another time, even though the materials in the work are strictly American."