The women invoked in Angela Ellsworth’s sculpture, Eliza and Emily, are bound to each other: the pin-sharp straps of these 19th-century-style bonnets, fashioned from thousands of pearl corsage pins, are continuous, holding them forever in place, opposing and supporting one another. A descendant of Mormon prophet Lorenzo Snow, Ellsworth examines women in the context of fundamentalist Mormonism, and the ritual, symbolism, and constraint inherent in trappings such as Seer Bonnets. These unwearable bonnets embody sister wives, representatives of a still-practiced polygamist tradition of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and reference the prophet Joseph Smith’s use of “seer stones”—stones he believed to be imbued with divine power. The circular designs on Ellsworth’s bonnets allude to Smith’s visionary stones. “The circles are my idea of giving the women wearing the bonnets their own vision and the possibility of seeing and translating things.” ⁠ ⁠ Pictured: An...