Angela Ellsworth - "Seer Bonnet (Emily)", 2011, pins, fabric, steel, wood.

Phoenix, Arizona based Angela Ellsworth's Seer Bonnets are objects that reference female physicality and spirituality. The artist was raised as a Mormon and although she is no longer a member of the church, her work has been heavily inspired by its history and culture. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Lorenzo Snow, a Mormon prophet and the fifth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) as well as a polygamist (he was documented as having nine wives).

The series of un-wearable bonnets represent Snow's wifes and the pearl pins refer to "seer stones", an important element of revelations in the history of the LDS. Ellsworth's work serves as a visual metaphor of the "sister wives" living in the polygamous Mormon lifestyle of LDS and FLDS (fundamental Mormon) communities: outside the bonnets are beautiful and elaborate but from inside look like instruments of torture and oppression.
Those antiquated pioneer women's bonnets are constructed out of thousands of pearl-tipped corsage pins embedded into fabric with their points directed inwards. The small, fetish-like objects not only refer to the tradition of craft work in the home - women's work - but also stand as disembodied memorials to the lives suffering cruelty, submission and control.