Willie Cole created this work by scorching a canvas with a hot clothes iron. The iron scorches form four crowns on the canvas, which is stretched on a wooden frame shaped like an ironing board—a testament perhaps to the nobility of domestic labor, or to the dignity of kidnapped Africans packed together on America-bound slave ships, the shape of which Cole has likened to ironing boards. For Cole, the work is ultimately about energy. Clothes irons transfer heat to a surface in order to eliminate wrinkles. If used in one way, that energy is an instigator of beauty. If applied too long in one spot, the energy becomes an instrument of destruction, scorching the surface and corrupting what it was supposed to make perfect. Cole uses old irons and the burn marks they leave behind to locate humanity in the residual energy of a consumer product.