Cast in bronze, the cheekily titled Woman in Heels depicts an overtly feminized form rendered from an assemblage of high-heeled shoes. The work is part of a series Cole refers to as Shoonufu figures. The name references the Senufo people of Africa, whose sculptural aesthetics of elongated forms Cole is mimicking in the work. To create most of his shoe sculptures, Cole assembles women’s vintage, luxury shoes into anthropomorphic forms reminiscent of African masks and figures. For this work, Cole made a cast of his original sculpture in order to create an enlarged version of it more attuned to a human scale. By bringing together multiples of found consumer objects and transfiguring them into an anthropomorphic form, Cole creates the conditions for viewers to reexamine their relationship to the objects. Each of Cole’s shoes has a history as a consumer object. Every scratch and scuff on their soles is a record of someone’s existence, a remnant of past energy. Like the masks and sculptural figures Cole assembles from them, these objects are connected to a human desire for transformation and adoration. Cole’s artworks exemplify the spirit, optimism, and mystery within that desire.