Mila 2015

Sofia Bonati made this arresting image, "Mila", using what appears to be digital painting techniques at some point in the late 20th or early 21st century. The figure of Mila, with her butterfly wings, seems to borrow from the tradition of surrealist portraiture. The cool reserve of her expression contrasts with the symbolic potential of the butterfly, a creature associated with transformation. The image speaks to a number of social and cultural trends of our present time, particularly the relationship between nature and technology. The artist may be suggesting the ambiguous place that the natural world has in our contemporary consciousness. Butterflies stand for the beauty of the natural world but here are presented as the symmetrical products of the digital realm. The picture could be read as a comment on the contemporary obsession with idealized self-representation, the perfection of which is often only possible through technological intervention. To understand this image better, we might study other examples of modern surrealist portraiture to find out whether Bonati is referencing certain forms of social critique.