Born in 1990, Bunny Rogers grew up on the internet, and her art vividly conveys a childhood lived partly in the real world and partly online. Her installation is the third in a trilogy set at Columbine High School, scene of the 1999 school shooting. While the first two parts revolved around Columbine’s library and cafeteria, respectively, the third centers on the school’s auditorium.
In a darkened theater furnished with a large toy orca representing the SeaWorld animal that killed three people, an animated video features characters appropriated from MTV’s series Clone High. Stand-ins for the artist, her family and her friends, they sing a Russian rendition of “Memory” from Cats, a lugubrious performance that, like the cuddly orca, represents an attempt to heal public and private trauma. Another series of sculptures—including three savaged office chairs and a chain-link fence decorated with autumn leaves—suggests the aftermath of violence and rituals of mourning.
Rogers’s work is surprisingly potent, tapping into a peculiarly American strain of weirdness, teenage angst and the uncertain comforts of family and community. Sometimes these things combine to produce tragedies like Columbine. At other times they conspire to create artists of promise like Rogers.