This print derives from a series developed in 2022, in which Colmegna dived into the story of the Mansonite (the young girls who were manipulated by Charles Manson for his murders). The image is taken from an archival press library. Her goal isn’t police work per se, but to reveal how details at the margins of crime scenes become powerfully allusive and lend themselves to a narrative. Examining the visual cues in the images, trying to interpret the signs in their clothes, their body language, the époque; she doodles on top of the prints with ice creamy agenda style. So, with some pleasure-seeking Colmegna asks herself: What – not who- are these girls who search the Los Angeles bins.
No external sign betrays the horror of their bloody acts, made almost like in a tantrum of a sadistic children’s game. In this new complexity of the process; the alchemy through which the Manson girls metamorphose into these characters are printed in pink and turquoise silkscreens referencing pop and surf and culminates with the attempt to change those terrifying powers for simply charming ones; as if they were barbie dolls.
