Fashionable Girls Come of Age in Kukula’s “Haute Debutantes”

We first featured Connecticut based Nataly “Kukula” Abramovitch in Hi-Fructose Vol. 7, who paints fashion obsessed pale-skinned beauties that transform into ornate objects. For her next solo exhibition “Haute Debutantes” at AFA Gallery in New York, opening September 5th, Kukula continues to explore this idea of transformation and female beauty. Her definition of a debutante, a high-class girl entering into fashionable society, is not what you might expect. In her show’s statement, she says, “A haute debutante is not an especially rich brat. She may or may not wear haute couture at all. She does take upon herself the task of appearing in the world in a certain way, a way that takes the art of dress seriously. But neither is she bound by the claustrophobic mannerisms of the traditional debutante cotillion. She is haute – above all that. Her knowledge and skill provide her a basis for creativity, allow her to transcend the accepted conventions. The haute debutante aspires to create a world of her own.” Where traditional debutantes dress in white to represent their purity, here Kukula reinvents them as colorful and fashionably rebellious. They are hardly the well-mannered daughters of the elite, but rather girls of all types; they are sexual, punk, ghetto, and vivacious courtiers. Some are painted to look like they are made of glass, porcelain, and delicious desserts, delectable objects of their own society – and this is how they like it. Coming of age in Kukula’s world means being unafraid to explore the potential of who they are meant to be.