Looking at the Woman in a Bomb Blast

Frozen in time, her bare legs stick up, her hands grasping the air. Her face is covered by a page from a newspaper. People approach to look at her, bending down to study the folds of her dress, the immature curve of her thigh, her neat toes, splayed in surprise. The woman is a sculpture, made by the Irish artist F. E. McWilliam in 1974. In this bronze figure’s awkwardly graceful near-death contortions, entire histories of pain,