Nara’s glossy white sculpture depicts the cutesy figure of a girl/dog hybrid with enlarged head and eyes and a button nose perched on a short snout. She is a 12-foot-tall sentinel that guards the Pappajohn Sculpture Park, a reference by the artist to komainu, lion-like statues that are commonly placed near the entrance to Buddhist temples. Her mouth may read as smiling gently in welcome or pursed in an enigmatic smirk, depending on the direction from which one approaches. Her eyes are cutely oversized, or perhaps they are hollow. Her long dress may be a shroud. In his practice, Nara is inspired by both Eastern pop culture forms such as manga and anima, as well as western influences including Disney characters and comic books. He engages the Japanese aesthetic known as kima-kawaii (cuteness with an edge), in which imagery is simultaneously sinister and sweet. This style rose to prominence with the development of Japanese Neo Pop in the 1980s and 1990s, a movement that adopted kitschy popular imagery to comment on globalized consumerism and mass media. The kima-kawaii style is also used by artist Takahashi Murakami and animator Hayao Miyazaki, who, like Nara, rely on a combination of cuteness and menace to convey complex messages about the innocence and darkness both inherent in human experience. Nara’s "demon children” are most frequently depictions of young girls. The piece may refer to the artist's own personal history—his parents expected him to be a girl, and he lost an older sister at birth who he believes he carries with him. "Emotionally," he says "part of me resembles a little girl."(1)

(1) Linda Yablonsky, "The Ghosts of Park Avenue,” New York Times, September 10, 2010, https://archive.nytimes.com/tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/artifacts-the-ghosts-of-park-avenue/