I have always felt as though I existed between two realities. This feeling has manifested itself into hours of looking at a mirror and deep self-examination. However, the person that I see seems unfamiliar to the person that exists in the real world. As an artist, I am interested in the way one simultaneously exists in two spaces. When one looks in a mirror, they often think that they are looking at a perfect reflection, but even the flattest mirrors distort by reflecting the reversed image of its surroundings. An image with which one becomes so familiar that one becomes more comfortable with their reversed reflection than the “true” image one might see in a photograph or a video. In some ways a reflection can ground someone in their own bodies and their surroundings, but at the same time a reflection can remove one’s self from physical reality and allow them to see their perceived one. This dual existence between the what is there and what is not is central to my artistic inquiry.
In this work I use mirrors to distort spaces in order to remove viewers from the familiar world and place them in an illusionary one. When viewers look for their own reflections they are met with multiple distorted or fragmented images. In these small encounters with an unfamiliar self in an unfamiliar place, viewers explore the ways they exist in both their own reality and the physical one.
