← Return to From Afar: 2020 Senior Art Exhibition
Mirrors are often associated with vanity, narcissism, and self-consciousness. By identifying and highlighting certain parts of the female figure, my artwork questions how mirrors correlate with these common themes. With the use of mirrors, shapes, and extreme contrast, I create multiple illusions of the female figure. The mirrors create repetition, reflection, textures, and saturated colors. While I use a variety of media, including charcoal and photography, the through line of my work remains consistent. While there may be subtle color differences between the media I use, my works are connected through their subject matter. My work includes a combination of warm-toned digital photographs and black-and-white film photographs with cooler lighting. The mirrors reflect and contort the composition of the female subject, creating a new figure with a new identity. My photographs serve as the source material for my charcoal drawings, which mimic the black-and-white film photographs on a larger scale and give the viewer another way of looking at the female figure.
I want my work to question how women are portrayed in photography, asking the viewer to consider how reflections and lighting can abstract identity. By eliminating or abstracting certain elements of the female figure, the viewer is moved to see a newly formed identity.