reconflection
recognition + reconnection + reflection
15-25 minutes,
-
1 large stone
1 mirror
1 body, wearing mildly functional shapewear
optional: an audience
-
Duration: 25 minutes
The artist carries old weight in an inefficient way that threatens their well-being. They're encouraged to explore all the options of how to carry the stone, without letting it go.
When they reach the mirror, the artist throws the stone to break the reflection of themselves and their audience.
Entering the ruble of broken mirrors, they dance, partially nude, to the sounds of fragmented energy before collecting the reflections.
Finally, they reconfigure the mirror onto their body, dressing in the reflections captured by the audience - representing the construction of other's projections as the artist's perceived identity.
The process is imperfect, stressful, and threatens the physical form of the artist as they handle the byproduct of improvised destruction. Mirrors often fall off the body, breaking into smaller pieces and changing the direction of adornments - representing the imperfect and long-term process of constructing our own identities.
-
I have difficulty pinning down the kind of person that I want to be, or feel like I am...there are all these different reflections of myself. And, they're really disjointed...It isn't easy for me to pinpoint exactly who I am, what I am about, what I look like, and what I want.
I don't know if it's from having multiple personas for work or having a neurodivergent path of thinking about self. It's very much the idea of, “I can't recognize myself,” and I feel like that often. That's why I feel an extreme need to change frequently...
...'cause sometimes I look in the mirror and I'm like, “I don't wanna look like that.” It's mostly true, but I think it means something deeper, like, "Okay, I know I don't recognize myself. Who is this?” What do I want to be?"
What is my truth? How can I evolve to recognize myself? I'm dressed by the projections of others, yet there's still this foundation of "me" that I don't feel connected to.
--
When you look in the mirrors from "Reconflection", you can't fully recognize yourself. You have to shift your point of view to look the way you want to - to see the parts of you that you want to see for that moment.
I captured the moment in time where I’m looking at myself, I don't recognize myself, and I understand myself as a bajillion different things.
So I brought all the pieces together to accept myself as a whole versus trying to fix it legibly, allowing the mirror to be a mosaic of personas.
From there I get to choose which persona to be based on how I feel and what I want. My reflection is impermanent, but the foundation of the mosaic is forever.
