Broken Mirror Poets
A shattered mirror is often seen as an omen, a symbol of misfortune or rupture—something to be discarded, as it refuses to reflect the viewer’s image in full. Instead, it captures fractured glimpses of its surroundings, presenting a kaleidoscopic vision that resists coherence. But do the shards still have a story to tell?
In the Broken Mirror series, each shard is carefully positioned to reflect a distorted fragment of a text placed on an acrylic frame. Only when seen from a specific vantage point does the viewer’s act of looking reassemble the fragments into a legible whole. The mirror becomes a site of anamorphic reconstruction, where perception restores what destruction has scattered.
The text revealed are brief, luminous verses meditating on impermanence—on the slow erosion of the visible world, and the unseen dissolution of the self. The mirror, in its brokenness, materializes that fading—yet paradoxically upholds the possibility of total vision: of perceiving coherence within fracture.
The work stages a tension between disintegration and wholeness, illegibility and meaning, object and subject. Influenced by Lacanian thought, it invites a confrontation with the fragmented self—a self overrun by language, inseparable from it, yet always striving to locate itself in the mirror’s impossible return.
The Broken Mirror reclaims discarded materials—literal garbage—and gives them new perceptual and poetic life. The violence of the break remains visible, yet what emerges is not ruin, but the viewer’s own reconstructive gaze: an act of witnessing, of assembling what has come undone.
In the Broken Mirror series, each shard is carefully positioned to reflect a distorted fragment of a text placed on an acrylic frame. Only when seen from a specific vantage point does the viewer’s act of looking reassemble the fragments into a legible whole. The mirror becomes a site of anamorphic reconstruction, where perception restores what destruction has scattered.
The text revealed are brief, luminous verses meditating on impermanence—on the slow erosion of the visible world, and the unseen dissolution of the self. The mirror, in its brokenness, materializes that fading—yet paradoxically upholds the possibility of total vision: of perceiving coherence within fracture.
The work stages a tension between disintegration and wholeness, illegibility and meaning, object and subject. Influenced by Lacanian thought, it invites a confrontation with the fragmented self—a self overrun by language, inseparable from it, yet always striving to locate itself in the mirror’s impossible return.
The Broken Mirror reclaims discarded materials—literal garbage—and gives them new perceptual and poetic life. The violence of the break remains visible, yet what emerges is not ruin, but the viewer’s own reconstructive gaze: an act of witnessing, of assembling what has come undone.
General info
Year of creation:
2025
Broken Mirror Ono
Edition:
1 Edition, 1 AP
Exhibitions
- Untitled Art Houston , bitforms gallery, George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston, Texas, United States, 2025.
Credits
- Emily Green, Jade Séguéla, William Sutton, Talia Mizrahi, Stephan Schulz
Photo Library (click to expand)
