Current Exhibitions > Milostka Center for Exhibitions > Broken Mirrors
BROKEN MIRRORS
Featuring 36 Artists From Around the World
Artistic responses to the contemporary disruptions of life
Artistic responses to the contemporary disruptions of life.
Featured Artists:
Amended Archives, Bilaka, Dimelza Broche, Maria Coletsis, St Valentino de Augusto, Amah Dongo, Jaco du Plessis, Gary Duehr, Zeiko Duka, Jesica Frustaci, Guven, Margarita Kerimova-Sokolova, Oleksandra Kulikovska, Dimitris Lapousis, Eva Ludwig, Marusia Makhmutova, David C Mendoza, Anna Miklashevich, Marko Milić, Anirban Mishra, Izumi Miyazaki, Kristine Narvida, Palash Paul, Niko Pazzaglia, Anna Ponomarenko, Maja Puda, Jennifer S. Lange, Tamar (Tako) Shashiashvili, Mali Shirazian, Josh Stein, Zhamilya Taken, Tanbelia, Botagoz Tolesh, Michael Wagner, Fazar R.A Wibisono, and Larry Wolf.
June 10th, 2022 - July 22nd, 2022
OVERVIEW
Present-day circumstances have drastically changed the way we feel about our surroundings. The world as we previously knew it has been changing and with it - our perceptions. The previously unthinkable circumstances have left a scar in modern-day society. In the current times of unrest, we can’t help but ask ourselves what is yet to come? What do we do with the pieces of our own broken mirrors?
Do the shattered pieces signify bad luck or a chance for self-reflection? Have they changed the way we express ourselves making us more realistic or the opposite - making us look at the world through an entirely different lens? Are our visions becoming distorted like the curved mirrors of a fun-house or that of a kaleidoscope?
ORGANIZED BY
Emma McMullin, Director of Curatorial Affairs; Rocio Montiel, Chief Curator; Jenny Chernansky, Senior Curator; Ana Lagidze, Senior Curator; Anwar Mohammad, Lead Associate Curator; Natali Dobreva, Lead Apprentice Curator.
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ARTISTS
For a full interview, click on each artist's name.
Instagram: amendedarchives
A time for reflection, yet there are so many fractured pieces to gaze into. Each show a slightly misshapen reality. How did we get to this space of such chaos under the guise of control? When did anyone decide that a woman's choice belongs to anyone but her, solely? When did it become the decision of one to uproot, displace and execute so many? It feels so unsettling to be a human in the world with very few places to turn for a sense of calm or absolute comfort. These images are broken reflections of the major events that consume, or at least affect a large majority of us. A marker for the history books of my own experience of the world in this lifetime.
Instagram: heritier_bilaka
The themes of my artworks relate to spirituality by presenting human being in a harmonious and non-dominant relationship with his/her environment. My main subject of representation is woman since it is linked to my traditional Bantu culture which has a matriarchal vision of society.
The representation of the female nude in my art illustrates this vision which is non-dualistic and which considers that woman is the mother of humanity. I illustrate this idea of a return to essential values and spirituality with regard to what is happening in the world.
Instagram: dimelzabroche
I aim for the viewer to go beyond the beautiful atmosphere and question what is it that makes them feel unsettled.
My experience as a disabled woman has definitely impacted my art and the way I make art. I question the functionality of our bodies, and the limits of my own body. As a wheelchair user I am limited to a lot of things. Making art allows me to access and create places I am physically not able to visit.
The themes I work with are a commentary on human behavior. I start with issues surrounding identity and move further to consider the impact on the environment.
My long term artistic goals are to continue my passion for the creative process, to continue to want to make artwork that provokes and inspires discussion which may revaluate our thoughts on life.
Instagram: agbakaoryimanart
My works focus on the emancipation of the human mind from conforming to the political conventional patterns that limit our abilities, but to promote Individual freedom and promote originality.
I have so many experiences that has greatly influenced my life, the closest I can remember was when my trust was betrayed, and I had to deal with legal issues over a crime I didn’t commit or directly commit. I was broken I thought I wouldn’t get through it but I did and all the way through it, I could only heal myself through my art. I really learnt so much during that time and my passion grew even much more.
Instagram: acd_ny
My themes are to get the viewer to see and think differently either in the way they see art themselves or the subjects pertaining to the artwork. So there is this interactive quality to the works where you can see and view it differently from another viewer.
I think living in Paris, New York, and Africa definitely impact how I see and process art and how I see colors and shapes across global places.
Instagram: thegreyprinter
Lately, I have been fascinated with the parallels between the stories from mythology and how relevant they are to the times we are living in. Narcissus tells the story of how a beautiful man rejected all the advances of love and eventually falling in love with himself. Sound familiar? In a world where social media and the rise of the beautiful influencer is an everyday occurrence, we have all turned into modern Narcissuses, the only difference being that our water reflection now happen through mirrors, camera selfies and our beauty is weighed by the number of likes we get.
Unlike Narcissus there has also been a great focus on self-love in the past decade. Being proud of who you are, what you look like and where you come from and embracing the fact that we are all unique in the world and deserve not only the love of other but more importantly – that we love ourselves. My Narcissus represented by two slightly different reflections of the same person is then not the vain man looking at himself, but rather a society looking through “broken mirrors” to find the love that we all crave.
Instagram: gduehr
GHOST IN THE SHELL
In these self-portraits taken in museums and galleries, my image ghosts in the reflected artwork.
Sometimes I am barely visible against a field of gold or blue, other times my image becomes entangled with complex textures or shapes. Once in a while, you can glimpse shadowy figures lurking at the edge.
“Ghost in the Shell” is a record of my merging visually and psychologically with contemporary art.
Instagram: dukazeiko
My art is evolving incessantly. The way which I use to visualize scenarios and depict it onto the canvas or on paper is changing. By the time, the use of colors is getting complex and the way thoughts are illustrated and getting even more intricate.
I try to do masterful manipulation of light and dark and the fluidity of forms, seem like a pictorial portrayal of music sonata. I depict my dreams and imagination in a symphony of color palette, that burst out of the canvas or paper with the emotional force of the spring.
Instagram: jesicafrustaciart
What I tell in my work is my experience of pain after having abandoned my previous career because of the harassment of my colleagues. That harassment was moral and sexual. That experience changed me a lot since I began to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. I started painting on the recommendation of my therapist. My works speak of my years of suffering. They also talk about my recovery as a person and as a woman. My artworks speak about my faith, which also helped me in this process.
My inspiration comes from faith, the beauty, and dignity of women, of nature, from art itself.
Instagram: silaguvenart
I aim to create a bridge between science and art. Since Renaissance Science is a part of art. Furthermore, Galileo was Italian physicist and mathematician who constantly was drawing Venus, Moon’s phases and Jupiter’s secondary planets. I observe celestial living’s phases to create my own art. I also use materials from nature as soil, linen, tissues for creating. These materials symbolize humanity and earth.
In my solo exhibitions, I teaching people and show them art and science inseparable. I tell children about space discoveries through my paintings. Sometimes, I also make creative writings histories about these livings.
Facebook: Margarita Kerimova
1. This Project was proposed to me by Ms. Ana Lagidze, whom I respect and this is one of the reasons.
2. I liked the title Broken Mirrors.
3. I was interested in the prospects of the project and its democratic character.
Instagram: littlecoolart
For me, inspiration is about attentiveness to life. Therefore, to feel it - I just need to pay attention to what is happening around and notice what causes emotions in me.
Now, after the forced emigration to Germany, I already have plans for the next series of collages on topics that are most relevant and exciting for me now. For example: losses, survivor's guilt, feelings from life in emigration, war.
Instagram: dlapousis
I grew up in a society that could hardly integrate diversity. My student years at university revealed a new perspective that I try to capture in my art as well. I usually draw or photograph when I have intense emotions and the process of creation works redemptively. Reaching the present I have left behind all these broken pieces of the past and I have kept the uniqueness of moments that evolved me as a person and artist.
Instagram: evaludwigart
I am convinced that in an increasingly unstable world, art can not only provide support, but also show ways to face the difficulties and challenges. An open attitude towards the strange, threatening or changeable is just as important as the perception of the inner self. In my art I try to give space to these thoughts and to encourage the viewers of my works to deal more deeply with the respective topics. I think that my art is therefore not just mere external form to look at. It invites people to enter into dialogue and seek the core of our humanity.
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Instagram: marusiamak
I want to inspire people and I want them to feel the art. I also don’t want to frame my images for the viewer. I believe that everyone can see something on their own in every artwork.
When I moved to the big city, I found myself working as a photographer, doing quite ordinary photo shoots and that seemed not enough for me. That was the time when I started making collages. To create something more than typical image. It was like something beautiful exploded inside of me.
Instagram: dcmoza
We live in a world afflicted with plague, social unrest, environmental destruction, and corporate greed. The state of global unity is transfixed with daily challenges. Throughout history Art and cultural distinction depicts a reality of hope and social change.
Through my fusion of abstract and representational subjects I incorporate humor, pathos, satire, social commentary, and beauty. “Let each man [woman] exercise the art he [she] knows.” Aristophanes.
Instagram: annamiklashevich
My work as an artist is an adventure in self-discovery. I paint as a way of talking to myself so as not to arouse suspicion.
What colors and textures does life paint on my canvas? What am I worrying about today? Am I experiencing discrimination? Or, am I maybe discriminating against someone?
If I don't personally feel inequality, does it mean that there is no inequality? What is feminism? Do I want to speak out about the role of women? How can I do this effectively? How do I express myself so that I can be heard?
Instagram: marko_milic_photography
Nature is really beautiful once you slow down, connect with it and really understand what nature is. Nature is not just a famous touristic location that you go to and be amazed by waterfalls. Nature is everywhere around us. It's amazing when you start noticing really small things and every detail on the plant, on bugs etc. That is the main thing I, as an artist, want to capture and show to people. As I like to say, “Nature is art itself, I don’t need to make it, just capture it”, there is beauty everywhere around us, every day, and will be, if we don’t destroy it.
Instagram: narvida_art
The relationship between certain parts of the work and its entireness excites me. I shape my space of solitude and the work that evolves lives its own life, defiantly independent of me. I like to wonder how colors happen and to maintain the dimensions in constant tension. That is instantaneous awareness of fulfilment that can just as instantly disappear. My search involves clear form-expressed messages in which what is present asks for the truth. The gaze is not a simple movement of eyes, it involves knowledge, experience, and an explanation. I go through this process, overcome myself and this leads to the choice I have made and gives me joy as a creator.
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Instagram: annkaproject
At the moment I have several directions that go in parallel with each other. This is the theme of self-discovery and the search for oneself in this world, the meaning of life. I also work on the topic of inner balance and mental health. I think that every person should find a balance between their desires and needs, the creation of a rigid framework and work that is contrary to your current aspirations can burn. I burned out at my previous job, which I did for 15 years. There is a time to be active, there is a time to be calm - we need to find balance.
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Facebook: Tako Shashiashvili Art
For me, being an artist is not a profession. you are born with this talent, you look at world differently and this is your life… as far as I can remember, all my life, I draw or create something-I can not stop. This is my lifestyle… I work and draw because I can’t live without it and I don’t even want to imagine.
Website: artistanirban.fanclub
I always get inspiration from my surroundings, mostly from our society's culture and habits. In our modern lifestyle we are alienated from each other. We are become lonely at the end of the day. Different aged peoples are dealing with loneliness in a different way. I trying to understand their perspective and trying to relate these perspectives with my view. I trying to develop the language of my work of art where everybody can find something which are very similar to their life. A viewer can interact with my art pieces, when a viewer interacting with my artwork, he/ she can feel someone is there, behind this painting who can understand my anxiety, depression, and pain. The viewer can take a full breath and relaxed and the go back with positive mind.
According to modern thinking in my way art is the living expression of people’s aspirations - experience and culture and the expression of social realities and ideas, material, economic condition and culture of people. It is a new experience that we belong to the human civilization on the soil of this planet.
Time never dies. It takes birth in every second. And at last I am trying to feel the impression of reforming existence with lines and colors to find out myself through the contemporary looking glass. In my looking glass, what I feel is the most Gray time I have spent in Covid situation, I explain it through colors and brush like an untold dialogue of my life. Here below the concept of my work Isolated Breath - III, is as follows
Scene I :
My Studio windows were opened a bit. Ceiling fan was moving so fast. It was silent in each and every corner, only the birdcalls coming to me.
Scene II :
Everywhere closed like full lock down. Eyes of the people were scary. Society people get isolated in a pandemic.
...
Instagram: mayayyyy
Definitions, detections, determinations, decoding, ... nothing for sure gives an approximate picture of art, because it does not wait for something to be said about it, it does not pay attention to our interpretations, our reference and analogous notes. It escapes us through the openings of established borders, through thin membranes, through invisible cracks; always before us this being of art, never fully accessible, hidden in the fractal border of the limes. Within the limes, in each territory, in a geometrized field, on a painting surface (if it is painting), arborescent figures, inverted figures, all sorts of appearances that require distance in order to see them at all, in order to accept them, are formed.
Each content is a narrative. Suddenly associative voluminosity’s, swirls, attempts of matter to take shape into recognizable patterns. Reminders and recollections, childhood and matrices of imitation, closed lungs and difficult breathing, heartbeat and penetration through thick sticky mucus, struggle and conquest of territories, re-territorialization and failure of the image regime, principles of composition and frantic attempt to appropriate this new, unknown area and that relay stations are embedded in it and under them you enter deeper layers in which the answers to difficult, most difficult questions are written. About the meaning of life, about death.
Nature is born before us as an image, as an opportunity: landscapes, horizons, dreams, layers ... and people. The characters become serious, personified, as if some famous names call out empty faces and give them eyes to see where they are going.
%20-%20Mali%20Shirazian%20(1).jpg)
Instagram: maliart_2
I express my feelings through my art.
Instagram: zhamiliataken
It is important for me to convey the theme of my works that we are guests on our planet, everything is perishable, and nature is eternal. “Witnesses” reflect this theme well, we have come and gone, and the stones will watch everything that happens for millions of years.
I draw inspiration from events, the society around me, people, and nature.
I am an indifferent person. It was painful for me to watch how my beautiful country was robbed for 30 years, the harsh totalitarian regime that violates human rights caused me protest moods, which were displayed in my paintings. I hope for a better life in my beloved Kazakhstan!
Instagram: tanbeliaart
My art is about encouraging people to sustainable development and protecting nature. We live in the Anthropocene, but this period should not be an ecological catastrophe. On the contrary, we can try to save land, air, and water from pollution, debris, and other human activities.
There is not a single specific event that would affect my art. This is a set of my views on life, topics, and issues that are relevant now. I feel the greatest connection with nature all my life, so it has the greatest impact on my art.
Instagram: zumimiyazaki
I want my art to create a world that my audience wants to join. Many of my paintings have a very physically inclusive composition in which the viewer is part of the composition, sitting amongst the figures within a circle, or seems to have walked in and interrupted a very close knit group of figures. Whatever themes I portray within my art, I want the viewers to be considered within the composition.
Instagram: niko_pzaz
With my work, I am interested in exploring the intersection between everyday social practices, digital technologies and contemporary art, delving into the ways power works in the “society of control” – for instance through social media and smartphone applications. I focus on issues that range from media representation, consumerism, and the beauty system to practices of subjectification and exploitation of bodies, especially in the context of gender. With my work, I also aim at exploring the performativity of materials as well as the relationship between body and matter, focusing on the body as the site of power and resistance. I have been working with self-portrait photography, performance art, metal, 3D printing, and I am currently experimenting with sustainable materials, such as recycled plastic and food waste.
Instagram: ranarh.draws
For this particular show, I was going for saying things we don't talk about often but know to be true - small everyday affairs that we deny, play down, or use as a shield against experiencing our own depths. The discussion about whether or not there is a "true self" or if wearing masks for different occasion is reasonable. The fact that we can't not be influenced by those around us. The wish to find a perfect path to walk, and what to tell to those that want to drag us off it.
Instagram: steincreates
In my current work, I find myself drawn to the use of metallic, iridescent, and fluorescent colors in combination with textures that lift the paint from the canvas, creating what I call deep patterns, almost Jungian in a way because they seem to tap into something deep within us as people. I strive for my optical and geometric work not to be “just wallpaper” as so much in these genres has often become. Rather, I seek to force a reckoning with the artwork as a presence unto itself, and the use of these more exotic acrylic mediums really produces a moment of active tension both in person and via digital reproduction.
I am continuing to explore where the idea of line itself creates or demarcates what the eye experiences as that is the essence of my work: fooling the eye into seeing things it never imagined could exist, and then going beyond fooling into willing participation in a different way to see the world around us, externally and internally.
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Instagram: botagoz_tolesh_art
In my works, I express the feelings of people and everything related to how we relate to nature.
The painting "Scream" is an image of a desperate woman. In the world, as in our country, there is often an unfair attitude towards people. A woman is inherently fragile, but our modern world, due to its globalization and urbanization, is under great pressure and often faces injustice. The composition depicts the image of a woman. There is so much pain and despair in her that she is already wounded, all bandaged and screaming in pain.
Everything can inspire me! Problems with ecology. political military action. The position of women in society.
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Well, basically I am concerned with the presentation of a world view that renounces confinement and categorization. Life is infinitely manifold. It consists of a stringing together of temporal sequences, which we may interpret for our orientation. Nothing is fixed. So we should also renounce this and look at life/the world in a way that puts love in the center, the universal love of life, the love of being.
My encounter with Concrete Art had a decisive influence on me. And before that, it was the encounter and confrontation with Expressionism, Surrealism and Pop Art that influenced me early on. My benchmark is the work of the Swiss artist Max Bill, whose consistency I greatly admire.
https://fazarwibisono.simdif.com/
I would like to say that the migration of animals in the season of migration from cold places to warmer places in order to reproduce their habitat from extinction, as for myself, if with this migration theme to move from bad behavior to better, at least we can be a little good instead of being a violent extremist. In the future, he will be stubborn and also ignorant of his personality about his actions for humans, but how can you be wise in dealing with life, but not be more like animals.
Instagram: _abrushwiththelaw
My work utilizes an intriguing and unique process whereby I push acrylic paint through the back of a silk screen canvas. Traditionally, silk screens are used for making prints on paper or T-shirts or any number of materials, but then the screens are washed and reused. For me, the silk screen becomes a permanent host for a one-of-a-kind artwork. The process results in strikingly vibrant abstract compositions, layered in eye-catching shapes and textures.
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