The mirrors are like chasms into which I dive, I sink, to explore my own depths.
'Mirror mirror'
Photographer & words : AURIANE KOLODZIEJ
@aurianekolodziej.artist
I began the practice of self-portraiture when I was recovering from anorexia nervosa and depression. After years of living dead, my self-portraits became a way for me to prove to myself that, still, I existed.
I place my mirror fragments inside blocks of transparent resin, materialization of the infinite and luminous room of my dream. I like to think of these cubes as asylums for my reflection. This reflection that has made me so unhappy for years. It is a way for me to lock up this past, to put it on hold forever.
When I pour the resin on the mirror fragment, I feel like I am burying myself. It's this gesture: I pour the resin as one pours earth, concrete, on a coffin. Maybe my blocks are my coffins. My poetic coffins. In which life and death cross and merge together through the prism of the light that passes through them. Each fragment is ultimately a mourning that I do of myself, allowing me to make room for who I am, and become.
In psychology, the stage of the mirror designates the moment when the child becomes aware of its own body and differentiates itself from the others; it is the appearance of the famous "I".
This "I",
I denied it a lot.
Today, at almost 30 years old, I am looking for it.
My blocks are the coffins of those I have been,
and I will cherish them,
like myself,
as long as I live.
