Knowing Me, Knowing You (uh huh~) (or “Mirror Box”)
2023 - 3 HOUR SCULPTURAL PERFORMANCE - ACRYLIC ON CANVAS
“Knowing You, Knowing Me (uh huh~)” (2023), or Mirror Box, was performed live at 65 East College St in Oberlin, OH, as a part of the Fall Junior Studio Art exhibition, “Half a Dozen”.
For the 3 hour duration of the “Half a Dozen” exhibition, I paint a self portrait using the one-way mirrors within a 4x4x8 foot plexiglass and wood box. As I paint, gallery goers observe me without my knowledge. At moments when studying my reflection, I seemingly stare right through viewers.
Mirror Box directly confronts my viewers with the choice to look or not to look. Despite not knowing who is watching me, or if anyone is at a given moment, I continue to create my image. As a trans nonbinary individual, strangers will decide who I am for themselves. There’s both a powerlessness and a powerfulness in the position, one which I try to exemplify in this piece.
This performance is an exploration of the experiences of panopticon and our right to look. What does it mean to look? To be looked at? To not look? What decisions do we make about the subject of our gaze when we look?
In what ways are we the only ones who truly know ourselves? In what ways do we never truly know ourselves in the ways that others do? What does it mean to be known? And where is the intersection of seeing becoming knowing?
