Distorted Reflections explores the uneasy distance between who we are and the version of ourselves we come to believe.
The work centers on the idea that self-perception is rarely neutral. It is shaped by memory, emotion, relationships, criticism, expectation, and the experiences we carry long after they have ended. Over time, those influences can begin to bend the reflection looking back at us until what we see no longer feels entirely true.
In this piece, distortion becomes psychological rather than purely visual. The fractured or altered reflection represents the ways we can internalize other people’s judgments, past wounds, and our own fears, allowing them to become part of the identity we present to ourselves. What begins as an external experience can slowly become an internal voice.
The work also considers how difficult it can be to recognize ourselves clearly while standing inside the emotion. Grief can change the way we see our strength. Rejection can make us question our worth. Betrayal can alter trust not only in others, but in our own instincts. Even love can become distorting when we begin seeing ourselves primarily through someone else’s eyes.
Yet the reflection is not the self.
That distinction sits at the center of Distorted Reflections. The image may be fragmented, stretched, obscured, or unsettled, but something beneath the distortion remains unchanged. The piece asks the viewer to consider how much of what they believe about themselves is truly their own—and how much was inherited from experiences that were never meant to define them permanently.
There is a tension between recognition and unfamiliarity within the work. The reflection is close enough to feel personal, yet altered enough to create doubt. That discomfort becomes a threshold: the moment when we begin to question the story we have been telling ourselves and look beyond the surface for something more honest.
Distorted Reflections is ultimately about reclaiming perception. It speaks to the process of separating identity from pain, dismantling the images we have been taught to accept, and learning to see ourselves without the distortions created by fear, memory, or another person’s judgment.
Sometimes healing begins not by becoming someone new, but by finally seeing what was there before the reflection changed.
