Mirror Piece 2015

This is Elina Brotherus’ photograph, "Mirror Piece", and I am immediately struck by the muted palette and the stillness of the water, the coolness of the day. It gives me the sense that something is about to happen. A lone figure stands knee-deep in the water, facing us head-on, but instead of a face, she holds a blank, white oval where we might expect to see her features. This stark contrast between the detailed, naturalistic rendering of the landscape and the flat, featureless ‘face’ makes me wonder about the nature of representation itself. The figure is both present and absent, there and not there, and this tension between presence and absence is so interesting. Brotherus’ work often explores identity, representation, and the relationship between the body and the landscape, and in this image, the blank mirror suggests endless possibilities for interpretation and projection. I think of other artists such as Claude Cahun who also used the language of disguise and masquerade to explore identity as a fluid, unfixed construct.