Haley Art Gallery will host The Mirror’s Memories, an artist’s talk by Carlos Vega, on Saturday, October 11, 1-3 pm.
Vega will explore the inspirations behind his Murmurs of the Mirrors mixed-media mirror art, which reflects glimpses of viewers’ reflections amidst vibrant, colorful symbols and icons. The exhibit, on view through October 31, also includes a collection of handmade jewelry and wall shrines and “Milagros” by the artist.
“Some say that a mirror merely reflects, only bouncing back what is cast upon it–albeit in reverse. But what if a mirror has memory? What if the images are not only reflected but also retained–even if only as scattered images and moments, much as we remember our own past?” says Vega about his mirror art, which captures the “hybridity” of his own Latinx culture and spirit, “shaped and reshaped by places left behind and those to be found.” In 1858 Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed the photograph was “a mirror with memory.” But in Vega’s case the mirror is not the frozen reflection of a single moment, but a surface that both reflects and remembers endless single moments, including that of the instant in which the viewer creates their own irreplaceable moment of dialogue with the mirror.
Carlos Vega is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Wellesley College. The Chicano artist lives between New England and the South of Spain, and was raised on the border between Mexico and the U.S. He later studied in Paris, New York, and Cambridge (Mass). His art captures the hybridity of culture that is ever-changing in the Latinx community, once shaped and reshaped by places left behind and those to be found. Religion and spiritual belief–in all its manifestations and transgressions–are central to Vega's work. For him, religion is as much image, ritual, and material as it is abstract belief. He works primarily with antique and vintage mirrors housed in historic frames that may tell their own stories, oftentimes already partially distressed. He further erodes the reflective surface to bring out what he believes the glass has retained and what it has seen. Some will imagine a collage, but he believes he is revealing portions of cultural and personal pasts. In addition to existing images, he employs gold and other metals, foil, paint, and ink using a syringe that breaks through the layers of impressions, and powdered pigment.
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