Published on Saturday, February 6, 2021 by Agitator Co-operative

Reflections for Change—A Worldwide Mirror Art Therapy Project

by Elena Morizio, Italian mirror artist

March 9th, 2020.

Italian lockdown.

It all began with a vision.

There was the Coronavirus. I was looking at it, moving my head left and right, and it did the same. Like it was my consciousness. Its body, its sphere acted as a mirror. I could see myself reflected on it.

Soon after I read in a scientific magazine about how the virus behaves when it comes in contact with our body: it uses a disguise through the use of parts of our cells to pretend to be a component of our organism. Like a reflecting mirror…

Continuing to focus on the vision, I remember that its protuberances were made of words that became voices:

"I need to breathe. I don't have time to breathe. Who am I? What do I really want? I don't know where I'm going anymore. I don't know how and where to place myself in the world. Every day is a race against time. I need to stop. I can't take this life anymore, which I haven't even chosen."

I understood that there were our voices, the voices of the world.

A human being and a world at the end of their line.

What happens inside also happens outside. And what happens outside also happens inside.

The destruction of Nature we are witnessing tells us about our forgetfulness. We forgot about our interconnection with Nature, its vital importance for our survival. We don’t know her anymore, as we don’t know ourselves anymore. And what man doesn’t know, he destroys it.

It is thanks to Nature that for millennia there has been no distinction in man between body and spirit, thinking and feeling, logic and instinct, individuality and union with others and with everything.

Our vital force, the authenticity that moves us, is linked by a conductive thread to the primordial Nature, which we have decided to consider an enemy. But our existence is in vain without her.

When we deny a part of ourselves, we project it to the outside world, accusing the latter (a family member, a schoolmate, employer, spouse, your city...) of our frustration and incompleteness.

But Nature is much more intelligent than we are, and the bond we have with her goes beyond our rational will. It is a bond as old as the world. Nature and our consciousness go hand in hand.

This is where the Boomerang effect starts: we deny and project outside our shadow, and nature sends our shadow back to us. It forces us to face it! In other words, we denied Nature and all the instincts and dark sides of us connected to her, and consequently Nature gave them back to us in the form of Coronavirus. Forcing us to silence, to listen to our breath, to the irrevocable task of dealing with ourselves.

The object, the person, the event, the place on which we project our mud will act as a mirror by returning it in turn. That's why the other is so important.

The other and the environment as our projection.

And nature is not the only architect, precisely because of the bond I mentioned earlier. There is a collaboration, an interconnection between us and her. We needed to breathe, and she needed to show us the way to do it.

Coronavirus meant isolation.

Time to ask ourselves questions, reflecting on our happiness and sorrows, on where we are going to, on which path to take.

What's the truth? What really matters?

My name is Elena Morizio; I am an Italian artist, and I work with the Mirror, realizing works of Art engraved on it. This is called the Art of Engraving on a Mirror: a new, unique, deep psychological artistic technique born in Italy in the 70’s and still unknown to the rest of the world.

An ancient symbol whose origin is lost in the mists of time, an object desired and feared at the same time, the Mirror is a never-ending story.

Every human intelligence (scientific, philosophical, artistic, etc.), in every place and in every epoch of its own history of civilization, has sought and pursued itself in the mirror's reflection: primordial manifestation of a need for self-awareness.

The Mirror chose me to let the world know it as a window on our fears, on what we consider frailties, on our unspoken emotions, our grudges as well as our unjustly repressed instincts and dreams.

In other words our monsters, our dragon…

The dragon, evil and an antagonist of the hero in our memory and in our childhood fairy tales, is nothing but the one that guards our treasures, talents, and powers that wait to be freed, reconquered, welcomed, and celebrated. The dragon that often comes to find us in nightmares at night.

If we continue to deprive that shadow of the chance of expressing itself and placing us in harmony with our light side, the apparent and conscious side, it will hinder our self-realization and will not allow us to be authentic and in love with ourselves, with the neighbor and with the environment.

It’s up to us.

The lockdown began, and I was in my room looking at the pandemic in a philosophical, psychological, and artistic point of view. I wanted to make a journey.

Like Ulysses who, through his own journey made up of events, people, and places, has found lights and shadows of himself reflected in the other.

That’s why I wanted to express myself and my emotions through the Art and the mirror but doing it together with all of humanity, in an infinite, tender hug. No barriers, no judgement. Just Art as our universal language. I already knew that in the drawing of each person I would find answers, I would find memories, I would find parts of myself.

Your emotions are my emotions beyond any illusory cultural border.

“You are my Mirror.”

I started asking my closest friends to realize a drawing on a mirror they had at home expressing their feelings about the Coronavirus. And then, through social networks, I found other people, strangers outside the Italian boundaries.

I was not looking for professional artists, but I wanted to involve people not used to using the creative act as a means of communication and expression of their own inner universe.

Some of them were afraid of the idea, afraid of not being able to realize something. But I told them that we all have creativity within us, we just forgot about it. We have to fuel it to give us a chance to give shape to our feelings.

They trusted me.

They accepted the date with themselves in the mirror.

They touched me deeply by realizing amazing and meaningful drawings.

This new form of Art goes beyond all the others in its artistic techniques:

Your art on canvas will show fragments of yourself, uncomfortable or not. But your art on a mirror will give you the chance to see those fragments in a deeper way. You, your reflection is part of the process as well as part of the final work. No lies. No masks. Just you and your truth.

“The Mirror is your Master,” states Leonardo Da Vinci.

“The Art on Mirror is the Art of the Future,” states Lorenzo Ostuni, pioneer in this technique and my mentor.

Regarding the project, actually I just missed a few drawings from some countries, and then I will have officially collected works from each state of the world. No one is excluded.

In a few weeks the Idea became project: Reflections for Change. In a few months the project became global. This global project will be a book (a worldwide historical art witness of the pandemic of the twenty-first century) and a path to spread out a new powerful artistic tool: the Art of Engraving on a Mirror and its ramifications.

People have to turn on their creativity and celebrate it! Especially the youngest. Many nonprofit organizations are joining, and I feel so lucky that children from the most remote and poor areas of the world have the chance to participate and face themselves in the mirror.

In a society of appearance instead of feeding the internal fire of human beings, it consumes it. It is our mission to educate man to the artistic expression of his inner voice.

This way, he will be free.

Thank you, in the name of Art and Humanity.

If you want to participate, take a photo of your drawing on a mirror, a second photo of the drawing together with you reflected in it (just if you feel it), and write some words about what you realized, your concept, your feelings. Then send everything to reflectionsforchange@gmail.com

Instagram Official Page: reflections_for_change