AURIANE KOLODZIEJ
Auriane Kolodziej (born 1993) is a self- taught artist based in Paris. Although she studied fine arts and graphic design, Auriane has found her artistic voice through her inherent nostalgic personality. Knowing past was tearing her apart and future will kill her, she decided to work with and on time by suspended it physically and poetically. Art became a means for her to anchor to the present as a way to accept her own condition; and overall to make us face our own condition too.
Two years ago, I had a dream. I was standing, fully naked, in an endless bright white room. It was just me, and a tiny mirror. I couldn’t stop looking at it: not my own reflection, but behind. I was so eager to know what was on the back of the mirror. The face that nobody sees, nobody cares about. I woke up with that intense feeling, and it has been haunting me since.
That dream was a trigger. I started my Mirror, mirror series right after. I knew, instinctively that I had to do, what I had to do and how to do it. It was as natural as vital. I’ve been making self-portraits since my first step into recovery from anorexia nervosa and depression – it was a way for me, I guess, to prove to myself that, still, I was existing. Since then, I never stopped. My first Mirror, mirror pieces are made after those self-portraits, the more recent ones with fresh ones. I transfer them on tiny pieces of mirrors that I strip, oxidize and break myself. The whole creative process reflects my story. Once the mirror’s piece is dressed with the selfportrait, I confine it into a resin bloc – symbol of the endless room of my dream. My bloc are like asiliums for my reflection. They have become coffins for the person I was; a uterus where the aborted versions of me float in a kind of amniotic liquid. Thanks to them, I keep my past self suspended in time, forever, and am now able to anchor my self in the very true present.
