Artwork > Potentiality and Presence

The six-foot print is positioned by wooden supports, positioned above a mirror so that when the viewer looks into the mirror, they see themselves in the work and can reflect with their personal experience to the work, as well as the reflected text is reversed and made legible. The text, by José Esteban Muñoz, is a poetic anecdote from his childhood, expressing one of his first encounters with otherness and homophobic microaggression. Although it is Muñoz’s personal experience and despite generational, racial, cultural, and geographic differences, his description is unnervingly similar to my own experience with the same type of microaggression.