Diptych Blog Post
Rudraksha (Rudy) Bhukhanwala – Broken
My diptych project, Broken, explores the topics of emotion, self reflection, and perceptions. The left un-photoshopped image shows a girl look at herself in a broken mirror and the right photoshopped image is what she perceives herself as. Every shard of glass representing a different emotion, a different type of pain, a different person. All of those shards of glass make up the face of a completely shattered individual. The work was intended to answer the question “Who am I” and emphasize that there isn’t one simple answer.
My entire artwork revolves around a broken glass so I had to make sure that the prop perfectly captured the message I was trying to portray. I bought a glass on Eleme and when I tried to break it, it seemed unbreakable. I tried to stab it with a pen and knock my phone on it and it didn’t even leave a scratch. So in an impulse and slightly out of frustration, I impaled it against the side of the sink in the dorms and the shards of glass flew everywhere. I couldn’t hold the mirror up without the pieces falling. This is why the angle of the first unphotoshopped picture is that low. However, this proved to be a blessing in disguise and because the angle that the ceiling lights hit the mirror created a massive contract by overemphasizing the brightness between the gaps and the rest of the mirror. This became my primary method of portraying my theme of self image by working with the contrast between overexposure and underexposure which can be seen clearly in the second image.
If I had more time, I would improve my photoshop skills and try to color grade both the images better and try to blend the shards of emotions more seamlessly on the photoshopped piece. Additionally, I would retake the second image to make sure the entire background is white and overexposed because currently there’s a strand of a black pillar in the background, which hinders the communication of my theme of contract.