Mirror Into Auntieverse

niceaunties

Artwork Description:

Mirror into Auntieverse is an interactive installation that reframes photography as a live negotiation between body, machine and cultural memory. First presented at Paris Photo 2025 and after in a solo exhibition at Load Gallery Barcelona, the work embeds real time motion tracking within a nineteenth century Napoleon III mirror frame. When visitors approach, their reflections are replaced by animated aunties from the Auntieverse, niceaunties' ongoing AI driven world building project that repositions the Asian auntie archetype from stereotype to protagonist. The mirror tracks the viewer's body while preserving each auntie's distinct face and expression. After a brief pause, the auntie speaks. Her remarks are blunt and intimate, what niceaunties calls the 'auntie love language,' a form of care expressed through critique and practical concern. The mirror becomes both a portal into the Auntieverse and a reflection of the internal voice of self criticism many carry: there is an auntie in all of us. Drawing on art historical uses of the mirror from Jan van Eyck to Manet, and on Asian folklore in which mirrors reveal moral truth, the work shifts reflection from vanity to accountability. The AI generated portraits draw their visual language from niceaunties' mother's studio photographs of the late 1960s, using emerging technologies to preserve emotional and cultural languages at risk of disappearance. Mirror into Auntieverse is part of the broader Auntieverse world building project, merging the photographic act of capturing light through a machine with the speculative framework of a living, expanding digital world.

Project Collaborators:

Load Gallery (barcelona): production partner, exhibition partner Artverse (Paris): exhibition partner Torrent Glassworks – mirror manufacturer Atelier Dissidi – cabinetmaker / woodworking