Mirrors of Perception
Distorting Images of Reality
November 5 – December 5, 2025
Opening Day Discussion and Reception, Wednesday, November 12, 4:00-7:00pm

Curated by: Polina Arzhenovskova, Leonie Cecco, and Egor Miroshnichenko

 Featuring:  Anton Andrienko, Lena Bils, Ilayda Dağlı, Simon Gilmer, Nelly Habelt, Aerin Hong, Sasha Kozma, Konstantia Lechler, Dasha Likhaia, Ilya Martynov, Evelyn Roh, Anzhelika Sarkisyan, Killa Schuetze, and Elsa Stanyer

How do we know what we see, and how do we perceive ourselves seeing? Mirrors of Perception brings together contemporary photography and time-based art to explore perception not as a passive reception of the world, but as a continuous process of reflection – both outward and inward.

This exhibition emerged from a transatlantic collaboration between students in the MA Curatorial Studies program at Goethe University Frankfurt and students in the Exhibition Design and Production course at The College of New Jersey. The participating artists are students from the Städelschule Frankfurt, the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach, the HSE Art and Design School, and the Moscow School of New Cinema.

Initiated by TCNJ Professor Liselot van der Heijden during a semester abroad teaching exchange at Goethe University’s Curatorial Program, this collaborative project extends from the class Artistic Practices, co-taught with Dr. Stefanie Heraeus.

Even though the art works were created by students in Europe, the exhibited works are either digital-born or reproduced on-site in New Jersey. This model of international exhibition-making not only addresses practical concerns of sustainability but also conceptually reinforces the exhibition’s themes of mediation, reproduction, and the fluid boundary between original and copy, virtual immediacy and spatial distance and the experience of self and other. 

The project is the result of a transatlantic collaboration between students in the MA Curatorial Studies program at Goethe University Frankfurt and students in the Exhibition Design course at The College of New Jersey. The participating artists are students from Städelschule Frankfurt, HfG Offenbach, HSE Art and Design School and Moscow School of New Cinema.