At first you feel like you are simply walking toward your reflection. But the closer you get to the large video screen, the further the image zooms in on the hundreds of pictures that make up this digital “reflection.” Colored spots first become abstract shapes, then recognizable, often disturbing images. They turn out to be photographs of aerial bombardments, of explosions in Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, and elsewhere. Your body has become an index of destruction, an iconography of devastation.
Each reflection is composed of a selection from the 1,000 photographs that audiovisual artist Ghazal Majidi collected in 2025, mapped onto your image through color matching. As you step back, the photographs shrink back to become indistinct spots. By making tangible how even this slight increase in distance can transform the images into abstractions, Twenty Twenty-Five questions the ethics of seeing, showing how violence is consumed and aestheticized through images. Now that your own body has become the bearer of all this suffering—taking place far away from you— how responsible do you feel for it?
Stills
