(From Craft Lake City:) Informed by activist Jane Jacobs’ fascination with self-organized urbanism, Celebration of the Hand is a seasonal exhibition series designed to enhance and reflect Salt Lake City’s cultural district through the work of Utah artists. Celebration of the Hand is displayed in large frames adjacent to the sidewalks along Broadway (300 South) between 200 West and 200 East, and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week free of charge.

In Celebration of the Hand: Lya Yang, the artist shares photographs of individuals wearing fragmented mirror masks against diverse Utah landscapes. The collection of work evolved from a previous project titled Mirror Helmet, in which a block-formed headpiece constructed from mirrors was photographed to distort and reflect different surroundings. In this new variation, the mirrored masks are more compact and highly fractured, creating meaning from collective fragments rather than reflecting a specific scene. The images explore themes of place, identity and anonymity, and seek to capture the beauty found in imperfection.

“I think we all start off at some point simply imitating what is around us like a distorted mirror, but as life happens, things grow, break and change,” explains Yang. “I think there’s something beautiful about choosing to gather chipped and broken-off pieces over and over to build something new. For this Celebration of the Hand, I wanted to highlight the beauty and diversity in our place, of both the physical land and those humans that inhabit it, and maybe recontextualize how we think of our people and our city.”

See all Mirror Mask images here