Broken Reflections (2022)

Broken Reflections is a sculptural intervention that reclaims a school desk as a site of fragmentation and self-examination. Encrusted in shattered mirror shards, the surface invites viewers into a disrupted reflection—distorted, sharp, and incomplete. What is meant to reflect the self instead fractures it, pointing to the instability of identity formed within institutional spaces.

The child-size desk, once a symbol of learning and order, now becomes a dangerous object—simultaneously alluring and unsettling. The cracks speak to personal and collective trauma, while the mirrored surface implicates the viewer, forcing them to confront their own image in pieces. It questions what we see when we look at ourselves through the lens of education: Are we shaped, broken, or reflected by it?

Part of Krystal Charlston’s Pedagogy series, Broken Reflections interrogates the emotional cost of schooling, especially for those who feel unseen or misrepresented within its structures. It’s a piece about looking—at systems, at ourselves, and at the ways institutions distort both.