Mending the Mirror: Auto-biographical Narratives through Photographic Embroidery
by Luis Daniel Herrera Romero and Gabriela Farías Islas
Is an educational artefact developed within the Experimental Narratives course at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), Mexico, led by Professors Luis Daniel Herrera Romero and Gabriela Farías Islas.
The project employs the symbolic self-portrait as a critical thinking device. Students transferred their own digital photographs onto paper and intervened them with embroidery thread, engaging in a literal and metaphorical act of mending: joining fragmented pieces of identity and reconstructing personal history through a single guiding rule — No stitch without intention. Within this framework, the stitch operates as a semiotic act. Every thread anchors meaning through four operations: Emphasis, to highlight; Erasure, to veil; Repair, to heal; and Signaling, to direct the viewer’s gaze. Students were further invited to integrate personal symbols with borrowed cultural references, transforming each portrait into a metaphorical argument about the self.
The resulting works are diverse in voice and strategy. One student rewrote a narrative of melancholy by turning sadness into vibrant colour. Another engaged in intertextual dialogue with Klimt’s The Kiss, yet redirected the gaze in rejection. A third explored internal wounds through surgical stitching. Others displaced the face entirely, choosing instead to portray personal space, beloved objects, or aesthetic sensibilities — arguing that identity is distributed across things, memories, and surroundings.
For many participants, embroidery reclaimed a childhood craft once imposed as obligation, transforming it into a chosen authorial stance through the new support of paper.
Collectively, “Mending the Mirror” demonstrates that tactile intervention in digital media can serve as a vital tool for recovering collective memory and fostering social engagement. Identity, these students show us, is always built in relation — to others, to history, and to the material world around us.
