The Invisible Double (2025)

In The Invisible Double, Mitrani invites the audience on a seven-minute mystical journey into the inner and outer worlds. This dual journey unfolds across two synchronized videos, each projected onto an eye-shaped puddle ostensibly filled with aqueous humor—the transparent liquid inside the eye’s anterior chamber. Yet it is not only form and substance that conjure the organ of sight; so too does the imagery cast upon these pools. This is evident from the very first frames. On either side, a close-up of an eye—or more precisely, a pupil—emerges, dark at its center, glowing orange at the periphery. Encircling each pupil is a ring of earth, through which, at intervals, the titular phrase glides: “All things have their invisible double.”

A few seconds into the videos, the pupils dissolve, yielding to a kaleidoscopic stream of images. It is here that the divergence begins, and the visions projected into the left and right eyes slowly drift apart. The left opens onto a tunnel shrouded in penumbra, that takes us deeper into the retina. From there, all grows increasingly arcane, abstract, and symbolic. The right eye, by contrast, starts with the soft glow of a sunrise and remains tethered to the tangible and the recognizable. These initial scenes reveal a deeper metaphor where the left eye turns inward, exploring the depths of the human psyche, while the right looks outward, serving as a portal to the outside world.

The Latin root of “sinister,” sinistra, means “left,” but evokes darkness, enigma, and evil. Mitrani’s left projection embraces this legacy. In it unfolds a meditative sequence of obscure forms, shadowed landscapes, and black creatures: night skies, abyssal seas, and a wild black horse galloping, neighing, prancing. This horse may well have wandered in from a story by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector—a constant reference for Mitrani—who confessed that a horse lived inside her body, as if it were its home. After the horse, an egg appears—another emblem dear to Lispector, who speaks of it as a symbol of mystery and intimacy, wondering whether it idealizes her, meditates her, or merely sees her.

Not all images in the left eye are so easily named, and there are moments when the viewer is swept into more esoteric territory. Projected onto the puddle are other eyes—stylized, symbolic—gleaned from secret and sometimes sacred texts of mystical and esoteric traditions. One such eye is drawn from the alchemical illustrations of Jakob Böhme, the Christian mystic whose visionary drawings are populated with ocular imagery—perhaps evoking the moment his own eyes turned inward in a state of ecstatic insight, perceiving the divine architecture of reality. The mythic eye of Odin surfaces, too—an eye sacrificed to Mímir, guardian of wisdom’s well, in exchange for a deeper insight. And from the realm of analytical psychology emerges Carl Jung’s third eye, the inner eye of knowledge, bestowed upon the serpent after its descent into the underworld—an allegory for the journey into the unconscious.

By contrast, the right puddle—symbolic of the right eye—offers a more grounded vision, gazing outward onto the material plane. Landscapes of sea and palm trees unfurl, interspersed with elemental motifs like fire and rain. Mushrooms sprout and suns rise and fall into oceans. Unlike the left, most images captured by this eye retain clear form and content—recognizable, contained, and defined.

Together, these mirrored visions form a dialectic: interior and exterior, seen and unseen, symbolic and sensory. Each reflects and refracts the other in an infinite loop—an optical and spiritual continuum—where every image gestures toward its invisible double.

In All Things Have Their Invisible Double neemt Mitrani het publiek mee op een zeven minuten durende mystieke reis door de binnen- en buitenwereld. Deze dubbele tocht ontvouwt zich via twee gesynchroniseerde video’s, elk geprojecteerd op een oogvormige plas. De linkerprojectie—verbonden met het linkeroog— keert naar binnen, naar de diepten van de menselijke psyche. Daar verschijnen zwarte paarden, onpeilbare zeeën en esoterische ogen, doordrenkt met verborgen kennis. De rechterprojectie richt zich naar buiten en toont visioenen van groeiende paddenstoelen, bewegende zonnen, met palmen omzoomde paden, flakkerende vlammen en druppelend water. Beide werelden weerspiegelen en vervormen elkaar eindeloos, en onthullen dat elk beeld—net als het oog zelf—een onzichtbare dubbelganger heeft.