The Lover’s Eye was never just a portrait. It was a portrait of a gaze. The art of looking back.

For the #FLORAMuseumChallenge, I chose the 19th-century Lover’s Eye Bracelet, an intimate object featuring a miniature of a loved one’s eye. Pieces like these were worn close to the body so the wearer could imagine their beloved’s gaze resting upon them 👁️

That idea became my creative starting point: what if the gaze that we see in art could be returned?

So I imagined a woman walking through present-day New York wearing the bracelet. As we get closer to the miniature, we find "Ivy" actually looking out from her own time. The person preserved inside the object is suddenly looking back at us, creating a fleeting exchange between past and present.

The engraved name “Ivy” on the back of the actual bracelet became a small but meaningful detail that helped me imagine the story behind the object.

And so I wanted to create something that felt like a visual poem 💛 A gaze captured centuries ago, finding its way back to another pair of eyes.