From the Fragment To the Whole (2019 – is a socially engaged art project that explores glass as a metaphor for the lived experience of surviving domestic abuse.
Watch this 3-minute video to learn more about the project before exploring the work below.
Click on the headings below to find out more about our main exhibitions so far.
Espacio Gallery – Exhibition & Talk 2022
Why Glass?
The Material
From the Fragment To the Whole is founded on the premise that creative engagement with materials can be a powerful way to reinterpret one’s past, creating opportunities for the emotional weight of lived experiences to become tangible through collaboration with the material — a process that is sometimes referred to as embodied knowledge.
In From the Fragment to the Whole, glass becomes a metaphor for the experience of rebuilding a life shattered by domestic abuse. Interesting parallels emerge between the contradictory qualities of glass and the realities of abuse: fragility and strength, transparency and opacity, sharpness and tactility, the ability to charm and even mesmerise, and the possibility of being shattered but also reformed into a new whole from fragments.
What Happens?
The Process
Through one-to-one workshops, women survivors of domestic abuse create artworks from fragments. The process is structured as an embodied engagement with glass, where material, memory, storytelling and physical action are inseparable.
Glass becomes a visual and material representation of lived experience — disruption, fragmentation and the attempt to reassemble a life affected by the devastating impact of domestic abuse.
At a certain stage of the workshop, participants use a large hammer to smash a sheet of glass, hitting it as many times as they choose. The material fractures in unpredictable ways, responding to pressure, impact and resistance.
The subsequent process of gathering fragments and reconstructing the surface becomes central to the work. Participants choose what to include, what to overlap, and what to leave absent. These absences are not empty gestures but reflections of loss — of what cannot be recovered, and what remains unresolved.
In this way, the process becomes an embodied form of making, where memory, material and thought are inseparable. It offers a way of working with fragmentation directly, through action, attention and care.
Why Does Breaking Matter?
Meaning
The breaking of glass carries a crucial shift in agency. In the context of domestic abuse, objects, homes and bodies are often subjected to violence and destruction by another. Glass, for many survivors, is associated in memory with danger and fear. Here, breaking is reclaimed. It becomes intentional — a reassertion of agency rather than victimhood.
It is also a deeply complex action. For many women, leaving abuse can involve the dismantling of the very structure they have been told to preserve: the family unit, relationships and shared life. Survivors are often made to carry guilt and responsibility for this rupture by perpetrators, wider family systems, and at times even by their own children. Within this context, the breaking of glass becomes a metaphor for that painful necessity — the moment of separation, the decision to leave, and the act of breaking away in order to survive, often at the most dangerous point in an abusive relationship.
The work therefore mirrors lived experience. It becomes a way of making visible what is often hidden, offering a silent retelling of stories that are frequently ignored, silenced or misunderstood.
What Emerges?
The Artwork
Once fired in the kiln, the resulting glass panels hold these actions permanently within their surface. The material registers fragmentation and reconstruction simultaneously, transforming rupture into form. The finished pieces reflect the slow reconstruction of a fragmented self and the ongoing process of rebuilding after trauma.
Within this context, glass provides clarity. The fractures are not concealed but made visible. They are not accidental marks, but direct consequences of rupture and harm. They ask to be seen and understood as such.
Similarly to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken vessels are repaired rather than discarded, the breakages are not hidden but given prominence and value. They become evidence of resilience, carrying the marks of survival while remaining whole despite past fractures.
The resulting artworks speak of repair, reforming and recreation.
For the individual, the process is an embodied one: working with hands, heart and mind to create an artwork that reflects memory and the shape of lived experience.
Why Does It Matter?
The Wider Context
On a wider level, the works produced through the workshops bring together individual narratives into a collective expression. They open space for recognition, listening and accountability, contributing to broader conversations around trauma-informed practice, social support and the need for epistemic justice – the right of survivors to have their knowledge, experience and testimony recognised as valid and significant.
Collectively, these works contribute to a wider visibility of survival, and to dismantling the barriers that prevent survivors from being heard, supported and believed.
As the project continues to grow, each new artwork becomes part of an expanding collection of survivor narratives. The long-term ambition is to bring these individual works together within a unified public sculpture: a collective structure formed from many distinct experiences, reflecting both the uniqueness of each story and the strength that emerges through solidarity. In this way, the project moves from individual acts of making towards a shared public monument to survival, resilience and transformation.
If you would like to find out more about this project and its participants, watch this 20-minute film. It made with footage of the workshops and interviews with the participants and the artist Roberta De Caro: