An ever-changing ebb and flow is echoed in the imagery of water suspended overhead in Mirror of My Heart / Dreamers with Lost Memories, Julio Valdez’s painting of the world beneath the ice. Set within the elegant curves of the oval rotunda, Valdez reverses the traditional intentions of allegorical mural paintings, popular allusions to wealth and prosperity painted as ornamentation within the mansions of the Hudson River elite of the 19th-century, by transforming the rotunda into a metaphorical mirror reflecting historical and economic relationships between the river and the slave trade. Migration and mortality become mythic themes represented by Valdez's image of the human form frozen between transparent layers of colors and textures; fractured identity and stilted freedom within the rigid strata of class and society. www.juliovaldez.com