https://www.cbc.ca/arts/this-artist-uses-shattered-glass-to-mend-broken-histories-9.7382041
Considering the superstitions around shattered glass, you might be surprised that artist Ry Van Der Hout has built a career on breaking mirrors — and they’re having great luck with it.
The New York- and Toronto-based artist’s latest exhibition, In Broken Light, spans the four floors of the Spadina Museum, a Victorian-era mansion on Toronto’s Davenport Hill. With dramatic and delicate works of glass and metal, Van Der Hout’s interventions inside the historic home delve into themes of time, queerness and community.
The exhibit starts in the basement, and explores different time periods floor by floor. The first stop is a sculpture called The Shattering, which concerns the period “before time.” A fragmented ball of glass hangs from the ceiling. In the damp room — which also features the archeological ruins of the original home owned by the Baldwin family — visitors can hear the sonification of black holes produced by NASA as well as the voice of writer and rabbi Rav Jericho Vincent recounting the Kabbalistic cosmology of creation.
Ry Van Der Hout, The Shattering, 2026, installed in the exhibition In Broken Light at Spadina Museum in Toronto. (Ry Van Der Hout)
Part of the symbolism of the broken glass ball, Van Der Hout explains, is the queer admiration of the disco ball, which the artist has contrasted with the “the idea of humanity's beginning in brokenness.”
On the bottom floor, visitors will also find Orpheus Twice, which consists of two nearly identical shattered panes of mirrored glass. Robert Baldwin, the original property owner, was married to his cousin Eliza, who died from complications after giving birth by caesarean section.
“They had this really intense love,” explains Van Der Hout. After Eliza’s death, Baldwin built a grieving cottage on the premises and spent the rest of his 30 years grieving his wife.
“When he died,” the artist says, “[Baldwin] left it in his will that he also had to undergo a cesarean section in order to be like her when he comes to heaven to see her.”
Ry Van Der Hout, Orpheus Twice, 2026, installed in the exhibition In Broken Light at Spadina Museum in Toronto. (Ry Van Der Hout)
To recreate this devastating story of loss, Van Der Hout shattered one mirror with a hammer and then meticulously cut the same pattern into a second mirror. “It's about this desire to control the uncontrollable,” the artist says. “We can't control our own deaths.”
The title, Orpheus Twice, is an ode to Cuban American artist Félix González-Torres, whose art practice often concerned queer history and the symbolic act of doubling objects. González-Torres created an artwork with the same name in 1991.
Another former resident of the Spadina House honoured by Van Der Hout’s work is Albert (Bertie) Austin, who died of tuberculosis at age 24. “I got to do an interview with one of the [family’s] descendants,” Van Der Hout says. “When he heard about my work, he said, ‘The shattering at the centre of our family is Bertie's death. That's what you should make a piece about.’ I took his suggestion.”
The piece dedicated to Bertie, After-Breath, consists of two panels of iron rods, each containing the shape of a lung. Stained glass — in pink and blue — sits within the curved sections, mimicking a shattered window. In front of each lung, Van Der Hout has bent some rods into a makeshift vase, which holds flowers from the Spadina Museum garden.
Ry Van Der Hout, Tiber, 2026, installed in the exhibition In Broken Light at Spadina Museum in Toronto. (Ry Van Der Hout)
On the second floor, Tiber represents the present. The artwork is named after Tiber Wilcox, a tour guide at Spadina Museum. At a young age, Wilcox started collecting and trading antiques. At 13, the young furniture enthusiast ordered an antique bed set from Hamilton to their home in Edmonton. Many years later, on their first visit to the Spadina Museum, Wilcox was shocked to see the very same bed set preserved in the historic home.
“These two bedroom sets were made for James and Susan Austin in 1865 by the Jackson Hay Company of Toronto,” Wilcox says. It is highly likely that Wilcox owns the missing bed set, which disappeared from ownership records in 1900.
Van Der Hout met Wilcox on a tour and became enthralled by their story. Van Der Hout photographed the tour guide as a vision of Narcissus reimagined through self-discovery and love. In the artwork, Wilcox is pictured in front of the bedroom set mirror, holding flowers that trail down their body. Van Der Hout used UV printing to apply the photo on shattered glass.
Wilcox feels that our present culture does not value antiques and artifacts the way it used to. It’s an honour, they say, to have Van Der Hout share in the awe of the stories held by the objects at Spadina Museum. “It is almost overwhelming to be a part of art in this way, because that's not quite me,” they say. “I became a sort of archetype outside of myself — and what a gift that was.”
Ry Van Der Hout, Open Wing Death, 2026, installed in the exhibition In Broken Light at Spadina Museum in Toronto. (Ry Van Der Hout)
On the final floor, Van Der Hout looks to the future with Open Wing Death. A hexagon-shaped glass dome occupying half the room, the artwork sits like a portal. Tiny preserved moths and butterflies rest on the shiny surface, juxtaposing death and rebirth. The mirror, which feels more like a kaleidoscope, acts as an opening to the future. Standing in the centre, you lose sight of yourself.
The piece brings you back full-circle to the disco ball while also referencing utopic forms like the geodesic dome, says curator Adrien Sun Hall. “This is the epilogue and the idea of a potential future.”
"At the heart of In Broken Light, is the understanding that shattering isn’t the end of a story — it’s the beginning of a new narrative,” says the curator.
“Ry Van Der Hout begins their sculptural practice with acts of intentional breaking, shattering glass and mirrors only to painstakingly solder them back together using traditional Tiffany stained-glass techniques. These intricately mended surfaces become metaphors for queer becoming and personal transformation. The fractures become apertures through which overlooked histories emerge, transforming the sculptures into contemporary reliquaries for lives remembered and forgotten."
The Ry Van Der Hout exhibition, In Broken Light, runs through Oct. 18 at Spadina Museum in Toronto.
