In Wish, Bethel Dute offers a masterful meditation on the mirror as a site of self-reckoning. The figure in the foreground is rendered only as a dark, textured silhouette, turning her back to the viewer to face her own reflection.

The reflection itself—a young girl with wide, searching eyes—is the only clearly defined face in the piece, suggesting that the 'truth' of the subject lies within her self-perception rather than her physical presence. Dute’s use of vertical striations and fractured color blocks creates a sense of a world viewed through a distorted lens. The artwork explores the inherent tension in the act of wishing: the gap between who we are in the present and the idealized versions of ourselves we see in our reflections. It is a quiet, haunting study of the lifelong conversation we have with our own history."