The Project
They were just six students from the Utrecht School of the Arts: Aria, Rosalie, Milly, Tess, Selene and Nora.
Young. Curious. A little intense in the best way.
For their final project, they didn’t want to design another object, campaign or installation.
They wanted to explore something messier. Something human.
Not just what we show — but what we usually keep hidden.
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Meet the Six
The Intuition
After years of sketching, sculpting and overthinking, they found themselves pulled toward something fuzzier.
Not form. But feeling.
They wanted to capture what usually slips through the cracks — the emotional undercurrent of women’s lives.
The layers. The contradictions.
That quiet knowing behind the eyes.
They didn’t sit in lecture halls talking about vulnerability and perception.
They did it their way: through messy sketches, midnight voice notes, weird metaphors and moodboards full of fog.
The Idea
Then the idea arrived:
a mirror.
But not the kind that tells you if your hair’s okay.
The kind that shows you what’s really going on.
Your mood. Your energy. Your emotional weather report.
They imagined a mirror that didn’t just catch your reflection —
but caught the stuff you normally keep to yourself.
Like a mood ring, but with better taste.
It sounded weird. Wild. A little woo-woo.
But they couldn’t let it go.
So they gave it a shot.
And somehow, they made it real.
The Pitch
They called themselves Emoti-Con — a slightly ironic name for six students trying to visualise feelings without turning into full-time poets.
Armed with a prototype, a half-baked pitch, and enough guts to fake confidence, they talked their way into the ECHO Festival — a yearly creative mashup in Utrecht full of art, food and tote bags with strong opinions.
They were given a tiny stand.
Smack in between a vinyl stall and a dumpling truck.
And honestly? It was perfect.
“We honestly didn’t think they’d say yes”
Tess laughed.
“But I guess there’s just something about six girls with a vision and zero chill.”
The Mood Booth
So yeah — they did it.
At stand number 33, tucked between vinyl records and vegan dumplings, they set up their booth.
Black. Boxy. Zero instructions. Maximum mystery.
Inside?
A wooden stool, a single spotlight, and two mirrors (one moody, one mellow) doing all the emotional heavy lifting.
No explanations. No hashtags. No curated playlist.
Just a woman, a mirror, and a vibe shift.
“I thought it was just a photo booth,”
- one visitor said.
“But it felt like a conversation with myself.”
The Response
On the morning of June 6, at exactly 9:00 AM, they opened the curtain, flipped the switch, and held their breath.
Nothing happened.
Just the quiet shuffle of early festival-goers and someone asking where the toilets were.
But then..
Women began to show up. One by one. Curious.
Some peeked inside. Others just walked straight in.
The Emoti-Con team exchanged glances.
Eyebrows raised. Was this for real?
Then they came back.
With friends. With sisters. One even brought her mum (and a very strong opinion about mirrors).
The booth — meant as a one-day experiment — started to feel like something else.
Something softer. Smaller. More human.
Almost… magical. But like, in a grounded way.
“We didn’t want to show them what they looked like,”
- Selene later said.
“We wanted to remind them how beautiful they already are - inside.”
The Reflection
They hadn’t expected so many feelings.
So many stories. So many women saying, “I didn’t think I’d feel anything... but then I did.”
Some saw softness. Others saw chaos.
One said it looked like her brain on a Tuesday: a bit grey, kind of foggy, but strangely accurate.
It wasn’t always pretty. Or clear. But it felt real.
Even when it looked more like a weather chart than a mirror.
So the team did what art students do: they pulled out their sketchbooks.
A little nervously, they asked if they could use these reflections as inspiration for a visual record of the project.
Most women said yes.
Some even cried a little. (In a good way.)
“I didn’t think I had a ‘mood’ worth drawing. Turns out.. I do.”
- One of the women
The Result
It started with a what if — and zero clue what they were doing. What if we could turn feelings into faces?
Moods into portraits? Vibes into… visuals?
That’s how Deminine the Collection happened.
75 women. 75 reflections.
Not perfect. Not polished. Not posing.
Just real moments, caught mid-feeling.
Because sometimes, a face says what words won’t.
All 75 portraits are out in the wild — now live as a limited NFT collection on OpenSea.
Full-resolution files are exclusively available to NFT holders.
The Collection
Each portrait is based on a woman who stepped into The Mood Booth. No names. No context. No backstory.
Just 75 faces — drawn exactly as they appeared in that split second of quiet.
There’s no single way to read them.
What you see says just as much about you.
Because, let’s be honest: meaning is mostly projection anyway.
“I stepped in for fun. Now I’m hanging on someone’s wall!”
- One of the women
Think you’d dare?
“Not featured, but deeply involved.”
