artist: David Widgington, MTL
Mirror Mirror is a documentary collage show that explores neuroplasticity and the paradox of tolerance.
Societies that consider themselves inclusive prioritize collective and individual tolerance to cope with difference. But unlimited tolerance can lead us to tolerate the intolerable and its brutality. The paradox argues that to preserve inclusiveness and diversity, a society must defend tolerance by actively suppressing the intolerant, by force if necessary.
Neuroplasticity defines our brain’s ability to form and reorganize neural connections throughout our lives. Active synaptic transmissions between neurons strengthen a network, while inactive ones can become obsolete.
Mirror Mirror invites us to question our individual and collective breaking point between tolerance and the refusal of the intolerable. The exhibit offers a macro perspective of collective resistance to intolerance through a microscopic lens of a brain’s neural network.
Hundreds of images are scaled, printed and meticulously cut, then pasted onto each of the five large panels. Together, they create complex mind maps of refusal that oppose systems of intolerance.
These compositions reflect the artist’s engagement with living archives and remix culture and show a cultural heritage of opposition from the past ten years.
Mirror Mirror takes us on a journey via these mental maps of individual and collective refusal of the intolerant.
The artist invites viewers to consider our own mental map and to always question our stance on what is considered (in)tolerable.
