Mirrors

About

Mirrors is an encounter between three different countries, three different cultures. Moles, scars and belly buttons are elements of the body shared by all of us, therefore they make us similar but never identical, no matter where we come from. One tends to forget about them and most of the time, people don’t even notice them.

Yet, those marks constitute our identity. They are not specific to a community, they are universal but always different. One detail, one small special feature might be invisible in the eyes of others but it constitutes the uniqueness and the humanity of the individual and it allows him or her to differentiate from the crowd. Freud evokes this phenomenon through the concept of “Narcissism of small differences”.

Besides, the skin keeps all the signs of our past and shows the evolution of the individual. The marks it bears can have various origins such as the consequence of a childhood disease or an accident, a punch, a conflict or a ritual. From this perspective, through their work the artists of Mirrors show that those marks constitute a map of ourselves. They are permanent representations of our past as the skin carries the buried marks and wounds of our family, of accidents, of our present and  of our destiny. When paying close attention to them, one can actually retrace the life of someone.

Mirrors praises diversity and, through the artworks and through their own reflection thanks to mirrors installed in the exhibition, visitors are invited to confront their intimate view of their body with a social view which corresponds to an external reality. A reality where there are rules and where physical differences can trigger some discriminations and feelings of hostility. Mirrors somehow reveals what is hidden behind ordinary perceptions and shows a version of the genuine essence of the being.

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Fan Wu is a young Taiwanese filmmaker who now lives in Budapest.This is Fan's first experiment on bringing a documentary into modern arts gallery. She is presenting her short 10 minutes movie The Map of the Faces, in which she has gathered people from different origins in a series of interviews to talk about the history of the moles they have on their face. Her concept is inspired by a Chinese-Taiwanese tradition which  says that people’s destiny can be read through the moles on their faces. Moles are sometimes due to some past events of the family and they can be passed on from generation to generation.

The face is the part of our body that is always fully exposed to others, and this is where emotions show with no option to hide them. By observing this part of the body closely, Fan is offering to the public an intimate encounter with someone else’s body.

Attila Glázer was born in Budapest, Hungary. He is a multi-disciplinary artist and is displaying here a piece from one of his contemporary photography project.

Through his work Belly Buttons, the artist aims at showing a part of the body we rarely look at,  we don’t really remember what is the purpose of it. The work consists in a series of close shots of belly buttons that are printed in large size. He likes to expose it as a “pixel” of individuality. The artwork has two different interpretations. First, it represents the link with the mother. The belly button is the sign of the separation and independence of the child as the appearance of the belly button marks the start of the construction of the individual.

Second, it refers to the expression “to look at your belly button” which is a universal representation of the fact that almost everybody tends to care about his or her own well-being in the context of the biggest human crisis of the century, where acting, taking part of human rescue program and being united is the solution.

Nico Forero uses drawings, diagrams and maps to display the stories of his own body through five visual approaches of accidents, surgeries and physical conditions his body underwent  that have defined the way he is now and the things he does. In Body Stories, every wound or mark is related to a specific event that are key moments in his life. His scars play the role of reminders of the different decisions he took and actions he did all along his life.

Nico is a filmmaker with a degree in Communication from Colombia, a diploma in Digital Media from Australia and currently studying a masters in Documentary film directing in Europe. He has worked developing journalistic projects for the national television in Colombia, National Geographic and Channel 4 in UK and digital content in Australia. "Mirrors" is his first visual exhibition produced in collaboration with artists and curators from Taiwan, Hungary and France.