Shape Open 2022: In The Mirror

About

In culture, mirrors are used to symbolise truth. It is also said that art is a mirror turned on society, reflecting the issues and mood of the current moment. In this way, the artist interrogates and sheds light, revealing things that might otherwise be disguised or hidden. 

For disabled people, however, too often what they find in the cultural mirror is distorted, filled with representations that are not only untrue, but harmful, damaging to individuals and communities.

In earlier times this might have centred on the physical self, but increasingly we find it in depictions of the person inside. Art and culture have a long history of using disabled people as props for entertainment, or as educational and cautionary tales. 

This exhibition treats the subject of disability differently, using the lens of lived experience.  Taking place in an age when mirrors are everywhere, even in our phones, it challenges the processes and assumptions that forge our ideas of who we are, and how we are shown. 

Through film, photography, data readings, portraiture, and computer-generated design, these digitally-hosted artworks ask new questions:

What happens to our understanding of ourselves if someone or something else has control of our image – and of the other ways we are represented?

Who has this power and where did it come from? How do we decide what is true? And what is the actual truth about how we live our lives?

As these twenty-five artists turn the mirror on themselves and society, we invite you to explore what might be found.

The Shape Open is our annual exhibition of artwork by disabled and non-disabled artists created in response to a disability-centred theme. The Open provides a space where disabled and non-disabled artists can discuss and exchange views and ideas about issues and topics which are often sidelined within artistic debate.

The Shape Open creates an opportunity for emerging and mid-career artists to raise their profile while allowing established artists taking part to show their work alongside new and fresh perspectives that they may not ordinarily encounter.