We Insist

The mirror was there, in front of our eyes. At first it looked like a hole, but when we saw what it was reflecting, its content became a reiteration of our reality, the reality in our side. Against the work, we were exposed to witness a wonderful game of perception and with diverse readings. Two dimensions came together at the act of watching. The first dimension was at the stage were the installation was placed: the borderline, the sky, the wires, and the light. The overall picture. The second one consisted in the particular picture held in every one of the more than 30 mirrors that were arranged as a mosaic that was the central part of the piece. The fragmented and the specific reality.

The space repeated itself over and over, like a multiplicity of our image, and every tree, house, wire, and floor, which peacefully adorned the background behind us. For a moment it was possible to imagine that the primordial sense of the piece was no other than to serve as a strange and restless decoration. Nevertheless, the work of dancers Mia Habib, Rani Nair and sound artist Jassem Hindi, proposed precisely something more complex. It insisted that we can never forget about that territory, that we should constantly think about our condition through our limits and borders.

It looked as if they were telling us that the wall was a nothing but a reminder of our everyday life: The wall is there, and all of us are here, persisting, crossing and contemplating daily, we are being constrained into a territory, an unchangeable political and cultural limitation. Finally, the acknowledgement that the life here is as important meaningful and unique as the lives on the other side.

For each mirror, we are a lot of pieces, because we understand that the reality is not just one only, and sure it is personal and untransferable, but it can also be shared. Then, what happens here does not just stays here, it crosses the boundaries or we keep it with ourselves when we cross this constant traffic space we call border.
The mirrors were there.

*The photographic testimony that accompanies this text presents “We Insist” a night before the official exhibition and a day after the event “Running into Political Equator”. Apparently it was completely destroyed by young habitants of the surroundings and just a few pieces of mirrors and wood remains as proof.



Julio Torres, julio de 2009.