We Are Reflected In Gazes Of Glass (2015) is a site-specific exhibition, and part of the larger project How Do You See?, focusing on five stuffed individuals on display at Malmö Castle. Through site-specific periscopes, built so that the visitors can see what the stuffed animals see, the exhibition is investigating if a changed direction of view can alter the visitors experience of the stuffed animals and through empathy and imagination give life to lifeless bodies.
One of the goals of taxidermy at natural history exhibitions is to make the dead bodies look as alive as possible. One of the primary lessons when visiting natural history museums is that non-human lives are not as sacred as humans. By making some of the animals into “active” spectators through which you can view the exhibition, this project is hoping for a change of perspective that sparks the radical idea that humans and non-humans are more alike than different.
The title We Are Reflected In Gazes Of Glass plays with the several layers of glass creating multiple reflections in the permanent exhibition Our Nature at Malmö Castle. All animals, both human and non-human, are reflected in several layers of glass such as the cage, the window, the lacquered surface and the glass eyes of stuffed animals bearing witness of human domination, power and violence.
The project How Do You See? consists of three different chapters:
Slit, Scratch, Stuff, Stitch -an exhibition at Galleri S:t Gertrud
We Are Reflected in Gazes of Glass -an exhibition at Malmö Castle
Giraffoperiscopic Investigations -a series of workshops at Malmö Castle
