Drawing on speculative fiction, somatic movement, cognitive psychology, and radical theater, artists and participants used visual storytelling to reframe lived experiences and open new possibilities for resisting systems of control. Fragmented, doubled, and slowed movements disrupted mainstream narratives of carcerality.
The title, inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605–15), reflects the project’s exploration of the intersection of fiction and reality, demonstrating how shifting storytelling can challenge dominant power structures.
The project also functioned as a curriculum for court-involved youth, formerly incarcerated adults, and others vulnerable to the justice system, undoing language around culturally embedded conceptions of criminality and providing an open resource beyond the exhibition.
Mirror/Echo/Tilt was curated by Emily Mello, Associate Director of Education, and Sara O’Keeffe, Associate Curator
Publication
Catalogue and Pedagogical Resource
Selected Programs
“A possibility that exists alongside” poetry series with Nicole Sealey, Jess Saldana and Sable Elyse Smith
“So the Body May Think, Feel, Move” Participatory Performance Panel with Bryan Doerries(Theater of War); Ras Cutlass Mashraman(Metropolarity); and psychologist Isaiah Pickens.
Melanie Crean, Shaun Leonardo, and Sable Elyse Smith in Conversation with Nicole R. Fleetwood
The residency included private workshops for community partners, public forums and readings, and a resource room with visions for justice facilitated by the New Museum Teen Apprentice Program.
Selected Press
Silence Speaking Volumes: Artists Confront the Culture of Incarceration, New York Times, August 1, 2019
Mirror/Echo/Tilt: Interview with the Artists, All of it with Allision Stewart, WNYC, July 25, 2019
How Three Artists are Taking on the Crisis of Mass Incarceration, Cultured Magazine, June 21, 2019