MISSION
The Yale School of Management (SOM) and limeSHIFT joined together to create Espejismo to activate SOM’s mission to educate leaders for business and society. The goal of the project is to forge connections between SOM and its neighbors, create dialogue and empathy amid a divisive cultural climate, and complicate reductive assumptions about people and communities across the globe. This partnership marks SOM’s first art activation that explores the intersection of business, art, and civic engagement. For students and the community, this timely project provides an opportunity to learn about others and share stories while building connections that will far outlast the art installation.
YAZMANY ARBOLEDA
artist statement
When I was eleven years old and simplifying fractions in the middle of a school day in Colombia, my father was murdered at a nearby gas station. Four men on motorcycles, armed with machine guns, sprayed bullets into him while he was pumping gas into his tank. Ever since then, when I draw or paint or laugh in the company of others, I feel him with me, and I am eleven again.
And now, I find myself seeking other witnesses to the inexorable blur between past and present, hope and regret, public spaces and private feelings. Using video, paintings, photographs—and especially people—I orchestrate elaborate, alternate realities that challenge certainties and unmask prejudices that lie just outside our collective field of vision.
And out of this practice came the idea for Espejismo:
The current global cultural landscape asks that we reflect on the perspectives of others more than ever before. To do this, we must immerse ourselves in how others see the world around them.The act of self reflection can lead to self improvement; reflection on the lives of others, leads to empathy, awareness, and the strengthening of community through curiosity.
By seeing how others see and by letting them see how we see, we can collectively move the world forward in a considered way. Espejismo’s garden of mirrors will be a monument to this considered forward movement. Every mirror will be a gift. Every mirror, a protestation. Every mirror, a stake in the ground claiming victory. And, as is often the case when people come together in a thoughtful way, the overall beauty will be greater than the sum of its parts. Yale’s grounds and New Haven will bear witness to this.
We are not who we thought we were. Our own reflections served us none.
ESPEJISMO: Project Precedents Film
The project is in collaboration with:
The mission of the Yale School of Management is to educate leaders for business and society. The school’s students, faculty, and alumni are committed to understanding the complex forces transforming global markets and using that understanding to build organizations that contribute lasting value to society.
limeSHIFT is a Brooklyn-based and MIT-founded creative agency that activates people and place with purpose through art. By bringing art and artists into communities, we transform spaces into a reflection of community vision and an inspiration for creativity, productivity and connection. Please visit limeSHIFT.com for more details and follow @limeSHIFTart on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.