What’s in the box?

Artist Kristy Robinson. Photo: Bruce Barnard.

‘What do you see when you look at me? Do you really see me or do you see yourself and what's behind you? I'm not just an object to be looked at and judged by my outsides. If you look at my outsides you might miss something beautiful-look deeper.'

A box that has metaphors upon metaphors is forcing people to look at themselves in the mirror and find clarity.

The art piece titled The Box is an interactive art display made of mirrors with words etched all over that you have to walk around to read.

To some people, when they look at The Box all they see is simply a shiny box that warps their reflection. But if you peer through a tiny gap in the lettering you'll find the box's inner beauty- a woman.

Artist Kristy Robinson says the woman inside the box represents the soul of someone and the box represents how the world sees you.

'The piece is all about when you meet someone and you see yourself - you see what's behind you and your past,” she says.

'It's not until you look through the box and see the person inside and communicate with them that you actually begin to connect with the person and not just judge the person by how they look.”

The installation was previously held in several public places in Whakatane and Ohope, but this is the first time it has come to Tauranga.

The Box invokes a range of responses - curiosity, surprise, confusion, joy, deep reflection, laughter - and Kristy says she can tell a lot about a person by the way they engage with it.

'Some people will look the object up and down and totally objectify it and some people will try and figure it out and they can't, so they just move on. Some people will figure it out straight away.”

She says the interaction between the person in the box and the viewer is the most interesting aspect.

'Some of the most intense conversations and revelations have come from the installation, like a friend of mine who is very self-conscious, but when she hopped in the box she found it very liberating, because she didn't feel judged on the way she looked.

'However, some people feel the opposite - trapped and judged.”

The Box can be seen at the Art of Technology exhibition, which is on now at the Goddards Centre at 21 Devonport Road, until November 5.

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