Idealization suffuses visual media, and the damage includes everything from promoting impossible body images to making real people invisible.  But sometimes an artist can turn convention against itself, and the results can be amazing.

The Swiss organization Pro Infirmis has created an art project that includes a department store installation and this film.  Their website is here, and for those who can’t read German, French, or Italian, you can read more about the project here.

The film has been going viral–over 11 million views at YouTube, among others–and we’re happy to help it along.  There is much that could be said, and not only about issues of disability.  For readers of this blog, the work could provide a fascinating reconsideration of questions about modeling, the relationships between images and mannequins, and between mirrors, mannequins, photographs, and self-image, and about copying and self-consciousness, and much more as well.  But that will be left for another day.  For now, watch the film and ponder what is revealed.