Ekaterina Leiva’s installation of sculptures is titled “Cave Dwellers”. It is a meditation on visual perception that questions what it means to really “see”. The title references Plato’s philosophy “Allegory of the Cave” where he is proposing the idea that what we believe is real might be just an appearance of the reality. He writes a story about the cave prisoners who are chained and unable to move their heads. Throughout their entire lives they have been facing a blank wall in front of them. They are convinced that the reality consists of only the shadows that are cast on the wall until one prisoner is freed and realizes that what they have been looking at throughout their whole lives was a mere projection of the world and not the world itself.

Unlike in Plato’s cave, the installation reflects a world of people whose visual senses are oversaturated with visual information. They reflect the laborious burden of looking but still fail at “seeing”. They demonstrate the need for reflection and show that facing the right side of the cave is still not enough. To “see” they must turn to other senses and find new ways of experiencing the world around them. 

Facebook Link to the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1745302559046635/?ti=icl