X is not the same as X

X is not the same as X is an installation that disturbs consumer identity and power relations. In the gallery at Melbourne Central the installation enacts a folding of the outside into the inside, and vice versa. Bishop & Reis entrap the viewer in a 2/3 size room – a slightly distorted replica of a space through which the viewer has recently passed. Inside this shaky interior, behind our own reflection, the viewer devolves into something else, an everyman who in The West Wing is presented as both one and many Santa. To warp a well-known phrase: the white hair follicles of the long beard marks a deterritorialisation of the fur, mouth and snout of the animal.