Phantom Histories
A Collaboration by Mary Jo Bole and Danielle Norton
Shadow Cabinet reflects the complex interplay between power, violence, and the fragile nature of reality in 2025. This multidisciplinary exhibition, combining drawing, sculpture, and video, draws inspiration from the 1920 silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film's unsettling expressionistic style and exploration of psychological horror provide a haunting lens through which we interrogate our times.
At the heart of the exhibition is the symbol of the hunting blind—an object traditionally associated with concealment, waiting, isolation, and predatory intent where the potential for cruelty lurks. Here, the blind is repurposed as a metaphor for the psychological traps that entangle the individual in a society where power, violence, and control often go unquestioned. The structure itself is angular, distorted, and ominous, evoking the fragmented set designs of Caligari's world, where physical space mirrors the internal chaos of its characters. This distorted form invites disorientation and unease, creating a space where the viewer's perception of reality becomes destabilized—much like the mind of the somnambulist Cesare, who is manipulated into violent acts by external forces.
Shadow Cabinet also delves deeply into the film's exploration of the fine line between sanity and insanity, a theme that resonates profoundly in our current moment. In Caligari, the film's fragmented reality is a metaphor for a world where what is rational and deranged blur together.