January 9th to March 11th, 2005

Vikky Alexander, Roman Bartkiw & Laura Donefer

The Mutual Group Tower Gallery

Disney's well-known film version of the story, released in 1937, was ostensibly based on the German tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Originally titled Snow-drop and published in Kinder-und Hausmarchen in 1812, the Grimms' Snow White is a darker, chillier story than the musical Disney cartoon, yet it too had been cleaned up for publication, edited to emphasize the good Protestant values held by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Alternative versions of Snow White were popular around the world long before the Grimms claimed it for Germany, but their adaptation of the story (along with Walt Disney's) is the one that most people know today. Elements from the story can be traced back to the oldest oral tales of antiquity, but the earliest known written version was published in Italy in 1634. This version was called The Young Slave, published in Giambattista Basile's Il Pentamerone, and is believed to have influenced subsequent retellings -- including a German text published by J. K. Musaus in 1784 and the Grimms' text in 1812.

The variants amongst the many texts are multiplicitious. In several versions of the story it is Snow White’s mother, not step-mother, who wishes her dead. Snow White lives in the forest with – depending on the adaptation – dwarfs, robbers or knights. The Evil Queen is able to kill Snow White with a comb, poison ink on a letter or a cursed bodice. The aspects that remain consistent within the story however include the mirror, the apple and the witchcraft of the Evil Queen.

The reason for those symbols being retained throughout the myriad of versions of the story most probably lies in their atavistic import. The apple – within Judaeo-Christian symbology – represents the choice between good and evil. Eve was enticed by Satan to eat the apple from the tree of Knowledge thus setting into motion the fall of mankind from divine grace. Her eating of the apple condemned humankind to mortality. Likewise it was this temptation – the poisoned apple – that proved to be Snow White’s downfall. Despite the fact that she had been warned (sometimes by the dwarfs, sometimes by good fairies) not to accept any gifts from strangers she couldn’t resist the enticement of the apple . Like Eve, she succumbed to temptation and suffered the consequences.

The mirror has long been used in fortune-telling and witchcraft. The practice is called “scrying” and it involves entering into a kind of trance or meditative state and then deciphering the images that the mirror presents. This practice has been around for centuries and different cultures have adapted different items for this use – bowls of water, mirrors, smoke from fires, crystals. Thus the Evil Queen’s ability to discover “who is the fairest” comes from her ability to scry. Beyond its literal meaning, metaphorically, the tale of Snow White – as with many fairy tales – can be seen as being a psychological mirror as to how we understand or deal with the world around us.

The witch’s pot likewise has both a benign and a malicious import. Many so-called witches were in fact midwives and healers, primarily women who understood the healing powers and properties of different herbs and who could brew up concoctions to heal many physical ills. These women came under increasing suspicion and malevolent treatment with the rise of the patriarchal Christian church in the middle ages – the time that many of the classic fairy tales first came into being. These women’s medicines and potions were derided as superstitions and their centuries old knowledge relegated to the realm of “the black arts.” Rather then being acknowledged as healers these women were scorned as witches and people were warned of the perils of their “dark arts”. Thus the “witch’s pot” changed from having a positive to a negative association, and came to be regarded first and foremost as something to be used for boiling up fatal poisonous apples with which to tempt young maidens.

In invoking the story of Snow White, the installation Mirror, Mirror uses the three symbols of witch’s pot, apple and mirrored chair, in order to stimulate viewers to think anew about this ancient fairy tale. Each viewer can – and will – bring their own interpretation to the tale. The enduring power and lifelong attraction of the deeper psychological journeys and moral quandaries that fairy tales address keeps readers coming back to them. Focusing on the drama of basic human attachments and temptations fairy tales work their magic by acknowledging our identification with the darker or more difficult parts of ourselves. In a very real sense they mirror who we were once and who we are now.

Vikky Alexander lives in Vancouver, and teaches at the University of Victoria. She studied fine arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, graduating in 1979. She has exhibited extensively within Canada and internationally, in Japan, Korea, Europe, and in the United States, particularly in New York, where she lived during the 1980s. Since the 1980's, Vikky Alexander's art practice has expanded the medium of photography into the areas of sculpture, installation and digital media.

Roman Bartkiw was born in Montreal in 1935. He studied at the Ontario College of Art, Sheridan College and Alfred University in New York. He received the Governor General Medal in 1960 and was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1980. He has exhibited in Canada and in Scandinavia. His works can be found in the Royal Ontario Museum, the Umea & Gothenburg Museum (Sweden), the Japanese Cultural Centre (Tokyo), the Nova Scotia Art Gallery and the Museum of Decorative Arts (Denmark).

Laura Donefer was born in Ithaca, NY and was raised in Quebec. She studied sculpture at the National Art School of Cubanacan, in Havana, Cuba, Dawson College and McGill University in 1979. She trained as a glass blower at Sheridan College and graduated in 1985. Her work has been exhibited internationally including solo and group exhibitions at the Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art in Japan, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Hammelev Arts and Culture Centre in Denmark, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, the Museo del Vidrio in Mexico, and the Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, China.