Thinking Model I (2011)
BRAIN LEG IN WAX WITH EYE PATCH AND FABRIC
In addition to the body, the human brain, the organ that registers impressions and directs our actions, has kept Fabre busy for years. Among other things, this led to a film project with Italian scientist Giacomo Rizzolatti, who discovered that the perception of an action activates the same brain cells as our own execution of it, the so-called mirror neurons. Furthermore, Fabre made many brain sculptures and drawings incorporating elements from Rizzolatti's experiments, classical vanitas objects and other symbolic objects. His Thinking Models suggest an answer to the question of a 2014 expo: 'Do we feel with our brain and think with our heart?' That inverse relationship between body and brain is also at the heart of this installation, in which a lower leg and foot appear to be composed of brains underneath. An eye patch suggests not only a permanent scar, but also that humans remain blind to their own destiny.