Masks & mirrors: from autobiographical reflection to unmasking interdisciplinary collaboration.

Masks & mirrors represent the evolution of a reflective arts-informed approach to research used in three contexts of inquiry including autobiographical reflection, performance and representation of data. Masks symbolize the social nature of human life and mirrors represent the importance of reflection. Together they hold a tension, a fine balance, between disguise/fiction and truth/reality. Masks represent the ephemeral truth of a moment in time that may become archetypal and that frequently connote ambiguity: what is true now may not be tomorrow. Mirrors, on the other hand, always reflect what surrounds them and while their reflective abilities do not change, what they reflect changes according to the context surrounding them. Just as one's autobiography is continuously revised, so is the process of interdisciplinary collaboration; mask-making is revealed as a process that elicits ambiguity and tentativeness yet which also opens deeper insights about the reality of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]