The Greatest Show on Earth, never ending, and replete with mysteries, daring leaps of faith, astounding transformations, emotional storms, and flights of logic and fantasy is right here in your mind.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman instigated my interest in behavioural and cognitive biases. Many of our social challenges and the associated economic and environmental challenges appear to suffer from a low awareness of how our minds work and why we act in certain ways. With this work, I offer a perspective on some ideas, concepts, and questions that I am encountering and that have helped me to understand my own situation and context.

Behavioural and cognitive biases are at play in our perceptions and interactions with power and privilege. Public discourse about privilege provided me with the idea to make Seats of Privilege. From the boardroom to the dining room, status, wealth, and privilege continue to be denoted by the seating arrangements. Wheel of Fortune is a playful presentation of some easily accessed biases. The hall of mirrors works with biases and awareness and includes the viewer in the scene. Time pieces raise contemporary concerns and by their structure imply scheduled action. Tower of Babel, built with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) illuminates issues arising with the quantity and quality of information and machine sources of it. I am using words and symbols in functional furnishings; it’s word art, installation, and fine craft in collaboration.

Art happens in the mind, not on the gallery wall. Marc Mayer is quoted as saying it with smoking references. “The artwork is just the match. Your brain is the cigar.” A better understanding of how we react, associate, think, and organize can help us deal with manipulations by vested interests but we can also use it to initiate and foster social change. Don’t forget the popcorn!