Artist Statement
As an adolescent, I was almost beaten up by someone because he thought I was staring at his girlfriend too explicitly and for much too long. The experience makes very explicit the threat that can be present in looking at something and the many latent power dynamics that can be revealed when it is the activity of seeing itself, which becomes the object on view. Watching people, watching people watch people, openly or secretly, is a core aspect of my being in the world and my artistic practice. My voyeurism has become a lens through which to reflect on the social and political engagement of looking itself. The gaze is not a neutral tool of registration, but one, which brings up many questions of moral obligation. There is power in looking, just as there is power in being able to avert one’s eyes. As a painter I often make images that attract the eye and at the same time turn the eye away. Using found footage and open-source images I put on display what I, myself, look at. Intimate scenes, where the shame of looking at such vulnerable privacy turns to excitement. Images of violence, where the gaze turns us into witnesses, no longer able to say we did not see. In doing so I tread the blurred line between watching and not watching, between watching and being watched. Putting these images together in series of paintings and even broadening my practice to installations has allowed me to highlight how the gaze itself is diffracted and the object on watch is constructed through its multiple perspectives. The spectator becomes embedded in the piece, as they are invited to come and look closer at something they might tend to look away from, and to do so publicly. In the upcoming year I aim to dive deeper into the situatedness of the audience as well as the piece by creating site-specific work, exploring the emphasis on the spectator as present.