Artists:

Aliyah Al Awadhi, Fatema Al Fardan, Garreth Chan, Maitha Al Omaira, Mia Bailey, Raheed Allaf.

Curators: Alya Alawadhi, Videocity Project Manager in Abu Dhabi, and Vivi Zhu, Videocity Assistant in Abu Dhabi.

Exhibition brochure download

“I View” Concept by Alya Alawadhi

There is no better reward than feeling seen – being recognized and accepted for who we are. Yet, there is a susceptible difference between being seen and feeling seen.

Often, the more we are seen, the more we tend to grow invisible.

Often, something innately human is corroded by something’s gaze.

Often, visibility becomes a trap.

A performer is always at the mercy of their beholder and we are all performing on a stage of sorts: for a loved one, for a camera lens, for a society, and even for ourselves. Imagined, assumed, digital, or physical, all the gazes we perform for all real. Yet, they are not equally piercing. The most complicated of those gazes is the one that’s cast across time.

The technology of the camera has afforded us the ability to erase the distance between the past and the present; the technology of the internet means that everything lives on forever. Yet, the camera also imposes an impenetrable distance between the beholder and the beheld, and between the beheld and everything that is out of frame. What does the camera alienate and who does it empower? What does it mean for us when still images are able to migrate through time as videos and as memories?

This exhibition explores the dimension of time in our understanding of identity, agency, and accountability. Who, or what, are we looking at when we look through the past?

Titled “I, View”, this exhibition curates UAE voices that respond critically to the ongoing discourse around the gaze to empower the visitor to take agency of their gaze as well as the ways that they are perceived. Situating a conversation that was instigated in Basel in Saadiyat, the exhibition aims to continue the dialogue with a new local audience while still retaining the voices of other contexts and previous exhibitions. “I, View” opens alongside “The Shot”, an exhibition chronicling the history of the camera and evolution of photography, and extends the conversation from still to moving image by including video art. Moreover, many of the selected works have been previously presented in Bern and Basel under different iterations of the theme of the gaze. At Manarat Al Saadiyat, these works return home to continue the dialogue with their newly acquired accents.