Ana Teresa Vicente | Wandering Gaze | 2018 29.02. – 18.10.2020 | Fotomuseum Winterthur

SITUATION #196

Ana Teresa Vicente, Wandering Gaze, 2018, SITUATION #196, SITUATIONS/The Right to Look, installation view at Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2020 © Philipp Ottendörfer
Ana Teresa Vicente, Wandering Gaze, 2018, SITUATION #196, SITUATIONS/The Right to Look, installation view at Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2020 © Philipp Ottendörfer
Ana Teresa Vicente, Wandering Gaze, 2018, SITUATION #196, SITUATIONS/The Right to Look, installation view at Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2020 © Philipp Ottendörfer

The installation Wandering Gaze by the Portuguese artist Ana Teresa Vicente consists of an X-Y plotter hidden behind a framed photograph to which a magnet has been attached. While looking at the photograph through the viewfinder, the viewer’s gaze is recorded by an eye-tracking system. Inside the box are metal shards, which are then set in motion by the magnet which retraces the recorded pattern of the gaze. What begins as a seemingly innocent act of viewing becomes a destructive gesture, erasing the image over time: The more the image is looked at, the more it vanishes in front of our eyes. Vicente thus unmasks the complicity between image production and image consumption, translating the immaterial inscription of gazes into photographs into a materially tangible form. The regime of the gaze does not end at the moment of taking the picture, but is subsequently multiplied or reinforced in the act of viewing. The viewers find themselves in a dilemma: not only do they contribute to the destruction of the artwork, but they are also confronted with their own curiosity and voyeurism which put them in this position in the first place.

More by Ana Teresa Vicente: anateresavicente.webnode.com/