Videocity x Manarat Al Saadiyat

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

“I View” Concept 

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 a 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 camera lens, for a loved one, for a society, and even for ourselves. Imagined, assumed, digital, or physical, all the gazes we perform for are real. Yet, they are not equally piercing. Perhaps 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? Who would we be if no one was, is, or will be looking?

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? 

Text by Alya Alawadhi

https://saadiyatisland.ae/experiences/manarat-al-saadiyat/

An exhibition by Videocity

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