Self Gaze: The Artist and the Image of the Self

DURATION: 2024-04-23 ~ 2024-08-18
VENUE: NATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGES
ADDRESS: NO.70, SECTION 1, ZHONGXIAO W. ROAD, ZHONGZHENG DIST., TAIPEI 100007, TAIWAN

Self-gaze

Photography has changed the way we perceive ourselves and our bodily postures in front of the camera. The mirrored self-images create a certain paradoxical loop between gaze and cognition, as revealed by Jacques Lacan's "Mirror Stage," which elucidates the process of shaping the mirrored self by omitting something before transforming into a certain image, and constructing an imaginary world through intermediaries. The self-image in self-gaze is a projection of desired, alienated, altered, and imagined images.

The essence of photographic imagery is representation, and image production serves as the keynote of subject representation. Artists, through the interactive relationship between mirrored images and self-gaze, project onto symbolic representations, endowing the mirrored self with inner consciousness and self-alienation references. Objectively speaking, artists interpret the self-identity and knowledge construction between "gaze" and "self" from diverse viewpoints, breaking through fragmented cognition, conveying personal inner desires, and simultaneously demonstrating the image interpretation after the transference effects.