Lenses: Seen and Be Seen
With the pervasiveness of technology and social media, Americans interpret their worlds through a variety of lenses, both literal and ideological. These lenses shift, distort, and refract our perceptions in subtle and unacknowledged ways. When we begin to unpack the ways that we see and are seen, we begin to recognize how our vision is never neutral and never complete.
Lenses: Seen and Be Seen is a collaborative effort to explore the perceptions of and intersections between Jackson, Mississippi residents, particularly those residing and working in and near Midtown Jackson.
The exhibition will consist of 20 door-size portraits of 10 individual residents painted on wooden panels and mounted on rolling casters in order to be double-sided and movable. One side of the panel will show a painted image of a resident specifically composed to exude how they see or hope to see themselves in their world. The other side will show the same resident posing as they feel they are seen by the outside world. Some images may be identical, some may be vastly different.
The design and composition of each painting will be based solely on the information provided by each participant, including photographs, conversations, and survey responses.