Re_g(u)ard_e plays with the term guarde (intended as guardian), the verb re-gard (to consider), and the French verb regarde (to look), trying to unhinge the limits of the visual and the too frequent association between gaze and judgement.
The Lacanian theory maintains that it is the eye that looks, but something about vision cannot be expressed by the singularity of the point (of view), no matter what it is. In the works of the international artists in the exhibition, we see a new way of understanding the gaze: no longer an automatic exercise – and the first instrument for formulating a judgement – but care, attention and poetry.
The exhibition underlines the physical and symbolic importance of love which, in opposition to the technological determinism of society, defines the human being as such. In a society that debates the limits of anthropocentrism every day, the exhibition brings new values of awareness back to the centre. Matthew Attard presented a distorted image created by an eye-tracking device that records his eye movements, redrawing the architecture and monuments of the square. The final result is neither a map nor a rendering but a possible representation of space through the presence and the testimony of looking. Meloe Gennai presented a performance of imaginary queer figures, through attempts of contemporary witchcraft, the artist attempts to connect with these spirits to recover fragments of non-binary memory eroded by patriarchal society. Stefano Non wishes to focus on the connection between the act of looking as a form of infinite care and the possibility of transforming care into a human language and, therefore, as a poetic act.
ARTISTS: Matthew Attard / Meloe Gennai / Stefano Non
IN COLLABORATION WITH: R. Kouto / J.A Santschi / Sergio Giusti