Looking Back At Us
Enamels, paintings and collages which explore our experience of viewing others and our accountability through witnessing.
'Looking Back At Us' is a collection of work in enamel, paint and collage. It explores our contemporary experience of viewing groups of people from a distance - through screens and via different media - in suffering, risking their lives at sea, crossing borders, waiting for food, running for their lives and ultimately looking back at us. It raises questions around our accountability when witnessing suffering, danger or aggression. The work was initiated by a photograph taken at Yarmouk Refugee camp in 2014 picturing hundreds of Palestinians standing still and looking straight to camera, waiting. It was also informed by photographer and theorist Susan Sontag's book 'Regarding The Pain Of Others' (2003):
'Our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may - in ways we might prefer not to imagine - be linked to their suffering.'
