Ways of Seeing in 2021

When John Berger said ‘we see these paintings as no one has ever seen them before’, he became endlessly right. I can look at the same artwork every single day, and every single day I will see something different. I will see something different because my lived experience will change how I view the world. 

In 2021, after a year (almost to the day in the UK) of what can only be described as collective suffering, I am struck by the feeling of how different we must all view the artworks we thought we could see clearly a year ago. So much has happened since. We have all become different people, and in a ‘Portrait of Dorian Gray’ turn of events, the artworks have changed too. 

What was the last artwork you saw before we went into lockdown?

The last artwork I saw before the second lockdown was in Steve McQueen’s exhibition at the Tate Modern. I have been racking my brain to think what on earth it was called, but I remember exactly that it was a video placed high on the wall in a corridor on the way to the next room. It was so bright white it made my eyes feel fuzzy, and as I stared at it a little while, a figure entered the top of the screen and began to fall, and they kept falling. The figure never made it to the bottom of the screen, they just kept falling through the bright white sky, in continuous suspension. I thought it was magic. I felt like it was a quiet metaphor for the limbo state we were all in at the time, having a floating summer, freefalling in being able to hug our friends again, all the while a second wave looming. 

I wonder if that figure is still in the Tate, falling through Steve McQueen’s screen. I wonder more, how it would look to me if I saw it again now, through changed eyes. 

I imagine the figure falling into theVOV, exploring our 15 online exhibitions until he finds his spot back on the wall at the Tate, the virtual and digital space ever-connected in our ‘new normal’ world. 

Lottie @ theVOV