Center for Contemporary Arts CSU

“Move on, there’s nothing to see!”
“Don’t look away, act!”

There is much to be said about the act of turning away; even Nietzsche wrote, “Looking away shall be my only negation.”[1] These perspectives reveal that where we choose to direct our attention – or what we choose to take notice of–constitutes reality for us: “We see the things themselves, the world is what we see. […] But what is strange about this faith is that if we seek to articulate it into theses or statements, if we ask ourselves what is this we, what seeing is, and what thing or world is, we enter into a labyrinth of difficulties and contradictions.”[2]

I grew up believing that art has an impact and must respond to the urgencies of our time. Nevertheless, I increasingly find myself confronted by works that are framed as “political”, either by overemphasizing their reflection of cruelty and injustice or by bluntly stating their ideological stance, leaving no room for ambiguity, leading me to ask: what if we engaged with these difficulties and contradictions–the very aspects that remain unclear when we look at the world, at how it presents itself and is presented to us?

Looking away, on the contrary, implies avoiding focusing on a subject out of ignorance, fear, self-censorship, or a wish to remain uninvolved. It can be read as a deliberate choice in the face of war atrocities, environmental destruction, and erasure of histories. Through art, viewers may externalize their moral judgements, perceiving works as a form of relief from the polycrisis shaping the world. One may not even care about the content, instead finding in the exhibition a sanctuary space–a place to completely withdraw from the outside. These behaviours all form part of a common conception of what it means to look away: resisting the impulse to look at what one doesn’t want to see.

But what happens if we approach an exhibition through the very act of looking away? On the one hand, we can focus on the overlooked and unseen, whether hidden from our knowledge or buried under distractions. On the other, it can serve as an invitation to reconsider how we act towards the things we would prefer to ignore, and to question thoughts that previously seemed unquestionable. This shift seems crucial in light of the powerlessness many people feel in the face of war, climate change, and ongoing global injustices.

“In fact, it may well be in the act of looking away from the objects of our supposed study, in the shifting modalities of the attention we pay them, that we have a potential for a rearticulation of the relations between makers, objects, and audiences. Can looking away be understood not necessarily as an act of resistance to, but rather as an alternative form of, taking part in culture?”[3]

In legal frameworks of oppression such as the Code Noir, the right to look at someone is a privilege reserved for white people. This distinction marks a clear divide between those granted full access to visuality and those forbidden from looking back, defining who can imagine what a future without the oppressor might look like. Visuality, for centuries, has been synonymous with authority (and truth, as mentioned above), while looking away was forced upon those forbidden to look back.[4] Today, by contrast, it is a privilege to look away from hard truths and difficult realities.

This exhibition is also about looking away in order to think and see beyond the image, to uncover “overlooked” stories and issues, indicating a need to truly look, rather than pretending we know what must be done, or using art as a substitute for genuine empathy. Looking Away brings together works that reveal the limits of representation. These pieces deliberately turn away from the obvious, yet they are powerfully present: where the past is denied, the present is censored, and the future appears as a scenario of scarcity and deprivation – though only for those who are unable to alter its course.

When confronted with the proliferation of photographic documentation of wars and its circulation among other types of images, Susan Sontag wrote, “Photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention. […] The person who intervenes cannot record; the person who is recording cannot intervene.”[5]

To be clear: this exhibition does not advocate for a surrender or a refusal to fight for a more just world. Rather, it is a reflection on weakness and vulnerability – asking how we can embody the perspective of those who lack the means and the power to change their realities.

It is easy to block out the world in safe spaces such as the gallery. Why worry here, where everything appears so coherent? And yet, as we enter an exhibition, we often expect difficult, controversial political, social, ecological – or even deeply personal – issues to be on show. However, these works rarely find a truly protected space.

This exhibition asks us to look away, to look beyond and disregard what one has actually seen or might see – as an engaged, political form of seeing. By looking away, we can focus on the hidden forces shaping our world. At the same time, by connecting history with the present, the exhibition encourages us to reassess current events, question invisible effects, and reflect on how we “use” exhibitions – as inspiration for engagement or as an excuse to remain inactive.

Sometimes, looking away can be an act of defiance: a way of remembering what has been hidden, looking at where visual attention has been directed and withheld, and asking what is kept from us and what remains unseen? From layers of histories and sediments of waste, from silenced voices to places facing erasure, and the inability to speak or act, this exhibition attends to the uncertain and the unseen, asking what happens when looking away becomes a way of seeing?

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science, New York: Knopf Doubleday, p. 223.

[2] Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968): The Visible and the Invisible, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, p. 3.

[3] Irit Rogoff (2005): Looking Away, in: After Criticism, G. Butt (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, p. 119.

[4] See Nicholas Mirzoeff (2011): The Right to Look, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 2–13.

[5] Susan Sontag (1973): On Photography, New York: Rosetta Publishing, p. 8.

Celje Regional Museum – Center for Contemporary Arts
Text: Maximilian Lehner 
Supported by: Austrian Cultural Forum, Erste Foundation, Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport Republic of Austria, Flanders State of the Art, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Celje