IMAGE? The Power of the Visual: April 9 - September 5, 2022

How many images do you encounter in a day?

In today’s world, images often overwhelm our visual experience. As a result, it is easy to lose sight of the deeper meaning they have always had in people’s lives, not least in earlier times when they were still restricted to specific contexts, and their creation required considerable artistic skills and precious resources.

This exhibition contemplates the lasting power of the visual in four key areas of life in which images have always played an important part in conveying deeper meaning and convictions: Power and Authority, Faith and Spirituality, Ideals and Values, and Identity and Self.

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Exhibition Themes

The most important value of satire is that it humanizes people in power, so you can stand against them.

Bassem Youssef, comedian, 2017

Today, as the camera became ubiquitous, we struggle to imagine aspects of the world hidden from the lens … The performative self in front of a mirror used to be a private indulgence, or a chance occurrence as one “caught” a glimpse by mistake as we went about our lives. Now as we physically inhabit the solitude of the mirror, our camera phone allows a broadcast, a sharing of this “real life” with others. The mirror is now a screen.

Rashid Rana, artist, 2020

What is not preceded by anything else, and not by non-existence, is eternal.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, theologian, d. 1274