FROM KEYHOLE TO SCREEN: THE EVOLVING GAZE IN CONTEMPORARY ART

Visuality has become a defining norm of contemporary society. In a spectacle-oriented culture, relationships are established and sustained through visual mediation. Within today’s surveillance culture, practices of monitoring are enacted through a gaze directed toward the other. Emerging from a sense of curiosity, the voyeuristic gaze directed at the other simultaneously entails an interest in the privacy of others. While it is undeniable that the phenomenon of surveillance affects and shapes individuals—and, by extension, the social sphere—it has also become a central concern for contemporary artists. This study aims to reveal the manifestations of voyeurism and surveillance within contemporary art. In Turkey, studies addressing the concepts of gaze and surveillance have predominantly emerged from the fields of social sciences and communication studies, whereas research within the visual arts remains limited. This gap highlights the significance of the present study. The focus is on the curatorial exhibitions titled “Karşı Pencere,” “Sosyomanya,” and “Gözüm Üstünde,” which explore the concepts of gaze and surveillance in contemporary Turkish art. The study employs qualitative research methods, specifically literature review and content analysis. The selected exhibitions and the artists’ works have been examined through descriptive analysis and semiotic interpretation, focusing on the concepts of “gaze” and “surveillance” as articulated by thinkers such as Foucault, Lacan, and Han, as well as their perspectives on the digital world. The conclusions reached through the analysis of these exhibitions include how contemporary surveillance practices are embodied through artistic productions, the possibility of subverting the practices of observing and being observed, and how the boundaries between the observer and the observed have become intertwined today.