Vision and Illusion

Overview

The artistic vision I am trying to convey through this work lies in the difference between vision and illusion, between seeing an image and moving away from it into a world of imagination. A moment’s reflection reveals that an illusory image often leads the observer into a heightened sense of visual and mental awareness.

The video depicts an optometrist performing an ordinary eye examination. I sit in a chair facing the examination chart with its symbols—‘E’s of different sizes and oriented in the four cardinal directions. The room is darkened and the doctor begins the exam by asking me which direction the symbols face—right, left, up, down. I answer, sometimes correctly and other times not.

Meanwhile, the camera depicts a spectator (an actor) sitting in a darkened room who perceives the image sometimes clearly and sometimes not clearly, just as I see it. He focuses his sight on the chart only to see a blurred image. He mobilizes all his other senses—external and internal—to clarify the image, but to no avail. My wrong answers compound his problem, making him feel a sense of visual impairment and forcing him to draw near and far. Agitated, the spectator makes a desperate attempt to regain his perspective, only to lose his concentration and lapse into a state of illusion. At this stage, the image is cut loose from its realistic moorings and the original subject of the image disappears. The fixed image melts into apparent motion of serpentine shapes and distorted dimensions. Here the imaginative faculty comes into play to reconstruct the image and give it meaning.

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 7.