See Saw - The Hierarchy of Gaze (2025)
This project is a critical discourse through art installation on the idea of hierarchy of gaze that is key to the modern cyborg. Deconstructing the term “See Saw” Riju explores how the irony of power balance in a post colonial world creates the illusion of changing control while keeping the orthodox regime which exercising a power depends on the stand-point and positioning oneself in an authoritarian institutional pathway. (ref. 1)
Though the “term metaphorically challenges the idea of permanent single state dominance it is also antithetical to equality in the field of recognition.
Starting from the very early childhood through language and its exercise in reality the capitalist modern society pass on the idea of power which is dialectically progressing through irregularity. One loses the power of gaze through political standpoint while going down while on the “other” end becomes heir to exercise the “machismo” over the imaginary subordinate.
Behind the facade of Bourgeoisie state system the representative who use to be the “other” in front of the “panopticon” (ref. 2) system shifts to be in the authoritarian mode while being posited in the power hegemony.
And this is fully exercised in the immigration checkpoints surrounding passport control under the guise of “security” turning all the “other” in-front of the system as possible threats and “alien”. The “other” becomes a pure object of pathological analysis.
Through this assemblage he tries to “imagine” the future of passport control as a place which removes the direct interference of personhood from the hierarchical practice but becomes self conscious to leverage the anonymity and how the nation-state removes accountability under post colonial or neo-colonial liberal system.
List of References:
Williams, Adebayo. The Post Colonial flaneur and other fellow-travelers: conceits for a narrative of redemption. Third World Quarterly, Vol. 18, No 5, pp 821-841, 1997
[Ref. 12. Forrester, John. Michel Foucault and the history of psychoanalysis. January 1981History of Science; an Annual Review of Literature, Research and Teaching 18(42 pt 4):286-303.
Note 8: This particular section can be found in John Forrester’s analysis of Foucault’s work from his research paper pp.290-291]
(Details of the Art Objects)