The Audience

ARTWORK DESCRIPTION

THE AUDIENCE

Someone is always standing in the light.

And someone is always watching.

Judgement is hardly new, but we have become extraordinarily efficient at it. A photograph, a sentence, a body, a relationship, a mistake — placed before an audience within seconds and examined by people who know almost nothing about the life behind it.

The Audience turns the attention away from the person being judged and towards those doing the judging.

She stands alone beneath the light, visibly different from everyone around her. The audience remains safely in darkness — anonymous, numerous and remarkably alike.

That sameness matters.

Because while we examine other people's choices, appearances and imperfections, it is remarkably easy to forget how much of ourselves we share with the people we judge.

Social media did not invent this instinct.

It simply gave it a larger audience, a brighter stage and somewhere to perform every day.

Perhaps the most unsettling part is not that people are watching.

It is how quickly we can join them.

How easily we can point towards someone standing in the light while remaining comfortably hidden among everyone else.

And how rarely we ask ourselves:

If all of us are judging — who exactly is different?

TO BE JUST SEEN

Gallery piece · Not available for purchase