Sameer Farooq /

Behind the Eyes (1)

Art Gallery of York University, Toronto
Curated by: Suzanne Carte

Research and Performance

Winner: Best Public Program Award, Ontario Association of Art Galleries

Turning the focus inwards to reveal the prophetic power of an image, "Behind the Eyes" was framed as a research-as- performance-residency examining the individual as a moving archive. Through meditation, intuition training, and guided visioning exercises, students at York University were asked to visit their inner image stream and examine the cultural, historical, and social geographies of their location through an atlas of images.

In addition, the students re-performed the image streaming session in the functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI) at the Sherman Health Research Centre at York University, providing vivid new documentation based on the human imagination and machine vision research.

Behind the Eyes was a part of AGYU Assistant Curator Suzanne Carte’s Creative Campaigning Project and was made in collaboration with the Sherman Health Institute, the School of Social Work, the Department of Film and Video at YorkU and eight student leaders from the York Federation of Students (YFS), York United Black Students’ Alliance (YUBSA), Active Minds, and the Visual Art Student Association (VASA).

Watch project documentation here