The Instability of the Gaze: Viewing, Power, and Technological Mediation
Standing before a window, the individual becomes both observer and observed. The window operates not only as a spatial boundary but also as a structuring mechanism that conditions the act of seeing. In my artistic practice, viewing is not simply a theme, but an active and formative force—one that organizes perception and shapes the spatial and affective experience of the viewer. Through drawing and installation, I construct specific viewing conditions in which acts of peering, exposure, and mutual gaze determine how the viewer navigates space and encounters the work.
Viewing is not purely visual—it is a structuring device that locates the subject, mediates the threshold between private and public space, and conditions both emotional and perceptual engagement. It is neither neutral nor passive, but a dynamic process in which spatial constraints, power relations, and technological mediation continuously redefine the viewer’s role. As Lacan writes, “The gaze I encounter… is not a seen gaze, but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other.” By constructing environments that foreground and shift the conditions of looking, my work examines how subjectivity is shaped, destabilized, and extended through spatial orientation, framed vision, and generative systems.
In my artistic practice, viewing is not merely a visual act but a mechanism that shapes subjectivity. The construction of viewing relationships determines the position of the viewer and influences spatial perception. Drawing from the theories of Jacques Lacan, Alenka Zupančič, Donna Haraway, and critiques by R.H. Lossin, this study examines how viewing constructs subjectivity, embeds itself within power structures, and negotiates the boundaries between private and public space.
Lacan’s theory of the gaze suggests that viewing is not simply a mode of perception but a disciplinary force. In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, he writes: “From the moment that this gaze appears, the subject tries to adapt himself to it, he becomes that punctiform object, that point of vanishing being with which the subject confuses his own failure.” Viewing is thus regulated by the symbolic order—a system of linguistic, cultural, and social structures that organizes meaning and positions the subject within power relations—placing the viewer in a constant oscillation between looking and being looked at. In my work, spatial structures dictate the viewer’s perspective, making them aware of the constraints imposed on their gaze and, in turn, revealing the inherent instability of the viewing subject.
Viewing is also embedded in cultural constructs. Alenka Zupančič, in What Is Sex?, expands on Lacan’s theory of sexual difference by asserting that the symbolic order maintains coherence through exceptions and internal gaps, and that the feminine position exposes this “not-all” structure. She argues that “The nonexistence of the Other is itself inscribed into the Other.” My work does not simply invert the roles of observer and observed but foregrounds the structural instability of viewing itself as a central concern. Rather than functioning as a closed and stable system, viewing emerges as a site of conflict and negotiation that constantly reveals its own fractures.
Haraway’s cyborg subject further challenges the stability of traditional viewing relations by exploring how technological mediation reconfigures the boundaries of subjectivity. Rather than positing a unified identity, the cyborg reveals how agency and perception are shaped through embedded technological systems. As Haraway writes, “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” Within this logic, employing AI is not a retreat from authorship but a strategic inhabitation of its conditions—reshaping how presence, authorship, and visibility are distributed across systems.
This critical attention to how power circulates within technologically mediated aesthetics is deepened through the writing of R.H. Lossin. In essays Godlike and Free? And Value in, garbage out: on AI art and hegemony, Lossin reveals how the aesthetics of AI art often obscure labor conditions, reproduce dominant epistemologies, and reconfigure authorship into a recursive system without origin. These insights reinforce the structural lens through which this thesis understands viewing—not as a passive perceptual act, but as a mode of engagement produced and destabilized by spatial, cultural, and technological forces.
In my work All Those Possibilities (2024) and To Be Seen Is To Be Cured (2024), a confined yet tension-filled viewing space is constructed, where intimacy is exposed in a public setting, placing the viewer between voyeurism and sympathy. The spatial design dictates the viewing process: windows and frames within the drawings are nested within the real frame, creating a sense of visual enclosure that restricts the viewer’s perspective and movement.
Lacan’s gaze theory reveals that subjectivity is constructed through viewing rather than existing as a pre-formed identity. In this series, the viewer's role transforms in the act of looking: initially assuming an active, observational position, they gradually realize that their viewing is preconditioned by the spatial structure, destabilizing their sense of agency. In To Be Seen Is To Be Cured (2024), the towering head-like figures gaze down at the bedridden body, mirroring the viewer’s own line of sight. However, the imposed framework of the composition restricts perception, leading to a shift in awareness. As the viewer continues to look, they recognize their proximity not to the vulnerable figure but to the voyeur. This rupture corresponds to what Lacan describes as the terminal arrest, the moment when identification collapses, and the gaze is no longer freely exercised but instead revealed as structured and restrictive. At this point, the viewer is caught within the gaze mechanism rather than merely observing from an external position. Thus, viewing is not transparent but a process of subject formation—one in which the viewer is both the observer and the observed.
In my second group of works, through Echos (2025) and Eyes (2025), a sudden shift in the viewing relationship occurs, allowing the audience to experience an instantaneous transformation of their own position within the act of looking. This mechanism is reinforced by the spatial arrangement: when the viewer observes the drawing on the left, they assume the role of an outsider, believing themselves to be an active spectator, much like the figures peering through the window at the central subject. However, upon turning to the sculpture on the right, they realize that the "window" within the sculpture has now become the source of the gaze, and they themselves have become the object of observation. This moment of realization disrupts the presupposed agency of the viewer, directly positioning them within the structure of being looked at.
Echos, colored pencil and soft pastel on paper, 2025
This framework of viewing gradually destabilizes the viewer’s presumed subjectivity. Initially, they assume control over their gaze and believe they are freely engaging with the work. However, as they move through the space, they encounter a rupture—realizing that their act of looking has already been anticipated and structured by the work itself. This moment of disruption echoes Lacan’s description of the gaze: “A gaze surprises him in the function of voyeur, disturbs him, overwhelms him and reduces him to a feeling of shame.” This reversal of the viewing relationship is not neutral but constitutes a direct intervention into the operations of viewing as a mechanism of power.
Within the symbolic order, viewing is never evenly distributed; rather, it is structured through the differentiation of subject positions and regulated by gendered structures. In What Is Sex?, Alenka Zupančič, in her analysis of Lacan’s formulas of sexuation, demonstrates that the symbolic order is not a self-contained or internally coherent system but instead relies on exceptions and gaps to sustain its stability. Within Lacan’s framework, the masculine position is predicated on the logic of exception—on the presumption of a singular, uncastrated “One” that is exempt from symbolic lack, thereby securing the coherence of the symbolic order. In contrast, the feminine position does not rely on exception but directly exposes the gaps within the symbolic order, revealing its not-all structure—its fundamental inability to constitute a fully enclosed totality.
This division of gendered positions not only shapes subjectivity but also structures the logic of the viewing relationship. The power dynamics of viewing operate along the same lines as this symbolic logic: they establish a stable viewing subject—the position of exception—allowing the viewer to occupy a position of wholeness, while the viewed subject is confined to the symbolic gap, functioning as the representation of a lack of subjectivity. This suggests that viewing is not merely an act of perception but a fundamental mechanism through which power organizes subject relations. Particularly within gendered structures of viewing, the ability to look and the condition of being looked at have never existed on equal terms.
The work enacts a rupture in the viewing relationship, forcing the audience to directly experience how viewing functions as the core process through which subjectivity is constructed, distributed, and destabilized. Initially, the viewer occupies a stable position of spectatorship, believing themselves to be in control of the act of looking. However, as they realize they have become the object of the gaze, they enter the gap within viewing itself, confronting the incompleteness of the symbolic order. Viewing is neither transparent nor neutral—it is both structured and regulated while simultaneously failing to be fully fixed due to the inherent lack within the symbolic order.
This instability not only exposes the ruptures within the viewing relationship but also reveals the structural instability of viewing as a system of power. As Zupančič argues, the political dimension of the feminine position does not lie in seizing the position of power within the gaze but in dismantling the very structural stability of viewing power. In this sense, the viewing relationship constructed in this work is not a simple inversion of the roles of viewer and viewed but a means of destabilizing the subjectivity of viewing itself, exposing the gaps within the mechanism of the gaze and revealing its political dimension. The work does not seek to claim the power of viewing but to dismantle and reconstruct its underlying logic—transforming the gap within viewing into a site for the potential reconfiguration of subject positions.
Flux (2025) extends the exploration of viewing relationships established in the previous two series, but further intertwines subjectivity, technological mediation, and language generation. AI extends the act of viewing by redistributing perception across human and machinic systems, complicating the boundaries between observer, observed, and generative process. The viewing subject is no longer confined to bodily perception but distributed across a network composed of human, machine, and symbolic output. Text is continuously generated by AI, based on a lexicon and instruction set authored entirely by the artist. Though rooted in personal experience, the unfolding of this language system exceeds authorial control: rhythms, tonalities, and verbal logic partially emerge from the inherited structures embedded in the AI’s training, producing a semiotic drift that cannot be fully predetermined.
The AI is not a subject, yet its continuous output is housed in an enclosed, head-like form. This visual resemblance evokes a sense of interior thought, while the visible printer inside immediately disrupts this illusion. The dissonance between what appears and what is revealed creates a perceptual tension—viewers may understand the mechanism, yet still feel as though “something inside is thinking.” This affective disruption is central to the work—not to assert AI’s agency, but to destabilize the viewer’s own.
The piece stages a condition where language appears familiar but resists interpretation. It accumulates like residue within the translucent form—visible, partially legible, yet detached from origin or communicative intention. As authorship becomes diffused, so too does the viewer’s position slip from a stable spectatorial distance. Though the audience may intervenetearing or removing fragments of the printed text—this gesture neither halts production nor reestablishes control, but rather marks their complicity in a system that invites participation while withholding mastery.
This is not a representation of AI autonomy, but an exposure of how easily agency is projected onto form, and how watching itself becomes unstable under technological mediation. As Haraway proposed in A Cyborg Manifesto, the cyborg represents a form of distributed subjectivity that transgresses traditional boundaries. In this work, the cyborg is not a utopian figure, but a structural condition—meaning circulates without center, and subject positions dissolve in the process of generation.
The use of AI here is not a gesture of optimization or creative outsourcing. It is a response to structural constraint—an attempt to navigate conditions defined by exhaustion, scarcity, and limited resources. The artist’s position within the cultural labor economy is one of negotiation, not privilege. Employing AI does not negate authorship, but reframes it as a situated and contingent act—shaped by the very contradictions the system produces.
The artist neither claims creative purity nor denies implication, but works from within a reality shaped by fatigue, automation, and precarity. In this context, tools are never neutral—but the refusal to use them is not equally available to all. Many critiques of AI rely on a moral position premised on distance from material constraint—a distance inaccessible to most. This work’s position—shaped in part by readings such as R.H. Lossin’s Godlike and Free?—acknowledges the complicities of technological systems while resisting the binary of refusal versus surrender. AI here is neither idealized nor condemned; it is mobilized to reveal the structural contradictions of authorship, agency, and participation—to produce a viewing experience that resists easy integration.
Flux (2025) thus constructs a recursive, mediated, and unfinished viewing relationship. It does not present a subject, but a system—one that speaks without a speaker, and draws the viewer into a space where the act of looking is marked by structural uncertainty.
Across the three bodies of works, viewing is constructed as an unstable and mediated process shaped by spatial, structural, and technological interventions. The first group examines how spatial framing regulates vision, exposing the tension between voyeurism and exposure while positioning the viewer within a controlled act of looking. The second group disrupts this dynamic by reversing the roles of observer and observed, revealing the structural conditions that shape subjectivity within the gaze. The final group extends beyond human perception, integrating AI-generated text to explore how viewing operates within a generative system, where meaning continuously unfolds beyond authorial intent. Collectively, these works reveal that viewing is not a passive act but an evolving mechanism through which spatial, perceptual, and technological forces negotiate and redefine the subject’s position, emphasizing the instability of the gaze and its entanglement with power.
Flower, hardground etching, 2025
Yining Fang, 2025
References
Donna J. Haraway
A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (1991)
Haraway’s concept of the cyborg disrupts fixed identities and traditional authorship. Her framework supports my use of AI-generated systems as fractured, unstable extensions of the gaze.
Jacques Lacan
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1978)
Lacan’s theory of the gaze underpins my understanding of viewing as symbolic and disciplinary. His ideas inform how subjectivity becomes structured through exposure and spatial power.
R. H. Lossin
“Godlike and Free?” (The New Inquiry, 2022)
This essay critiques the aesthetics of AI art and its tendency to conceal labor. It informs my rejection of technological neutrality in machine-generated visual language.
“Value In, Garbage Out” (The Drift, 2023)
Lossin further explores AI’s embedded hegemonies and political economy. Her work grounds my argument that AI-generated text functions as structural critique rather than autonomous expression.
Alenka Zupančič
What Is Sex? (2017)
Zupančič extends Lacanian theory to expose how symbolic coherence depends on internal contradictions. Her writing supports my analysis of the gaze as a gendered and unstable structure of subject-formation.
