Capital City

(Installation) Seeing the City: Glass and Gaze

This installation is a part of London College of Communication’s Capital City Exhibition. It explores the physical and psychological space between public and private, surveillance and control, through the treated surface of the glass in the city’s architecture. The large-scale perspex sheets mimic the mirror glass-walled homes and office buildings in London that developers use, highlighting the materiality of power structures in a contemporary city. They maintain the illusion of transparency, yet only offer a one-way view that denies access to outsiders, while giving those on the inside a false sense of omnipotence over the cityscape. Here, the power divide is inverted, as those on the inside see their mirrored reflection and partake in an exchange of identities whereby they are looking and being looked at, becoming both subject and actor of an external gaze.

Other group members: Xueting Lin, Xingxin Li, Maria Clara Lima, Dalia Dawood, Barbara