Museum 54 is pleased to present its first NYC debut “Ways of Seeing”, a 3-day pop-up exhibition showcasing works by six emerging artists from March 3-5, 2023. This exhibition spotlights more than 20 pieces of artworks in painting, drawing, video, photography, and installation.

Addressing the gendered perception brought forward in John Berger’s 1972 essay collection of the same title, “Ways of Seeing” examines the multi-layered meanings behind female identities and bodies, with an invitation for open dialogues from the audience. The process of seeing, according to Berger, is not natural but rather shaped by habits and social conventions. A woman’s presence is continually accompanied by the male gaze and the internalized gaze of herself when she walks across a room. “And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.”

Weaving different storytellings through their medium of choice, the artists in this exhibition seek to break the dichotomy of gendered presentation of selves, as well as the connotation of otherness projected on women and non-binary community. While some artists depict their alter-egos and selfhood through dreams of fantasy, others explore their spatial and corporeal definition of home, and queerness in particular environments. Several pieces of work also elaborate on the peculiar experience of being an Asian diasporic woman in the Western context, by alluding to its colonial and patriarchal structure.

The pop-up exhibition “Ways of Seeing” is a jubilant celebration of thinking and seeing differently through a feminine lens.

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