I’m Still Here, 2023

In Stealing the Mona Lisa British psychoanalyst Darian Leader takes the intriguing story of the Mona Lisa’s theft from the Louvre in 1911 as a starting point to  explore the psychology of looking at visual art.

Curiously, the robbery led to an influx of visitors to the Louvre, who flocked  there in large numbers to see the empty space where the painting once hung, including people who hadn’t previously visited  the museum  or expressed an interest in art. In his book, Leader argues that this may be explained by Freud’s early ideas about scopophilia (the pleasure of looking) which revolve around the notion that our visual curiosity is organized around something which is hidden or which escapes us. This exclusion, this absent feature, unleashes our curiosity – in an attempt to complete the image by revealing its hidden or absent parts.

Whilst I don’t fully subscribe to Freud’s views I do agree, however, that we must model a way of seeing that is capable of withholding some ‘secrets’.

This series results from research and projects developed over the past 8 years with organisations such as prisons, legal medicine institutes and human rights organisations based in conflict zones.