Supriya Manandhar is a Master’s student in Art Education at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a 2015–2016 Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) Fellow. This PAGE Blog Salon features visual content, an important topic of the upcoming Imagining America national conference, Oct. 1-3, 2015, in Baltimore, MD.
(Left: Macchindranath Chariot festival in Lalitpur, Nepal, 2014; Right: Visitors in front of Van Gogh’s Starry Night at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014; Photo credit: Supriya Manandhar)
For me, the most powerful thing about art is the idea of making visible. Making visible for observation and not merely seeing. We notice. Then we acknowledge, engage and exchange. The challenge lies in having the selfawareness to analyze our perceptions and explore a more nuanced view of the world. In many ways it is just as much viewer who makes the art as the artist.
The juxtaposition of these images interests me. It holds many threads and layers of looking and making visible.
We are looking at these pictures.
People in the picture are looking at elements of culture.
At things.
At things that are not visible.
At you.