Kitab-ı Nazar, sharing its title with Seda Gazioğlu’s sixth solo exhibition, is a book that turns the act of looking into a voice—and looks back at its reader.
Drawing from three significant texts—John Berger's Ways of Seeing, Michel Foucault's writings on the Panopticon, and Anatolian belief systems—the book rearticulates their ideas through a first-person narrative voice. In doing so, Kitab-ı Nazar moves beyond being a text that merely explains the gaze and becomes an object that establishes a reciprocal relationship with the reader. As the reader examines the book, the book, in turn, examines the reader.
Sealed with a ribbon, the book comes to life only when it is opened by its reader for the first time. This moment marks a threshold: the instant when that initial gaze begins to transform the book—after which it can never return to its former state.
Kitab-ı Nazar, which shares the same name as Seda Gazioğlu's 6th solo exhibition, is a book that transforms into the voice of the gaze and looks back at its reader.
Drawing on three important texts—John Berger's Ways of Seeing, Foucault's writings on the Panopticon, and Anatolian Beliefs—the book reconstructs the ideas in these texts using first-person narration. Thus, Kitab-ı Nazar ceases to be merely a text that explains the gaze and becomes an object that establishes a reciprocal relationship with the reader. As the reader examines the book, the book also looks back at the reader. The book, sealed with a ribbon, comes to life when it is opened for the first time by the reader, and this moment is a threshold where that first glance begins to transform the book, and the book can no longer return to its former state.
