ZONE 30 ART PUBLIC Welcomes Céline Burnand

This photographic installation, as captivating as it is unsettling, draws inspiration as much from George Orwell’s novel *1984* as from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern traditions related to the evil eye, as explored in particular by the French journalist and writer Louisa Yousfi in *La Grande Méthode*. In Western societies, sight is traditionally associated with knowledge and truth. Eyewitness testimony thus forms the foundation of our systems of knowledge and justice, while the recording of such testimony fuels surveillance and data collection systems. On social media, this ambivalence continues: everyone observes and puts themselves on display, contributing to widespread mutual surveillance. This conception of the gaze as an instrument of observation and control is countered by another tradition, in which seeing also amounts to acting. According to beliefs surrounding the evil eye, envy or jealousy can affect the person who is its target. Charged with intent, the gaze becomes a force capable of influencing the fate of others, and the Egyptian expression Khamsa fi ʿēnak (“five in your eye”) thus refers to a protective gesture: holding an open palm up to another’s gaze to deflect or neutralize its power. With *Speculum Mundi*—the mirror of the world—Céline Burnand places viewers in an uncomfortable situation, somewhere between realism and strangeness, facing eyes that seem to be staring at them. Evoking the constant presence of Big Brother, these eyeballs also reflect a protective hand in their pupils, warding off the evil eye. Who is watching whom? What must we protect ourselves from? By blurring the roles of the one who looks and the one who is looked at, the artist creates tension between two distinct conceptions of vision, thereby revealing just how deeply the ideal of objectivity is permeated by power dynamics and desire. Biography: Dividing her time between Lausanne and Cairo, Céline Burnand graduated from the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD) in 2009. She went on to study art history, literature, and film history at the Universities of Lausanne and Madrid, followed by visual anthropology in Berlin. She received the Alice Bailly Prize in 2012 and the Canton of Vaud Visual Arts Grant in 2018, and participated in artist residencies between 2013 and 2023, in Col

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.