Animal Gaze on-XR CD Key

Animal Gaze on-XR: A Speculative Archive Experience

Animal Gaze on-XR is a digital and VR‑friendly speculative archive exhibition built around the original concept of the non‑virtual show staged in Istanbul in 2023. This on‑XR edition gathers multimedia artworks by eleven artists from Türkiye, Canada and Germany, continuing the same narrative and curatorial constraints that defined the initial project. It invites you to step into a future where non‑human animals are no longer treated as resources and the history of their exploitation is remembered, questioned, and reimagined.

The setting is a repurposed former slaughterhouse, transformed into a permanent exhibition space for the animals of the future. The human audience participates indirectly, observing what future animals have come to observe and witnessing the history their predecessors endured. Each artist contributes at least one piece designed as a record for this evolving archive, creating an exhibition within an exhibition that exists across time and perspective.

The project draws on Jacques Derrida’s reflections on the animal gaze, recognizing that animals gaze back as subjects with their own view of the world. This shift from objects to subjects opens up ethical questions about liberation, memory, and responsibility. Animal Gaze asks: what if animals, liberated in the future, look back at their past, and what would it mean for us to see ourselves through their eyes?

The exhibition’s temporality weaves present and future, prompting reflections on the persistence of violence and the limits of anthropocentric perception. Are we still participating in exploitation today, even as we imagine a different fate for animals? The artworks are crafted to evoke an uncanny defamiliarization, inviting viewers to reconsider the “normal” by approaching it from a nonhuman vantage point. Human language is deliberately avoided within the works and the spaces, honoring ethical responsibility if we cannot bear graphic detail. The archive focuses on affective experiences—the look, the gaze, and the feeling of being seen by those who are usually unseen.

The spatial design adapts to diverse animal bodies, with thoughtful height and placement so different species can engage with the pieces. This is a place of encounter and confrontation where humans and marginalized nonhuman animals arrive from two dimensions of time to meet. The journey culminates in a moment of mutual recognition, where gaze meets gaze, and the audience is invited to reconsider what it means to look.

Exhibition Artists: Ece Nada, Engin Arer, Havva Zorlu, İrem Yüksekbilgili, Jan Engelhardt, Kübra Ateş Sarı, Melisa Kılıç, Özlem Gök, Sara Ko, Shannon Johnstone, Volkan Parlak. Exhibition Curator: Ece Nada. Developer/Technical Artist: Engin Arer.