Ways of Seeing: This Technology Is Outpacing Our Ways of Seeing

OONA reveals her lips in this video essay to compare women in the oil painting to women in NFTs.

About the Work: Art critic John Berger released Ways of Seeing in 1972. Ways of Seeing compares the portrayal of women in oil paintings to the portrayal of women in 1970s media.

“Berger didn’t just help us gain a new perspective on viewing art with his 1972 series Ways of Seeing – he also revealed much about the world in which we live. Whether exploring the history of the female nude or the status of oil paint, his landmark series showed how art revealed the social and political systems in which it was made. He also examined what had changed in our ways of seeing in the time between when the art was made and today.” -- James Birdle

OONA replaces 1970’s advertisements with NFTs, comparing the oil paintings and NFTs (combined with critical price points) to highlight the lack of progress regarding the way women are portrayed in art.

“I’ve always been attracted to the ethos of blockchain technology: self-sovereignty. In a techtopia, this technology facilitates greater degrees of artistic agency. But in application, its quite disappointing to see that the image of woman {as told within this work by most popular price points} has remained stagnant since the 1970s. This work reclaims the image of woman, within art history. Using my lips. Im advocating that we update our ways of seeing women within art to fully embody the progressive technology at hand. ” -- OONA