Le Regard éloigné

Bringing together some fifteen works from the MACS collection, the exhibition underscores the critical reach of an anthropological vision that embraces the near and the far, the familiar and the foreign, the centre and the periphery. This shift in focus produces a double reframing: a gaze turned outward towards elsewhere and, in turn, estranged from itself as though seen from without by a foreign eye. Putting into practice what Claude Lévi-Strauss, that 'astronomer of human constellations', calls 'the distant gaze', these artists seek to bring the distant closer and push the near further away, to illuminate the one through the other. Theirs is a reformed humanism where the modern and the traditional, the rational and the sensuous, and progress and nature, are at last reconciled. Just as Marcel Broodthaers' geopoetic atlas reduces the outlines of different states to the same scale, creating an archipelago of kindred othernesses, this subversion of boundaries is also a struggle against ethnocentrism and the imperialist model of the 'conquest of space'. Against the backdrop of globalisation, many of the works presented here forground minorities who have been affected for generations by acculturation, exclusion or immigration within territories marked by a colonial history: from the Naxi of Tibetan origin in China (Emily Bates) to the Native Americans of North America (Jimmie Durham), and the young undocumented Comorian migrants on the island of Mayotte. Like Johan Muyle's Tireur d’épine (The Thorn-Puller), wrested from Christian iconography to become a tragic and ironic allegory of atonement, does contemporary art have a mission to warn us – much like the anthropologist – of the fatal destiny that awaits a humanity whose gaze, absorbed by the near, has neglected the far? 

Featuring works by: Adel Abdessemed, Emily Bates, Marcel Berlanger, Marie Bovo, Marcel Broodthaers, Jimmie Durham, Jot Fau, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Mekhitar Garabedian, Alexis Gautier, Laura Henno, Olivia Hernaïz, Alfredo Jaar, Tarik Kiswanson, Michaël Matthys, Johan Muyle, Emmanuelle Quertain.

14.06 > 16.08 and 06.09 > 01.11.2026

© Laura Henno

Bringing together works by artists including Alfredo Jaar, Jimmie Durham, Tarik Kiswanson, Marcel Broodthaers, Laura Henno, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Marcel Berlanger, the exhibition reflects a concern that lies at the heart of the museum: namely, how we might, through the direct experience of a work of art, unsettle our own way of seeing and open ourselves up to the world, to others, and to a horizon extending far beyond the walls of the institution and the boundaries of contemporary art. 

As the exhibition unfolds, we also introduce you to one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, Claude Lévi-Strauss. A founding figure of modern anthropology and a major thinker on alterity, he also popularised the concept of the ‘distant gaze’, which gives the exhibition its title. 

This episode explores the significance of a concept of this kind in the field of contemporary art, while also considering the critical perspective we can bring today to the universalist ambitions historically espoused by Western thinkers.

To find out more
If you would like to explore the themes discussed in this podcast in greater depth, we recommend the following publications:

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture.
Édouard Glissant, Treatise on the Whole-World.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropology Confronts the Problems of the Modern World.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The View from Afar.
Louis Marin, La traversée des signes (in French)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?
 

► Listen here (In French)