Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

The paper looks at the epistemology of being seen and seeing as learnt. The visuals, images that we engage with are constructed culturally, painstakingly cultivated through history of arts, social practices that make both image (display/art) and viewership (spectatorship), a dynamic embedded in human societies. The new symmetries of knowledge are inundated by images; reckoned as both immersive and economic force. The paper engages with the inherent dichotomy of visual cultures that allow to read them as both representative of visual capitalism, rooted in corporate structures, fabricating our desires, ubiquitously present in our everyday life; and as democratic cultural space that facilitates a close scrutiny of doctrines, ideologies and codes within itself. Visual hegemonies serve cultural imperialism nonetheless it delineates an informed citizenry working towards cultural democracy.