Through The Looking Glass: Fresh Window, Finding Fresh Perspective

There’s something about an aeroplane window that forces you to think about your life with an almost offensive level of clarity. Maybe it’s the altitude or the stabbing pain of the aeroplane ear I can never escape, maybe it’s the sheer smallness of everything below - the cities reduced to clusters of fairy lights and entire lives flickering in the distance. Whatever it is, I found myself staring out at the world from 30,000 feet, feeling an odd sense of reverence.

The thing about aeroplane windows, though, is that they’re really such a tease. They show you everything but let you touch nothing. I sat there, forehead pressed against the cool plastic, watching as the world below shrank into a constellation of tiny lights, each one an entire life I’d never know. A home, a heartbreak, a child too wired to go to bed, a dinner burning on the stove. Lives knitted together in tapestries of joy, pain, and everything in between. And then there was me, floating above it all, on my way to see an art exhibition in Switzerland. 

Because I could. Because generations before me couldn’t.

It’s a strange feeling, becoming aware of your own privilege in real time. My parents’ sacrifices, their parents’ resilience, an entire history of struggle distilled into the simple fact that I had the luxury of pressing my forehead to this plane window, watching the world go by. The weight of that felt heavy, but so did the gratitude; I’m not ashamed to say I shed a small tear - although that might have been the aeroplane ear, it’s truly awful.

Below me, Basel was waiting, quiet, historic, beautifully self-assured. A city that felt like it had been carefully preserved in a glass case, untouched by the chaos of the modern world, a place that seemed curated, not built. At its heart was Museum Tinguely, where Fresh Window lay, an exhibition that felt almost like a conversation between the past and the future, between those that created it and those that saw their own image in the creation and deemed it good.

Fresh Window takes its name from Marcel Duchamp’s 1920 work Fresh Widow, a piece that playfully reimagined a window as a barrier rather than a view. And that’s exactly what the exhibition does: it forces you to think about windows not just as glass and frame but as metaphors - for fashion, for history, for power, for the way we consume beauty without a second thought.

Windows have long been the perfect stage for selling desire. The exhibition traces this lineage, from the decadent department store displays of the early 20th century to the avant-garde installations of artists who turn shop windows into living, breathing works of art. Jean Tinguely himself was once a window dresser in Basel, arranging displays designed to make people stop and stare. The idea that something as commercial as a shop window could be art was radical then - it’s interesting to see it is still radical now.

Walking through the exhibition, I noticed an interesting correlation between the art and the way people interacted with it. I watched as a chic woman, dressed with the kind of elegance that only comes from wealth, leaned in to examine a video of impeccably dressed mannequins posed in a 1950s Bonwit Teller display window. Maybe she saw herself in them. Maybe she saw a version of herself she could never be.

I saw a couple stood in front of Andy Warhol’s Bonwit's Loves Mistigri, arms wrapped around each other and absentmindedly tracing circles on each other's bodies, whispering something only they could hear. 

At the beginning of the exhibition, a group of students stood huddled in front of Pascale Marthine Tayou’s Daily Life, the LED lights bathing them in multicoloured auras.

What were they seeing? Themselves? History? The future?

The exhibition isn’t just about what is on display; it’s about the lives it reflects back at its viewers.

Fresh Window is truly gorgeous, beautifully choreographed and, honestly, only fully appreciated after several walk-throughs. I could wax lyrical about the emotional journey it took me on, instead I’ll talk about my favourite installation - a video piece that unfolded like a slow, deliberate meditation on vision itself. It began with statues - elegant, almost ethereal statues, quite reminiscent of Greco-Roman sculptures - being placed with meticulous care. At first, it felt familiar, almost predictable; the statues existed in the way classical sculptures often do: as objects of admiration, frozen in time, idealised and distant. But it’s not long before a shift happens.

A magnifying glass enters the frame, studying the statues in forensic detail. Suddenly, the passive admiration is replaced by scrutiny. The lens, typically an instrument of discovery, felt almost intrusive, as if searching for imperfections in beauty itself. And then, just as we settle into this voyeuristic rhythm, the magnifying glass turns outward, confronting us - me - directly.

It was hypnotic; a moment of pure subversion. The observer becomes the observed. The fourth wall shatters, and suddenly, I wasn’t just watching the piece; I was inside it.

But the transformation doesn’t stop there. In place of the magnifying glass, a mask materialises - thespian but austere, reminiscent of a Venetian masquerade ball where identity is both concealed and performed. In an almost theatrical sleight of hand, the mask is “placed” over us, the viewers. The camera zooms in, ensuring we feel as though we are now peering at the statues through its hollowed-out eye holes. In this moment, I wasn’t just seeing, I was seeing through.

Then came the final, breathtaking image - one of the mask’s eye holes, now isolated, with light reflecting behind it, creating a circular shadow. A composition that eerily resembled a single, all-seeing eye; a visual crescendo that suggested something profound - the act of looking is never neutral. It carries power. It carries intention. It carries consequence.

But the piece isn’t just about observation; it is about the power dynamics of the gaze itself. The statues, beautiful and silent, began as objects of display, much like the mannequins and shop windows explored throughout Fresh Window. But the video disrupts that passivity. It causes us to question what it actually means to be looked at, to be studied, to be consumed.

In classical art, the gaze has always held weight, whether it’s the male gaze shaping ideals of femininity or the museum’s gaze determining what is “worthy” of display. This installation cleverly dismantles that hierarchy. It gives power to the statues, to the act of looking, to the viewer themselves. By turning the magnifying glass outward, it asks: Who has the right to observe? Who controls the narrative of beauty? And perhaps most hauntingly, what happens when we realize we, too, are being watched?

In a world where surveillance, social media, and self-presentation are in constant negotiation, this work felt deeply pertinent. We perform for invisible audiences daily, curating ourselves in our own personal digital shop windows. This piece doesn’t just invite us to look; it makes us interrogate how we look, why we look, and whether we, ourselves, are ever truly seen.

In that final image, the mask becoming an eye, the act of concealment turning into revelation, it felt as though the work was whispering something urgent to me - seeing is never passive. To look is to participate. And once you understand that, you can never unsee it.

I found that this sentiment followed me beyond the museum walls. Fresh Window doesn’t just confine itself to the museum’s interior. It spills out into Basel’s streets, with artistic interventions in seven shop windows across the city. This approach dissolves the traditional boundaries of art spaces, inviting passersby to engage with art in their daily routines. It’s a reminder that art isn’t confined to galleries; it’s woven into the fabric of our cities, waiting to be discovered in the most unexpected places.

Walking through Basel felt like stepping into a painting—a mosaic of preserved history and modern movement, where past lives and present moments become intertwined. On Sunday morning, the streets were empty in the most romantic way. The kind of stillness that makes you feel like you’re walking through time itself. The architecture, gorgeously preserved, told stories of the people who came before. Pepper Street, where spice traders once haggled over cinnamon and saffron. Tailor Street, where skilled hands spent their lives cutting and stitching fabric into futures. The city wasn’t just a place; it was a museum of human existence, with every window a glimpse into lives that had been lived, laughed through, grieved over.

I left changed. Not in the grand, dramatic way people talk about transformation, but in the quiet way that lingers. Like looking out of an aeroplane window and pondering on how every tiny light below isn’t just a dot in the darkness. It’s a life. A story. A window of its own.

And maybe that’s the genius of Fresh Window. It isn’t just about art - it’s about perspective. About the way we move through the world, assuming we are the ones doing the looking, only to realise we are being observed right back. The exhibition, the city, the flight, even the simple act of pressing my forehead against the aeroplane window, it all felt connected.

Because windows aren’t just things we look through. Sometimes, they are things we find ourselves reflected in.

How often do we catch our own distorted silhouettes in shop windows, in train doors, in the glass of someone else’s sunglasses? How often do we mistake the act of looking for understanding? We think we see people - our friends, our lovers, our parents - but we only ever see the versions of them that we’ve constructed in our minds.

We do this with ourselves, too. We present carefully edited versions, making sure the lighting is just right, the mask perfectly in place. And yet, there will always be moments - fleeting, accidental - when the glass clears, and we catch an unfiltered glimpse of who we truly are. In those moments, do we recognise ourselves? Do we like what we see?

Fresh Window lingers because it reminds us that we are all, in some way, standing in front of a glass pane - looking out, looking in, trying to make sense of what we see. The exhibition ends, but the questions remain.

And just maybe, when I was in that plane looking down and shamelessly snivelling about the magic in the mundane and how lucky I felt to experience it (as I tend to), someone down there was looking up out of their own window, watching a tiny blinking light cross the sky, wondering about the life behind it. Wondering about me.

Because, in the end, to see and to be seen is the most human thing of all.

‘Fresh Window: The Display of Art & Art of Display’ is at Museum Tinguely, Basel, until 11 May 2025.