Christian Boltanski

Les regards (Glances), 1988-2001

Posters in public spaces

Christian Boltanski was born September 6, 1944 and sadly passed away on July 14^th of this year. For over sixty years, the artist created works that offer meditations on fate, mourning, memory, and death. His public project Les regards (Glances) features monumental black-and-white close-ups of eyes, displayed in meaningful locations around the city. The larger-than-life faces are signs of absence; and can be interpreted through our own projection or identification, as traces or memorials to the forgotten and marginalized.

Through his art, Boltanski seeks to communicate and disorient his audience. In Kaunas, a city that has gone through significant upheavals, the faces may be seen by some as belonging to those who were lost, and for others they could act as reminders of an authoritarian gaze. Ultimately, the story Boltanski strives to tell us is our own, the story of each viewer who sees her or himself in this portrait of life and of everyday existence.