Third Person (Plural): A Cinematic Essay by Aikaterini Gegisian

Thursday 30 Apr 2026

Third Person (Plural) is Aikaterini Gegisian’s feature-length cinematic essay, built from over 200 postwar U.S. informational films and newsreels drawn from the Library of Congress and the National Archives. What begins as an exploration of early European integration history unfolds into a feminist re-reading of the masculine gaze that shaped the ‘new world order’.  

This layered work unfolds across a multi-screen installation, a feature-length essay film, and an artist’s book. Originating as a quest to source documents of early European integration processes in the post-war United States, the project unfolds into an expansive feminist re-reading of the hegemonic masculine gaze and its manifestation in material images. The work is a bracing encounter with the gaze that produced the ‘image’ of the world as the new, Western order, bound by the notion of a united Europe, the delirium of the Cold War, and decolonisation processes. Casting a female gaze upon this history, Third Person (Plural) reclaims the unseen perspectives that haunt the margins of official narratives, making visible a collective ‘third person’. 

Gegisian will be joined by Shoair Mavlian, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery, for a discussion and Q&A.

Additional information

Aikaterini Gegisian

Aikaterini Gegisian was born in Thessaloniki, Greece and is of Armenian descent. She is a visual artist, filmmaker, educator, and researcher whose practice is rooted in image-making. She lives between London and Thessaloniki, where she also tends a small homestead—an extension of her interdisciplinary approach to art and life.  

Working across collage, film, photography, installation, and textile design, her practice engages a feminist re-reading of optic technologies. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Venice Biennale (Golden Lion-winning Armenian Pavilion, 2015), Mathaf (Doha), ICP (New York), the National Arts Museum of China (Beijing), MOMus (Thessaloniki), Baltic (Newcastle), Spike Island (Bristol), IVAM (Valencia), and Kunsthalle Osnabrück (Osnabrück). Her films have screened at festivals such as Oberhausen and Videoformes, and her work is held in collections including the V&A and Frac des Pays de la Loire. She often employs the photobook form, with notable publications including A Small Guide to the Invisible Seas (Venice Biennale, 2015), Handbook of the Spontaneous Other (MACK, 2020), and Third Person Plural (Büchs’n’Books).