The eyes carry the weight of the world. The gaze channels their heft. We look, and are seen in return. But to look closely, knowing there is more to what the eyes can see, to read between the lines, is to acknowledge the art in a subject. Consider architect Juhani Pallasmaa's idea of a door handle being a handshake of a building in his book, 'The Eyes of the Skin'. The inanimate becoming sensorial.

However, to constantly elicit one's gaze, always leaving room for the puzzle to remain unsolved, some of the greatest works of art continually challenge our ways of looking. In this week's STIRfri, an array of curious stories invites you to turn your gaze inwards.

At London's Hayward Gallery, Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara's piercing portraits ask you to feel what cannot be seen, while an exhibition on Phyllis Birkby's work on 'fantasy environments' deflects our gaze away from solely male-led architectures. An examination of offerings at the Venice Biennale unpacks the spatial dimensions of occupation and resistance in Palestine and Lebanon, and a showcase at the SOAS Gallery calls attention to the overlaps in our decolonial journeys.

Can visual saturation make way for intent listening, while our eyes consume more than they can chew?