1<!DOCTYPE html> 2<html lang="en"> 3 <head> 4 <meta charset="utf-8" /> 5 <!-- <link rel="icon" href="../../favicon.png" /> --> 6 <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" /> 7 8 <link href="../../_app/immutable/assets/0.46b60629.css" rel="stylesheet"> 9 <link href="../../_app/immutable/assets/SplashSvg.fae29175.css" rel="stylesheet"> 10 <link href="../../_app/immutable/assets/ContentPage.b38a7a98.css" rel="stylesheet"> 11 <link href="../../_app/immutable/assets/Newsletter.b9608ebe.css" rel="stylesheet"> 12 <link href="../../_app/immutable/assets/CardWrapper.98eecee2.css" rel="stylesheet"> 13 <link href="../../_app/immutable/assets/PageHero.b50abc20.css" rel="stylesheet"> 14 <link href="../../_app/immutable/assets/Splash.0ad3b056.css" rel="stylesheet"> 15 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/entry/start.73efc197.js"> 16 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/entry.15c55a6a.js"> 17 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/scheduler.4e46e6ec.js"> 18 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/index.3aa1e644.js"> 19 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/entry/app.2847fca1.js"> 20 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/preload-helper.a4192956.js"> 21 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/index.d870fd12.js"> 22 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/nodes/0.1a465d06.js"> 23 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/ScrollTrigger.eae5f93d.js"> 24 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/index.e8aa51fc.js"> 25 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/layoutStore.6d989912.js"> 26 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/stores.193d2aed.js"> 27 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/SplashSvg.95731e9a.js"> 28 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/nodes/24.451ec534.js"> 29 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/ContentPage.0cac3a91.js"> 30 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/Newsletter.642d40d6.js"> 31 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/Interview.617d3f4d.js"> 32 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/CardWrapper.c4ab5dac.js"> 33 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/storyblok-js.809f3135.js"> 34 <link rel="modulepreload" href="../../_app/immutable/chunks/ArchiveCard.9e7b1fbd.js"><title>Refresh ⢠Ali Cherri: Soul Witness at WIELS Brussels | Review</title><!-- HEAD_svelte-4hwnu7_START --><meta name="description" content="A moving review of Ali Cherriâs Soul Witness at WIELS Brussels, where "><meta name="keywords" content="Ali Cherri, Soul Witness, Ali Cherri exhibition, WIELS Brussels, contemporary art review, Lebanese contemporary artist, political art, war and memory, sculpture and installation, The Watchman,art, magazine, print, online, post-digital, digital art, quantum, contemporary, IA, art, refresh, ecology, diversity"><meta property="url" content="https://refresh.art"><meta property="og:type" content="website"><meta property="og:site_name" content="Refresh"><meta property="og:url" content="https://refresh.art"><meta property="og:title" content="Refresh ⢠Ali Cherri: Soul Witness at WIELS Brussels | Review"><meta property="og:description" content="A moving review of Ali Cherriâs Soul Witness at WIELS Brussels, where "><meta property="og:image" content="https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2800x1400/5373125ba9/preview.png"><link rel="icon" href="https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/64x64/a9f74cef04/favicon.png"><!-- HEAD_svelte-4hwnu7_END --> 35 36 <!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
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Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></span></div></div></div> <div class="flex flex-col items-center justify-start h-[100vh] h-100vh review-hero__title w-full svelte-w0vctz" style="margin-top: -100dvh"><h1 class="relative h-[80vh] flex w-full border-solid h1 no-anim s:h-[66vh]"><span class="text-left h3 pr-spc-xl bg-Refresh-White-100% w-[50%] p-grid-margins flex pt-elements-header-height review-hero__title__part1 absolute left-0 top-0 h-[80vh] flex-col justify-between text-balance s:h-[66vh] s:pt-[100px] svelte-w0vctz" style="color: #d0a873">The Moment the Image <h2 class="p-m" style="color: #d0a87380"><span>Review by Philippe Riss-Schmidt</span> <br> <span>September 9, 2026</span></h2></span> <span class="text-Refresh-Black-100% text-right h3 bg-Refresh-White-100% w-[50%] p-grid-margins flex justify-end pt-elements-header-height items-end review-hero__title__part2 absolute left-[50vw] top-0 h-[80vh] text-balance s:h-[66vh] svelte-w0vctz" style="color: #d0a873">Stops Protecting Us</span></h1></div> </header> <main class="grid grid-custom mb-spc-section-l s:mb-0 body "><div class="col-span-4 sticky m:col-span-2 m:mt-[4px] s:flex sticky-share s:relative top-[10rem] s:top-0 svelte-tm6d9t" style="color: #d0a873; 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border-bottom: solid 1px #d0a87340" placeholder="Your email" value=""> <button class="text-left p-s block self-end" style="color: #d0a873; width: fit-content">Subscribe <span class="ml-spc-s inline-block" data-svelte-h="svelte-8asna2">â</span></button></form> </div> </div> <div class="body__paragraph body__block p-m pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="text"><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><!-- HTML_TAG_END --></div> </div> <div class="body__image body__block pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="image__container overflow-hidden mode-- body__media image--landscape img--0qk7buipgyv9" id="img--0qk7buipgyv9"><div class="image__wrapper ml-[-3%] w-[106%] h-[106%] mt-[-3%]"><img src="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c92.webp" data-sizes="auto" data-expand="1000" data-srcset="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c92.webp 768w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/1050x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c92.webp 1050w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/2048x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c92.webp 2048w" class="lazyload image w-full h-full object-cover" alt=""></div></div> <span class="p-s mt-[-4px]" style="color: #d0a87380"><!-- HTML_TAG_START --> Ali Cherri The Sentinel, 2026 Digital video, projection screen Video aspect ratio, 16:9 29 minutes Edition 1/5 + 2AP<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></span> </div> <div class="body__image body__block pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="image__container overflow-hidden mode-- body__media image--landscape img--0a7rei0b4tvf" id="img--0a7rei0b4tvf"><div class="image__wrapper ml-[-3%] w-[106%] h-[106%] mt-[-3%]"><img src="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-still-from-the-sentinel-2026_2_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpg" data-sizes="auto" data-expand="1000" data-srcset="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-still-from-the-sentinel-2026_2_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpg 768w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/1050x/ali-cherri-still-from-the-sentinel-2026_2_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpg 1050w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/2048x/ali-cherri-still-from-the-sentinel-2026_2_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpg 2048w" class="lazyload image w-full h-full object-cover" alt=""></div></div> <span class="p-s mt-[-4px]" style="color: #d0a87380"><!-- HTML_TAG_START -->installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></span> </div> <div class="body__paragraph body__block p-m pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="text"><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><!-- HTML_TAG_END --></div> </div> <div class="body__image body__block pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="image__container overflow-hidden mode-- body__media image--landscape img--08j9c34c34ps" id="img--08j9c34c34ps"><div class="image__wrapper ml-[-3%] w-[106%] h-[106%] mt-[-3%]"><img src="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-the-seven-soldiers-detail-2023-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-galerie-imane-fares-c-photo-aurelien-mole_1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg" data-sizes="auto" data-expand="1000" data-srcset="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-the-seven-soldiers-detail-2023-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-galerie-imane-fares-c-photo-aurelien-mole_1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/1050x/ali-cherri-the-seven-soldiers-detail-2023-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-galerie-imane-fares-c-photo-aurelien-mole_1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg 1050w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/2048x/ali-cherri-the-seven-soldiers-detail-2023-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-galerie-imane-fares-c-photo-aurelien-mole_1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg 2048w" class="lazyload image w-full h-full object-cover" alt=""></div></div> <span class="p-s mt-[-4px]" style="color: #d0a87380"><!-- HTML_TAG_START -->installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></span> </div> <div class="body__quote body__block pb-spc-section-s gap-spc-xl m_pb-spc-l z-10"><h2 class="h3" style="color: #d0a87380">â<span style="color: #d0a873" class="h3">"Soul Witness" is sublime because it reaches us where explicit images now fail. It does not raise its voice above the noise. It lowers it</span>â</h2> </div> <div class="body__image body__block pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="image__container overflow-hidden mode-- body__media image--portrait img--0axae4jpybs" id="img--0axae4jpybs"><div class="image__wrapper ml-[-3%] w-[106%] h-[106%] mt-[-3%]"><img src="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9a.webp" data-sizes="auto" data-expand="1000" data-srcset="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9a.webp 768w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/1050x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9a.webp 1050w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/2048x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9a.webp 2048w" class="lazyload image w-full h-full object-cover" alt=""></div></div> <span class="p-s mt-[-4px]" style="color: #d0a87380"><!-- HTML_TAG_START -->installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></span> </div> <div class="body__image body__block pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="image__container overflow-hidden mode-- body__media image--portrait img--01rx64tm7h2g" id="img--01rx64tm7h2g"><div class="image__wrapper ml-[-3%] w-[106%] h-[106%] mt-[-3%]"><img src="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9b.webp" data-sizes="auto" data-expand="1000" data-srcset="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9b.webp 768w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/1050x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9b.webp 1050w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/2048x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9b.webp 2048w" class="lazyload image w-full h-full object-cover" alt=""></div></div> <span class="p-s mt-[-4px]" style="color: #d0a87380"><!-- HTML_TAG_START -->installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></span> </div> <div class="body__image body__block pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="image__container overflow-hidden mode-- body__media image--landscape img--0o88fcrnmuh" id="img--0o88fcrnmuh"><div class="image__wrapper ml-[-3%] w-[106%] h-[106%] mt-[-3%]"><img src="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp" data-sizes="auto" data-expand="1000" data-srcset="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp 768w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/1050x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp 1050w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/2048x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp 2048w" class="lazyload image w-full h-full object-cover" alt=""></div></div> <span class="p-s mt-[-4px]" style="color: #d0a87380"><!-- HTML_TAG_START -->installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></span> </div> <div class="body__paragraph body__block p-m pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="text"><!-- HTML_TAG_START --><!-- HTML_TAG_END --></div> </div> <div class="body__image body__block pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="image__container overflow-hidden mode-- body__media image--landscape img--0el4lr03azg5" id="img--0el4lr03azg5"><div class="image__wrapper ml-[-3%] w-[106%] h-[106%] mt-[-3%]"><img src="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c98.webp" data-sizes="auto" data-expand="1000" data-srcset="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c98.webp 768w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/1050x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c98.webp 1050w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/2048x/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c98.webp 2048w" class="lazyload image w-full h-full object-cover" alt=""></div></div> <span class="p-s mt-[-4px]" style="color: #d0a87380"><!-- HTML_TAG_START -->installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert<!-- HTML_TAG_END --></span> </div> <div class="body__image body__block pb-spc-section-s m_pb-spc-l z-10"><div class="image__container overflow-hidden mode-- body__media image--landscape img--0zpr5v6hcbrr" id="img--0zpr5v6hcbrr"><div class="image__wrapper ml-[-3%] w-[106%] h-[106%] mt-[-3%]"><img src="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-counter-monument-for-the-fallen-2025-c-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-almine-rech1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg" data-sizes="auto" data-expand="1000" data-srcset="https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/768x/ali-cherri-counter-monument-for-the-fallen-2025-c-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-almine-rech1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/1050x/ali-cherri-counter-monument-for-the-fallen-2025-c-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-almine-rech1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg 1050w, https://cdn.refresh.art/assets/cdn/assets/2048x/ali-cherri-counter-monument-for-the-fallen-2025-c-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-almine-rech1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg 2048w" class="lazyload image w-full h-full object-cover" alt=""></div></div> <span class="p-s mt-[-4px]" style="color: #d0a87380"><!-- HTML_TAG_START -->installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at 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77,{_uid:"9bc3dbf6-cd4d-4835-82db-bc6f1d3d99bf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:199399539015103,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x667/df76e94135/2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup, 2026, Canada Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. © Abbas Akhavan. Photo: Francesco Barasciutti",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"98035297-ece3-4b44-a32f-a7ca9ff28337",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Akhavan bridges the botanical garden and the Venice Biennale gardens for their shared political undercurrent: in the case of the botanical garden, it is a colonial one founded on plants being imported from colonies through the British Empire system; in the case of the Venice Biennale, instead, it is its inherent political dimension, which we have experienced lately with the cases of the Israeli and the Russian pavilions. Akhavan approaches the political side of gardens through the non-human lens of the giant water lilies and silently embroiders this narration with multiple topics: the colonisation of Canada by the British Empire and the non-human entities as the first to be put in cages as a spectacle for Western audiences.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"The whole project works within a penumbral environment, where what appears and what lies behind the appearance coexist: Canada is only obliquely mentioned through the discourse on British colonialism, and the shady political system of the Venice Biennale is hidden behind a curtain of aesthetics and international cooperation. The title itself ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Entre Chien et Loup ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"brings forward this idea: in the twilight a wolf can be mistaken for a dog and viceversa, just as a botanical garden can appear as a simple aesthetic exercise while carrying testimony of colonial violence or as the Biennale Gardens can perceived as a display of current aesthetics while they are instead a powerful tool to lure through culture political recognition even for countries who are accused of war crimes.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"61st Venice Biennale. Abbas Akhavan represents Canada with his installation \"Entre chien et loup\" â Giardini, May 9 to November 22, 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-17 00:00",name:"\"Entre Chien et Loup\" ÷Abbas Akhavan ",author:"Iacopo Prinetti",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"878d1c62-f725-4047-a082-518ed7ab4a65",color:"#792a33",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d941a306-1448-4fdb-8339-acc85c4bad17",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:199397495286609,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/aace6268f9/3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: \"Entre chien et loup\",Canada Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"entre-chien-et-loup",full_slug:"directory/reviews/entre-chien-et-loup",sort_by_date:null,position:-1430,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1f6de932-e1ef-423a-af10-5d7594024208",first_published_at:"2026-07-18T10:43:38.479Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Still Joy : The World Rebuilt Through Love",created_at:"2026-05-17T03:04:42.493Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T12:20:37.699Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T12:20:37.719Z",id:177346488335324,uuid:"c94421c4-0926-4fa9-be06-45d8ae718714",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"cf709099-4206-4a31-b68b-ac553386b6bb",title:"Still Joy: Ukraine Rebuilds the World Through Love",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:177377219727812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2398x1326/03c445b3ea/17-roman-khimei-yarema-malashchuk-dedicated-to-the-youth-of-the-world-ii-2019.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Still Joy, Ukraine, Venice Biennale 2026, Ukrainian contemporary art, PinchukArtCentre, art and war, joy as resistance, love as resistance, Philippe Riss-Schmidt, Björn Geldhof, Oleksandra Pogrebnyak, independent art magazine , in-depht art criticism",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt reviews Still Joy at the Venice Biennale 2026, where Ukrainian and international artists turn love and joy
77into resistance."}],_uid:"f61e6649-dac4-43d6-a131-36a274ce74d1",body:[{_uid:"3dcefa24-ef5b-481d-b0fb-ef89958aab41",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" : The World Rebuilt Through Love",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In Venice (European Union), in May 2026, a Ukrainian marine who survived captivity walked into a palazzo on the Grand Canal and spoke about a strawberry chocolate bar. What followed was one of the most important exhibitions of the year.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"War doesn't leave much time for beautiful words. But there is still something it has not managed to destroy. It is the bond between people. And when we speak of joy, it may seem inappropriate in the context of war. But joy is the proof that we are still alive and that we are fighting.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Yuliia \"Phobia\", Senior Sergeant, Ukrainian Armed Forces and combat medic, Venice, 7 May 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"993b2654-7122-431a-996f-58a7e0438187",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177378139025861,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1992x1316/adff6df23e/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-06-37.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"JuliaâFobiaâ.StillJoyâFrom Ukraine Into The World /BiennaleArte2026. PinchukArtCentre.Photo:ValentynaRostovikova/PRYZMphotography",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"69faf6db-9a81-4f31-89fa-31bcfd6aa818",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy â From Ukraine into the World\" is an exhibition built on a question that refuses to be deferred: how can anyone still speak of joy when their country is being destroyed by war? The PinchukArt Centre (Kiyv, Ukraine) offers no ready-made answer. It offers a visceral experience, an unsparing testimony to the human capacity to remain alive to beauty in the midst of annihilation. Its power is inseparable from its restraint. \"Still Joy\" is subtle and fine-grained, operating through nuance rather than declaration, and it is in that very restraint that its underlying force becomes irresistible. Joy and love are not its themes. They are its supreme intelligence: the deepest, most demanding form of understanding available to a civilization under pressure.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this exhibition refuses, above all, is the consolation of heroism. The Ukrainian and international artists gathered here do not aestheticize suffering, nor do they flee it. They inhabit it. The video by Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, superimposing images of Kyiv raves before and during the war, makes this inhabitation visible with disarming clarity: the faces are the same, the music pulses with the same intensity, the bodies move with the same abandon. Joy here is not a departure from reality. It is its most precise reading. A ferocious refusal to let war become the only frequency on which a life can be lived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" does not ask for sympathy. It asks for something harder: the willingness, intellectual, emotional and moral, to hold joy and devastation as a single, indivisible condition of being alive. The dominant cultural grammar around war tends toward two poles: mourning or resistance, as though grief and defiance were the only legitimate responses to destruction. \"Still Joy\" proposes a third term: love. Not unconditional love, not love as surrender to feeling, but the kind of love that keeps its eyes open, that refuses both sentimentality and despair, that demands of itself the full weight of what it means to remain attached to the world while the world is being taken apart. To love a person, a plant, a piece of music, the warmth of chocolate melting against your skin, in the middle of annihilation, is not naivety. It is the most serious, the most demanding, the most uncompromising thing a human being can do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"fc7ce668-d2ba-439e-9c14-d477b50b6ca0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177377219727812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2398x1326/03c445b3ea/17-roman-khimei-yarema-malashchuk-dedicated-to-the-youth-of-the-world-ii-2019.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Dedicated to the Youth of the World II, 2019",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"87930ae8-fe21-4c93-867a-4b0ca01649bb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Architecture of Testimony",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This proposition is grounded not in theory but in lived testimony, and that choice is the exhibition's most fundamental declaration: a manifesto written not in words but in the irreducible weight of what people have actually lived. Hlib Stryzhko, a marine, veteran and former prisoner of war, spent years after his captivity interviewing fellow survivors, not about death, but about the moments of joy that kept them alive. His stories are presented in a visual language of deliberate lightness, creating the exhibition's first and most decisive tension: the surface is a fairy tale; the content is not. Lost limbs. The smell of marshland on survivors. Grief without a name. And within all of it, the extraordinary persistence of small pleasures: a strawberry chocolate bar softened under the thighs of a prisoner whose teeth had been broken, offered by a guard in a moment of inexplicable humanity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That detail is not anecdotal. It is philosophical. It tells us that joy does not require permission from circumstances. It erupts anyway, through the body, through the senses, through the bond between two human beings in a situation designed to destroy all bonds. Conflict journalist and co-founder of The Reckoning Project Nataliya Gumenyuk contributed her own gathered testimonies alongside Stryzhko: voices from the field, from the rubble, from the impossible ordinary of wartime survival. Together, they establish the exhibition's ethical foundation: \"Still Joy\" is not an artwork about Ukraine. It is an artwork made from Ukraine, from inside the experience, from the irreducible fact of people who are still here and still feeling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens with this foundation and immediately expands it. Kateryna Aliinyk's landscape paintings, in which small animal life vibrates under a soft moonlit glow, propose a world that continues to breathe at the margins of catastrophe. Piotr Armianovski's video essay blends the reality of war with the dreams of Mariupol, a city that no longer exists as it was and yet persists in the imagination of those who loved it. Simone Post's immersive installation reimagines the palazzo's interior through a structure made of candy, an architecture of childlike joy that is also, in this context, an act of radical insistence on the right to pleasure. These three works together establish the exhibition's first argument: that the world does not stop being beautiful because it is being destroyed. It becomes more so.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4c6d1c66-23a2-4539-afcc-4cbd6aaed526",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177387446878694,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2002x1320/3ce2f09ff5/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-51-01.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"PiotrArmianovski,cMeandMariupol, 2017, \"StillJoycFromcUkraine IntoTheWorld\" /BiennaleArte2026.PinchukArtCentre.©PhotoOKNOStudio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"7a2ef441-e428-49d2-a7e0-1377bca4d439",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177414497444483,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2143x3000/b8e9596a6f/6-simone-post-she-knew-she_it_they-would-melt-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Simone Post, She Knew She/It/They Would Melt, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cdbabf14-6af6-4a5e-9ff9-ca511cb550ce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177387049447902,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2006x1328/6424334c55/arte-2026-pinchukartcent-okno-studio.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kateryna Aliinyk, Night in Heaven, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"022429ff-2014-48a1-867b-a3009e368594",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Love as the Only Adequate Response",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial decision to bring international artists into dialogue with Ukrainian voices is not a gesture of solidarity. It is an argument. Loss and love are not Ukrainian conditions. They are human ones. And the works that carry the most weight here are those that understand love not as warmth but as precision: the exact, specific, irreplaceable attachment to a particular person, a particular gesture, a particular world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tacita Dean's 39-minute 16mm film \"If I Were in the Adlon\" (2025) makes this argument with surgical precision. Filmed over a single afternoon with Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov and his wife and lifelong collaborator Vita Mikhailov, the film does not document a relationship. It inhabits one. Joy here is not an emotion. It is the accumulated weight of decades of chosen proximity, what love becomes when it survives long enough to be taken for granted, and then, under the pressure of history, is no longer taken for granted at all. Cardiff and Miller's \"Conversations with My Mother\" (2023) presses this further: a row of telephones, each carrying the voice of someone gone. Love does not end when the person ends. It continues, unresolved, looking for a receiver. These two works together make the exhibition's most precise philosophical claim: that love is not a feeling but a form of sustained attention, one that outlasts the body, outlasts the war, outlasts the silence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gabrielle Goliath's video works bring another register entirely into the room, and in doing so, make the exhibition's argument about love more precise and more demanding. The intimate testimonies of Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ soldiers and civilians speaking of joy are not a statement about identity politics. They are a statement about the nature of love itself: that it persists in conditions designed to deny it, that it constitutes a form of knowledge precisely because it is contested, that the people who have been most systematically told their love does not count are often those who understand most clearly what love costs and what it is worth. In a war that has made every form of human attachment a target, these testimonies hold survival and beauty as inseparable, not as a consoling idea, but as the most rigorous position available. That insistence is the exhibition's moral spine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ãlvaro Urbano's painted-metal \"Kalyna\" â a viburnum branch, the emblematic Ukrainian plant, rendered in a material that cannot be smelled or plu
77cked â holds this tension in a single object. The joy of recognition is immediate; the impossibility of possession is equally so. Julian Charrière and Ryan Gander each trace, in their distinct registers, how human presence leaves marks in the world: the geological, the atmospheric, the intimate. Daniel Turner's work operates in the register of material endurance, what survives when everything else has been consumed. Lesia Vasylchenko, Katya Lesiv, and Kateryna Lysovenko each bring the body and its memory into the room, through drawing, through gesture, through the insistence that a person's inner life is not erased by the circumstances imposed upon it. Pavlo Kovach and Oleksiy Sai & Yury Gruzinov extend this into the territory of collective memory, of communities that hold their shape even when the ground beneath them has been taken away.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4ca99ed1-4057-4b76-9440-16a23cd03572",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177382048522694,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2010x1336/9676c410a4/biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tacita Dean, If I Were at the Adlon, 2025. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"35dd8d6e-4ce0-4c2a-a666-16bbd75a36ae",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177382843597256,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2024x1338/8df91cf060/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-31-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gabrielle Goliath, Personal Accounts (a quiet rush), 2025. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3e970863-4257-4672-82fa-a97857b39f30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177415650001546,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x3000/e19a18081d/36-alvaro-urbano-disobedience-after-hilma-af-klint-kalyna-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãlvaro Urbano, Disobedience After Hilma af Klint (Kalyna), 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f89ccefc-da20-4574-9d80-f7fecb263f6e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177415747838603,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x3000/29ea315581/34-alvaro-urbano-disobedience-after-hilma-af-klint-kalyna-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãlvaro Urbano, Disobedience After Hilma af Klint (Kalyna), 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cb0390af-9be7-46a5-a7aa-a041e6a10c18",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177418129027732,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/2a9d1d02f1/41-julian-charriere-where-waters-meet-2019-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julian Charrière, Where Waters Meet, 2019. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c4082653-b86f-42b4-ade7-f5e19012a0ff",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424737489608,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/9cfbe00661/27-lesia-vasylchenko-1534-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lesia Vasylchenko, 1534, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ce785913-5501-4e12-8c84-4437832fbc74",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Body as the Last Territory",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"War makes the body its primary site of violence. \"Still Joy\" makes it the primary site of resistance. Alevtina Kakhidze's tattoo salon inside the exhibition is philosophically precise about this: to be tattooed by the exhibition is to refuse the separation between aesthetic experience and lived life, to insist that what happens here is permanent, an act of sovereignty over the only territory that cannot be bombed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zhanna Kadyrova's light-box photographs of bombed interiors each contain a single surviving houseplant amid the rubble, plants she rescued and carried to Venice. The image resists symbolism. It is simply factual: something lived, something continued, something carried across the wreckage. And Ashfika Rahman's monumental sculpture of tiny bells, each bearing the fingerprint of a displaced woman, does not mourn. It rings. The work's argument is the same as Kadyrova's, stated in a different register: love is the refusal to let a person be reduced to their absence. Every fingerprint is a person who was somewhere, who touched something, who insisted on leaving a mark.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fb514128-cfdf-443e-823d-bbfe634e3c79",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424676770503,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/7d974bb0ab/1-ashfika-rahman-than-para-no-land-without-us-2025-ongoing-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ashfika Rahman, Than Para â No Land Without Us, 2025âongoing. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a4050c3e-440b-4abe-897f-171f5023b60d",quote:"\"Still Joy\" is beautiful. It is moving. It carries an intelligent and universal message with the full weight of what has been lived. What if the world rebuilt itself through love? ",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"e4dbf803-fa3b-4aeb-8920-ce5996b34392",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424676516550,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/fa88b85984/14-zhanna-kadyrova-refugees-2023-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zhanna Kadyrova, Refugees, 2023. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a3f19fee-32a3-4fdd-b93b-3b5c8cd8875e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nikita Kadan: Where It Ends",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition closes with Nikita Kadan's monumental drawing of a silent rave: bodies pressed together in the dark, moving without sound, finding in collective movement what language cannot hold. In Kadan's drawing, bodies become a landscape. Emergence and loss are indistinguishable. The rave is a funeral. The funeral is a rave. Joy and grief share the same breath, the same gesture, the same room.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the image \"Still Joy\" leaves you with: not resolution, not consolation, but the full weight of human beings insisting on being alive together, in the dark, without words, without explanation, insisting that this insistence is enough.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this exhibition ultimately proposes is that love is a practice. A discipline. An ecology. It extends beyond the human, leaving its marks in rock, in ice, in the slow chemistry of the earth, in the subversive kinship between the organic and the synthetic; The boundaries between species, between bodies, between the living and the lost, are not walls but membranes, permeable, trembling, alive. 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77,content:[{text:"To love is to engage in a profound act of world-making, one that refuses the hierarchy that places destruction above survival, despair above attachment, absence above the insistence on contact.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, joy is not a passive state. It is an act against systemic collapse. The boundaries between the personal and the political, between the intimate and the historical, blur and dissolve. What remains is the raw, unmediated fact of people who are still here, still feeling, still reaching toward one another, across every distance that has been imposed upon them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" is beautiful. It is moving. It carries an intelligent and universal message with the full weight of what has been lived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What if the world rebuilt itself through love? ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Not unconditional love, not love as surrender,but the kind of love that keeps its eyes open, that holds the full weight of what has been lost and chooses, with full knowledge of that weight, to remain attached.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists gathered in this exhibition understand that to love is to engage in a profound act of world-making. They expose the friction between the organic and the synthetic, mapping an ecology where desire extends far beyond the human. We navigate through the intimate architecture of queer ecologies, where the toxicity of our environments forces new, subversive kinships. We confront the posthuman body, where vulnerability is stripped of its romantic veneer to reveal a raw, unmediated entanglement with the other, whether that other is flesh, flora, or the slow chemistry of the earth.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, joy is an act of resistance against systemic collapse. Submission to grief is repurposed as a political tool to dismantle established hierarchies. The boundaries between species blur in works that function as contemporary cathedrals for bodies that have been marginalized, displaced, bombed, and yet remain. That insistence belongs to no flag, no front line, no particular season of catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy â From Ukraine into the World\", Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice. until 1 August 2026. A Collateral Event of the \"Biennale di Venezia\". Presented by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the PinchukArtCentre. Curated by Björn Geldhof and Oleksandra Pogrebnyak ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"de9d09a6-966c-426f-b3f6-5838ee15dcf2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EDITORIAL NOTE :",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Refresh Magazine is an independent publication committed to freedom of speech and avant-garde thought. We have proudly published this article despite certain pressures, and we will continue to build a proper art journalism that holds its ground. We will re-publish this essay in a different format in our upcoming Print issue, distributed worldwilde.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-17 00:00",name:"\"Still Joy\"÷The World Rebuilt Through Love",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e023d6b7-620e-44a5-bf0a-39988326b51d",color:"#727272",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a82f7b07-6ba5-45c7-bc08-4ef1ddcf6620",poster:{i
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77,{_uid:"588600b7-e97c-493a-8525-a7df30d29009",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174428040649770,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2338x3508/f5e929f7b3/14-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"E.T\", Installation view of \"La Merde\" by Aline Bouvy, Luxembourg Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9acb1f10-6302-4785-b499-c4ef4b4400c0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The sculpture E.T. The Excremential deserves a moment. It fuses Spielberg's alien, the most beloved outsider in cinema history, with Bouvy's own face and body. The result is a utopian mutant that is simultaneously a self-portrait, a pop-culture joke, and a piece of shit. It is the kind of object that makes you laugh and then makes you stand there a little longer than you planned, working out why you are still looking at it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The graphic design is doing its own work. The title is set in Futura, the typeface that modernism built to embody hygiene, geometry, and the rational elimination of mess. Printing the word merde in brown Futura against a black background is a small, perfect act of sabotage. The accompanying publication takes the same logic and runs it for 300 pages, compiling centuries of excrement imagery into a single brown duotone archive. It is the kind of book that looks serious on a shelf and is absolutely not.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"19694fa3-e26e-44f5-bf08-49e76c866f10",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174432641060131,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/790x1102/3ce902d4a8/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-23-09.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"462dac60-51a4-4c67-8c37-2e7019012a08",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174432641273125,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1472x1148/5e30550921/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-23-26.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bfd8136f-2ec5-417e-841a-e7ac3da83bb2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174432641465638,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1548x1158/772ab3d7aa/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-23-44.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ba6ddb9b-8850-4e23-97df-518c355e27a7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174432641137956,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/822x1134/cff9b34a16/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-24-01.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e9b7964-88de-4cdf-952d-a32619471697",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bouvy has built a pavilion out of everything we are told to bury, and she has done it with the formal rigour and dark wit of someone who finds the whole situation genuinely funny and genuinely outrageous at the same time. La Merde is a Rabelaisian farce, a feminist manifesto, and an immaculate piece of contemporary art. Go see it. You will not regret it, even if you feel slightly implicated on the way out.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"La Merde\", Aline Bouvy. Curated by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Stilbé Schroeder - Organizer Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Luxembourg Pavilion, Arsenale, Venice. Until 22 November 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-09 00:00",name:"\"La Merde\"÷Shame, Precisely",author:"Refresh Team (Venice)",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"990a254e-e133-4828-a5b5-530f40b0a232",color:"#935100",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"9282c18d-04ce-4754-a0a6-0e193d9f257c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174430002670775,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2876x1480/0f41d2d058/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-17-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Aline Bouvy, La Merde (still), 2026. Courtesy The Artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"lamerde",full_slug:"directory/reviews/lamerde",sort_by_date:null,position:-1230,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fc5b9742-5484-4748-b905-c2905fc1b105",first_published_at:"2026-05-08T21:34:52.958Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"TAIWAN ",created_at:"2026-05-18T07:03:18.371Z",published_at:"2026-05-18T19:26:33.359Z",updated_at:"2026-05-18T19:26:33.376Z",id:177759020564637,uuid:"7e542c8e-06a9-4527-95f4-b016dd905546",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"13dadcb7-2b02-4862-9e35-8f2a12895e99",title:"Being There Is the Point: Li Yi Fan's Screen Melancholy at the Venice Biennale 2026",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:177792982876160,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/ab1cb969f3/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Li Yi Fan, Screen Melancholy, Venice Biennale 2026, Taiwan Venice Biennale, TFAM collateral event, Palazzo delle Prigioni",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Li Yi Fan's Screen Melancholy at the Palazzo delle Prigioni is the most politically charged work at Venice 2026. Taiwan speaks. Quietly. Devastatingly."}],_uid:"76f17270-eea9-4da8-9b48-735c96222a91",body:[{_uid:"a72e2963-1b68-473b-89b4-ebcb90fcf65b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Pavilion of Taiwan: Being There Is the Point",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Palazzo delle Prigioni sits heavy and damp behind the Doge's Palace. Built in the late sixteenth century as a prison, the architecture imposes an immediate sense of confinement. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This year, the Venice Biennale is a fraught arena. Geopolitics has fully breached the Giardini, bringing with it a wave of boycotts, public letters, and withdrawn invitations. The national pavilions are locked in loud arguments about state representation and soft power. Yet, away from the boing noise of the main venues, a masterclass in quiet, stubborn defiance unfolds inside this former Venetian jail.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The official roster of participating countries entirely omits Taiwan. Instead, a placard outside the venue credits the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, effectively relegating an entire nation's cultural presentation to the secondary status of a collateral event. Inside this contested space, Taiwanese artist Li Yi Fan presents Screen Melancholy. The physical environment is disrupted by massive sculptures resembling fragmented body parts, generated from three dimensional scans and carved open to expose crimson muscle tissue. On the surrounding screens, a digital human filmmaker directs a cast of virtual actors. Li constructs these chaotic digital environments using Unreal Engine, mapping his own facial movements onto cheap avatars purchased from online marketplaces. The protagonist is a pale, hairless figure marked by visible surgical sutures, delivering frantic monologues about artificial intelligence, the automation of labor, and our increasingly digitized existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"50781d09-fc5a-45a3-85a1-9fc7803b3b4e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177776787657953,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4658x2622/b0ed8ca843/06_-li-yi-fan-screen-melancholy-installation-mockup-image-for-reference-only-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-20.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi Fan ,courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan Pavilion",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e88bf138-9e84-4e96-88a4-615aaf3383df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177792982384639,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/5d62c8c956/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1054ba54-f761-4eaa-a108-7fa7a2d982a2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To be present without a formal name is only a defeat if one believes a name is absolutely required to exist. The Palazzo delle Prigioni proves otherwise. What cannot be stated in the official program is loudly articulated through the artwork and the sheer physical reality of the exhibition. The Taiwanese organizers do not need to shout or cause a scene. Thirty years of uninterrupted attendance is the ultimate political gesture. They occupy space. They create art. They invite the world to look.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And the world should pay closer attention to what Taiwan consistently brings to Venice. Year after year, the island produces some of the most intelligent, nuanced, and genuinely adventurous exhibitions in the entire Asia-Pacific region. This is not accidental. It is the direct product of a cultural ecosystem that prizes plurality over spectacle, critical thinking over scale, and artistic risk over institutional prestige. Taiwan does not need to fill a vast pavilion with monumental screens or drape its presentation in the language of decolonization while quietly advancing its own geopolitical interests elsewhere. It does not need the grandiloquence that increasingly defines its neighbor's cultural output, an output that grows louder and larger in inverse proportion to the freedoms available to the artists producing it. The Chinese pavilion this year offers a useful point of comparison. It is a sanitized, technically accomplished, and profoundly tedious affair: a celebration of artificial intelligence in a frictionless society, all gleaming surfaces and optimistic data flows, the kind of presentation that mistakes scale for ambition and polish for thought. The irony is almost too large to process. This is a country that has built one of the most extensive surveillance infrastructures in human history, a state apparatus of cameras, facial recognition systems, and social credit scores that monitors, grades, and disciplines its citizens at every turn. And yet here, in Venice, it arrives with a pavilion that presents AI as a benevolent force, a tool of harmony and progress, a gift to humanity. At this level of ideological packaging, the word propaganda feels almost too generous. It is a trade fair. It is a tech showroom dressed in the vocabulary of contemporary art, and it fools no one who has spent more than ten minutes looking at the real thing. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Taiwanese pavilion, by contrast, is intelligent precisely because it refuses that comfort. It knows what surveillance feels like from the inside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"dd3f6077-969a-4967-9565-16e3516f2799",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177781756376730,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/874x558/2fa668ea19/image004.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b82cd17f-8a52-435a-9432-894e3884cebd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177825141271770,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1537/a750307749/07_screen-melancholy-li-yi-fan-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"878a55f2-b554-4f02-b082-7995ddfe8fac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177825141714139,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2840x1794/a7bac86a2b/03_li-yi-fan-screen-melancholy-screenshot-2026-60min-video-installation-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-2026.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b5088fa3-4a79-4022-bc01-0fc435568fae",quote:"Taiwan is not simply a participant at the Venice Biennale. It is one of the most important outposts of contemporary art thinking in the world today,",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"a7cc4736-bc04-40ce-ad3f-790d428cd9e7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"China's art machine is formidable in its ambition and its reach. But ambition and reach are not the same as depth. The most sophisticated collectors, curators, and critics working today know the difference between genuine cultural production and artfully packaged soft power. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Taiwan, precisely because it operates under constraint, precisely because it cannot rely on state spectacle, has developed something far better: a culture of genuine intellectual resistance. Its exhibitions tend to be smaller, stranger, and considerably more honest. They engage with technology, identity, and geopolitical anxiety without resolving those tensions into comfortable narratives.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In that sense, Taiwan is not simply a participant at the Venice Biennale. It is one of the most important outposts of contemporary art thinking in the world today, a place where the pressures of the twenty-first century are processed with clarity, wit, and a refusal to be absorbed. And Li Yi Fan's \"Screen Melancholy\" is, ultimately, a work that speaks directly to Beijing and to the entire world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Not through protest, not through provocation, but through the sheer sophistication of its form. A digital body trapped in an infrastructure it did not build, asserting its presence through intelligence rather than volume, navigating its constraints with humor and precision: the metaphor does not require explanation. Taiwan is speaking. It is doing so with remarkable elegance. And that, in the end, is the most defiant gesture of all. The exhibition is somptuous, clever and curated by a new genration curator.. It is a masterpiece of the 21st century and the must see exhibition in Venice.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Li Yi-Fan , \" \"Screen Melancholy\"\" Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), organizer of the Taiwanâs representative pavilion",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"curated by Raphael Fonseca",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-18 00:00",name:"Taiwan ÷Being There Is the Point",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"05fc5f80-fd6a-4327-bd55-5db35339ca43",color:"#6a669e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"46578b84-498e-43c3-b565-6b5fde4b4992",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177792982876160,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/ab1cb969f3/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. 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Congratulations. Welcome to the network. The connection is a little slow, but you made it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is something genuinely endearing about watching a centuries-old institution have its digital awakening in real time. The enthusiasm is sincere, and the work on show is, in many cases, worth the trip: precise, alive to friction, attentive to what actually happens when the physical and the computational share the same room. The post-digital turn is visible across the Biennale, and in places it hits with real force. This is not a dismissal. It is something more interesting than a dismissal.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is a question about memory.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rewind to 2017. At the Arsenale Nord, in three vast historical warehouses amounting to 3,000 square metres, a project called HyperPavilion quietly set up what was, in retrospect, a fairly precise diagram of the world we now inhabit. Curated by Philippe Riss-Schmidt (disclosure , PRS is currently EDF) and produced by Fabulous Inc ( South Korea), it was not an exhibition about digital art but an exhibition at the digital age. It was an exhibition inside the logic of the digital age: generative works, 360° immersive cinema, hologram theatres, networked time-based pieces, AI-assisted creation, sculptures. The artists involved were, in Riss-Schmidt's own words, \"native\" to the internet, people whose thinking had been fundamentally reshaped by connectivity, who did not use technology as a tool but moved through it as a condition. The exhibition argued, clearly and without apology, that the digital revolution had already happened, that the merger of the physical and the digital was not a future prospect but a present fact, and that any exhibition worth its salt had to be built as a transition, something that continued to exist and evolve after the doors closed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition drew over 50,000 visitors. People who had never set foot in a hybrid environment of this kind found themselves inside one, and most of them stayed longer than expected. Native visitors felt immediately at home; others arrived sceptical and walked out unsure of what had shifted, only that something had. By any measure, HyperPavilion was a success, a proof of concept for an art world that was ready for this conversation, even if the conversation took another decade to become the main event.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And now? Now the Biennale has entered the 21st century : the digital has infiltrated everything. It runs through the national pavilions, the collateral events, the satellite shows scattered across the city. The medium is no longer the announcement; it is the substrate. The post-digital condition is no longer a genre; it is the atmosphere. The Biennale is, at last, genuinely hybrid.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the real news. When the digital stops being a category and starts being a condition, when it stops being about technology and starts being through it, the work stops performing its own novelty. The best pieces here do not announce the
77ir processes. They simply use them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That is the threshold HyperPavilion was already standing at in 2017.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The irony is not that the Biennale arrived late. The irony is the amnesia, the institutional capacity to present as urgent discovery what was already fully articulated, in Venice, in those same warehouses, nine years ago.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But that is, in the end, how the timeline works. The future arrives early, in a warehouse, with fifty thousand visitors and no main pavilion status. Then, a decade later, it becomes the institution. The world these exhibitions describe did not begin in 2026. It was already there, in 2017, waiting for the rest of the room to notice.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And the shift does not stop in Venice. In June, Art Basel entrusts its curation to a post-digital framework, a signal that the market has also registered what the institutions are only now catching up with. The momentum is clear.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The category of \"digital art\" is quietly dissolving. Not because the digital has retreated, but because it has become too pervasive to name. When everything is touched by it, when the physical and the computational are genuinely inseparable, the label loses its purpose. We will stop talking about digital art. We will talk about art. Art at the digital age. That was always the point",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-09 00:00",name:"Venice Biennale÷ Fully Plugged In",author:"Philippe de Manus",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"92aa41a5-2d93-4c05-b5a2-50a5dc64eb35",color:"#3343e8",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"dd1e6519-7a9b-490b-b2a0-c3c7e6fadba7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178180658881893,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1200/f3a47ab8e5/hyperpavilion-vinciane-lebrun-verguethen-voyez-vous-5608-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hyperpavilion, Venice Biennale",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:"1"},slug:"venice-fully-plugged-in",full_slug:"directory/essays/venice-fully-plugged-in",sort_by_date:null,position:-230,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"e08772c1-242f-4c96-896c-dff014200244",first_published_at:"2026-05-19T13:37:37.174Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Hyperpavilion",created_at:"2025-10-11T13:27:34.227Z",published_at:"2025-10-13T17:40:03.817Z",updated_at:"2025-10-13T17:40:03.834Z",id:100350583747526,uuid:"14eafbe1-6447-4755-8d64-94290a14b7c5",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"214acce7-a8ef-4b84-bba0-33c6ea24b577",type:"",title:"Hyperpavilion",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:100350926702574,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1200/4eab75df19/hyperpavilion-vinciane-lebrun-verguethen-voyez-vous-5698-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"hyperpavilion, Venice Biennale",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Refresh magazine review abut the landmark Hyperpavillion exhibition."}],_uid:"35a5b0dc-a6bb-4bcc-b310-e903683286e9",body:[{_uid:"39fc3678-226e-4eae-9978-f60474a3ba1b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The post-digital world of today is a far cry from its early promises of a decentralised democratic world of innovation connection and freedom... Hyperpavilion, a landmark exhibition, was designed to reflect on the post-digital era we were entering. Hyperpavilion pioneered the ways in which the digital world and the physical world were merging to create an entangled hybrid reality that encompass us globally - the visionary statement was announcing the age where we are standing now the Algocene, where the synthetisation on the past into a perfect neo-future had begun.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"2e9aaab2-809e-48dd-8a41-9be58b19750b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100356050257947,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1200/d708a9cd55/hyperpavilion-vinciane-lebrun-verguethen-voyez-vous-5608-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julien Prévieux, Vincent Broquaire, Lawrence Lek",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"16a51b45-3025-488f-b70b-61023fdd944f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Held in 2017 as a collateral event of the 57th Venice Biennale, Hyperpavilion was more than just an art exhibition; it was a prescient and critical examination of our increasingly complex relationship with technology. Curated by Philippe Riss-Schmidt, the exhibition brought together a diverse group of international artists to explore the consequences of the digital revolution . Riss-Schmidt's curatorial vision was rooted in the idea that the digital and physical worlds have become inextricably intertwined, creating a \"hybrid reality\" that shapes our perceptions, interactions, and very existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"cda42072-d7da-40b8-8db9-e1c082244e22",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100356856293413,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1200/f4a2c17c90/hyperpavilion-vinciane-lebrun-verguethen-voyez-vous-5660-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Claire Malrieux",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1c597ec0-99fe-423e-8b07-4da73b28a8d8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100357014620205,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1200/44e57703d7/hyperpavilion-vinciane-lebrun-verguethen-voyez-vous-5559-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lawrence Lek, Vincent Broquaire",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ad128d51-4f26-4502-b244-45c4b0c928a3",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition itself was an immersive experience, a deliberate departure from the traditional \"white cube\" gallery space. With its 360° theatre, large-scale projections, and hologram installations, Hyperpavilion plunged visitors into a sensory landscape that mirrored the ubiquitous and often overwhelming nature of our digital environment. This was not technology for technology's sake; rather, it was a carefully orchestrated attempt to make visitors viscerally understand the profound societal shifts occurring around them.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e5263fbb-d707-4b7d-9339-bdea11a827a2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100358973859974,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x600/b2c3d400f5/hyperpavilion-vinciane-lebrun-verguethen-voyez-vous-5518.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Theo trianfylladis",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"598f5bf7-a32f-4c9a-af20-8314d2f92964",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the heart of Hyperpavilion was a deep-seated analysis of the digital age, a perspective that has only grown more relevant in the years since. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" The term \"Algocene,\" perfectly encapsulates the era that Hyperpavilion so astutely diagnosed. We are living in an age defined by algorithms, where the past is constantly being processed and repackaged into a \"perfect neo-future\" that is both alluring and deeply unsettling. The artists in Hyperpavilion grappled with this new reality, their work serving as a powerful and often disquieting commentary on the human cost of our relentless pursuit of technological advancement.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"616642a5-f61b-4e29-b3ef-bc7268ae240b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100359871101073,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/759x510/f0670bab02/schmidt5.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Paul Souviron",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"54429aa2-3408-4b0a-8b57-68f09a8b819e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100358297172050,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/759x510/f531efd798/schmidt6.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Frederik de Wilde",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75acd801-bba9-4c8b-a160-1fdb1b200dab",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hyperpavilion was a landmark exhibition not only for its innovative use of technology but also for its profound and timely critique of the digital age. It was a wake-up call, a reminder that the promises of a decentralized, democratic digital utopia have given way to a far more complex and often troubling reality. In the Algocene, where the lines between the human and the machine are increasingly blurred, the questions raised by Hyperpavilion are more urgent than ever. The exhibition's legacy lies in its unflinching exploration of this new frontier, a legacy that continues to resonate in our increasingly entangled hybrid world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9883e061-9fa9-4723-af2e-220370a62270",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100360325716120,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/759x510/1a20330339/schmidt2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Théo Massoulier",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2022-08-01 00:00",name:"Welcome to the Algocene: How Hyperpavilion ÷Predicted our Hybrid World",author:"Editorial",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f776f539-f718-4daf-bf75-5d2569a2d52f",color:"#3426df",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a68df94f-e0d7-4786-aa27-d7c68a62d2cb",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100350926702574,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1200/4eab75df19/hyperpavilion-vinciane-lebrun-verguethen-voyez-vous-5698-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Aram Bartholl",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"hyperpavilion",full_slug:"directory/reviews/hyperpavilion",sort_by_date:null,position:-160,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"ab6b27ee-6406-4dde-a9ba-832bdde500f8",first_published_at:"2025-10-11T13:59:06.235Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"The Feed as Reality: Eva & Franco Mattes at the Venice Biennale",created_at:"2026-05-20T08:08:19.461Z",published_at:"2026-05-20T12:36:38.586Z",updated_at:"2026-05-20T12:36:38.604Z",id:178482788222452,uuid:"108b9e3c-ba37-4852-9439-837020d27707",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"a0f46973-cc1e-42e9-9803-41d5e8fa0996",title:"RAGE BAIT Review: Eva & Franco Mattes at Venice Biennale 2026",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:178503800731684,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/e1daf5b345/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2611-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Eva Franco Mattes RAGE BAIT Venice Biennale 2026",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Eva & Franco Mattes' RAGE BAIT at Palazzo Franchetti is the sharpest exhibition at Venice Biennale 2026. A review of the Autotelic Foundation show curated by Nadim Samman.v"}
77],_uid:"971cea36-704a-41d2-bc97-78d087033617",body:[{_uid:"d34050a7-f129-420b-810b-7d84cae8ff15",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Feed as Reality: Eva & Franco Mattes at the Venice Biennale",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The shift of the attention economy is addressed by many exhibitions worldwide. Most treat the digital as a world apart. Eva and Franco Mattes know it never was.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The attention economy, the weaponization of affect, the dissolution of the image as a reliable carrier of meaning: these have become the shared subject matter of a generation of exhibitions, and many engage with them seriously. What most share is a spatial assumption so embedded it rarely gets examined. They treat the digital as a territory with borders, a zone you enter and exit, a parallel world whose pathologies can be observed from the outside. That threshold has not existed for years. We live inside a single condition in which the physical and the digital are continuously folded into each other, shaping the same bodies, the same cities, the same political outcomes. An exhibition that still stages that crossing is working from a premise the world has already left behind.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"RAGE BAIT, presented by Autotelic Foundation at Palazzo Franchetti and Le Cabanon during the Venice Biennale, starts from the condition itself. Eva and Franco Mattes have been working inside the overlap of physical and digital life since the late 1990s, not as critics observing from a distance but as practitioners who understood early that the two were never separable to begin with. Their early interventions, fabricating an artist, impersonating the Vatican online, circulating hoaxes as fact, were not provocations in the usual sense. They were experiments in the mechanics of belief: how authority attaches to images, how institutions ratify fictions, how the desire to belong to something real renders audiences complicit in their own deception. What they were mapping then has since become the architecture of the entire information environment. Curator Nadim Samman, whose trajectory runs from the Antarctic Biennale to the inaugural role of Curator for the Digital Sphere at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, brings the same long engagement with how digital systems reshape physical and social territories. This is not an exhibition assembled around a timely subject. It is one that has been thinking about it for a long time.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"44db7d82-ffa6-4c98-a649-11ca279466c8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178508731419343,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/6ffc1fff42/480.mov",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"exhibition trailer",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"924c8e44-6df2-4f27-9186-712ed9a4734b",quote:"\"We optimised for engagement and got radicalisation. We optimised for c
77onnection and got loneliness. We are very good at optimising.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"5b6283f0-9b2b-4212-9043-a199efbd3131",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Palazzo Franchetti: when the data center meets the Renaissance",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Palazzo Franchetti, the 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal becomes the first argument. The Mattes overlay its historic rooms with raised flooring, cable trays, and prefabricated components drawn from the vocabulary of data centers and cryptocurrency mining infrastructure, not as metaphor but as architectural fact. The palazzo does not recede. It becomes a palimpsest in which Renaissance grandeur and server-farm logic occupy the same plane, each making the other more legible. The hybrid condition of contemporary life is built here, walked through, physically inhabited, and the decision to work at this scale, in these rooms, with these materials, is what separates the exhibition from the many that address the same territory in two dimensions on a white wall.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cursed Cat (in the Dataset): the meme as object",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Cursed Cat\" (in the Dataset) (2025) introduces a stuffed, earless black cat, a physical incarnation of the internet meme, posed beneath a robotic arm-mounted camera that also frames visitors in the background, folding them into the same image-making logic as the object they are looking at. A Large Language Model trained exclusively on images of this single figure generates a continuous stream of new iterations, released onto the internet to be absorbed into future training datasets, corrupting the imagination of AI systems from within. The same figure reappears in wood carved from the Dolomites, glass forged in Murano, plastic food replica from Japan: craft traditions of singular, place-specific making pressed into the service of a meme whose whole logic is frictionless reproduction. These are beautiful objects, strange in the way that things are strange when two incompatible systems of value have been forced to share the same surface, and that strangeness carries more weight than any caption could.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1706b430-1631-4f2c-bfac-86c0bc005af5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178542598813839,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1244x414/08cfd9c85e/screenshot-2026-05-20-at-13-49-25.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IMAGE GENERATIVE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fc6f77a2-4df3-4eec-839e-c0ae147a7e92",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178503800731684,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/e1daf5b345/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2611-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dfb207cb-9d39-4214-82fa-51fd531a4d9c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178514243251571,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6336x9504/b62ba93ed2/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2635-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
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77,{_uid:"64f863ca-f46c-4321-84cb-f08ffb4a27f7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178542035744836,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/722x1286/8af8c5d398/screenshot-2026-05-20-at-13-50-42.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. 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The result is an exhibition that does not explain the condition so much as extend it, which is, in the end, a more honest thing to do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"RAGE BAIT is on view at Palazzo Franchetti, Venice, from 6 May to 30 June 2026, and at Le Cabanon, Giudecca, from 6 to 31 May 2026. Presented by Autotelic Foundation. Curated by Nadim Samman and Luisa Haustein.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-20 00:00",name:"The Feed as Reality ÷Eva & Franco Mattes at the Venice Biennale",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"dbeacc4c-d1af-4cd9-bdee-5049c369c12f",color:"#f5e529",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"91682d35-80c7-4c66-8a63-a98260f667f4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178507084380788,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/c6151a93e7/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2430-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-feed-as-reality-eva-franco-mattes-at-the-venice-biennale",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-feed-as-reality-eva-franco-mattes-at-the-venice-biennale",sort_by_date:null,position:-1300,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"5d9060ac-dd59-422b-be1c-5c1667c53413",first_published_at:"2026-05-20T12:15:21.739Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Aeolian Suite Jenna Sutela",created_at:"2026-08-26T19:16:36.403Z",published_at:"2026-08-26T22:14:36.510Z",updated_at:"2026-08-26T22:14:36.523Z",id:213328676502180,uuid:"1e566467-d58b-4a33-877e-23760dd9a4d5",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"68aa1cb4-ed49-425e-892c-156410a27424",title:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:213361552979842,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1910x1444/48e1a570e2/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-25-41.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1910x1444"},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela"}],_uid:"9dd3fa1d-25d9-4d31-acb5-0fb1bf47aaed",body:[{_uid:"9d836b0f-8c25-4727-a1fe-d304d3df7d42",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Aeolian Suite\" by Jenna Sutela",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In the Venetian context, the wind has never been only a weather condition, but the origin of local mythologies and narrations: the wind moved the boats of Marco Polo towards China in the 14",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"th",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"superscript"}]},{text:" Century while the Venetian âRepubblica Marinaraâ reached its peak thanks to this same element; the songs of complaint for the death of sailors and fishermen directly relate to tumultuous waters produced by the winds, the writer Iosif Brodskij in ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Watermark ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"describes the wind as a constant Venetian presence, revolving in the streets of the city complementing the water fury. When a city is built on water, the sea and the wind become daily visitors, part not only of the folklore, but of every experience, whether through their absence or through a violent appearance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In musical compositions, a note that repeats itself alongside the whole piece is defined as an ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Ostinato; ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"in the same way, the wind repeating itself day after day and century after century, populating the Venetian landscape, becomes a recurring character punctuating the Venetian ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Score. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"The musical metaphor is particularly poignant as, just as the wind, it invisibly replenishes environments with its presence and makes itself heard although not seen: itâs a common experience to perceive a voice singing or a violin playing without understanding where the sound is coming from.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"67b616a3-1d52-446c-9eae-181df7640791",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213371662411971,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1398x1864/aa07dba771/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-23-27-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026. Detail. Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo by Clelia Cadamuro. Courtesy of FRAME Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b703c475-914c-46a9-92cd-5ada9dd85a2e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213371611412670,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1062x1440/95b77809a9/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-26-02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1062x1440"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026. Detail. Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo by Clelia Cadamuro. Courtesy of FRAME Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ec96b525-fa90-495c-a9f6-988f40c78fc5",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The project ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Aeolian Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"by Jenna Sutela for the Finnish pavilion takes this idea of constancy and presence, as well as the musical score, at its core, starting from the title where the ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"takes yet another term from the musical realm, in which it means a composition of multiple instruments. In Alvar and Elissa Aaltoâs architecture, these instruments take the shape of five entities playing together different c
77ompositions created through the agency of five Venetian winds: Bora Chiara, Bora Scura, Tramontana, Scirocco and Garbin. Each of the five entities playing together in the pavilion presents itself as a hairy sculpture that practically demonstrates the unpredictability of the atmospheric agent it represents: with every minimal air movement, the sculpture surface redefines itself in a continuous game of rearrangement. Entering the pavilion, the wind music wraps the visitors up, becoming at times soft and pleasant to listen to and sometimes violently dissonant, making it hard not to make space in ourselves to listen to the wind's voice. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"Taking back from the theory of ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"deep listening ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"by Pauline Oliveros, Sutela and the winds ask us to be aware of these air movements and to their voices, making space in ourselves to listen to them and to their unpredictability, which defies forecasting and AI modelling, more than ever in the current context of climate change where even winds are affected and violence or complete absence disrupt the usual score are not just musical notes in the scor every event is unpredictable and where its violence is heightened day after day. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"Aeolian Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"is a spiritual experience connected to the capacity to listen not only to ourselves but to any entity that surrounds us, and a fiercely scientific one that reaffirms, through this non-human voice, the importance of being aware of how climate change is affecting everything on the planet. A temple for the winds, the project becomes a space of reflection in the chaos of the Biennale, an invitation to step out of the climate-unaware crowd to get a moment of pantheistic understanding of what happens beyond the next opening and the next champagne flute.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-08-27 00:00",name:"\"Aeolian Suite\" ÷Jenna Sutela",author:"Iacopo Prinetti",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"d1f31111-f669-4180-8445-40cd691e7d0d",color:"#3e81ad",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a297dfda-598a-4949-9e82-f2f8f5e75610",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213361552979842,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1910x1444/48e1a570e2/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-25-41.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1910x1444"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026, installation view. Photo: Ugo Carmeni. Courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"aeolian-suite-jenna-sutela",full_slug:"directory/reviews/aeolian-suite-jenna-sutela",sort_by_date:null,position:-1470,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"597c8126-9bf2-4d77-b648-f53d86a05a00",first_published_at:"2026-08-26T22:13:27.196Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true}]},slug:"venise-2026",full_slug:"directory/focus/venise-2026",sort_by_date:null,position:-60,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:93876722978922,meta_data:null,group_id:"90a95d66-c496-45cf-9827-acdf41f7e6fd",first_published_at:"2026-05-17T09:01:23.332Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Reviews",created_at:"2025-11-25T21:37:38.800Z",published_at:"2026-09-24T22:44:47.011Z",updated_at:"2026-09-24T22:44:47.028Z",id:116396272880795,uuid:"d39a07f3-31ed-430a-b852-3cf22aeae78a",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"be682e3a-0bc7-48ad-b203-01de153d1aad",title:"reviews",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:116211876365280,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1198x720/32692c1118/screenshot-2025-03-31-124103_hd.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"test",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"test"}],_uid:"99094245-0e53-47d7-9994-4190aa092b77",date:"Sept 2026",name:"Exhibition Highlights:÷Refresh Reviews",component:"focus",color_dark:{_uid:"cac647e3-eaf1-4aae-8518-7a9acf62e17a",color:"#d3fd53",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"dfad7bc6-5363-4faa-a066-8824b1adf0e9",poster:{i
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77climate, organisms, infrastructures and human use. Is sculpture, in this sense, the most contemporary of mediums? Can it be understood as inherently dynamic, even when it appears materially still?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: I am cautious about naming any medium âthe most contemporary,â because contemporaneity is not an intrinsic quality; it is produced through how a form meets the conditions of its time. But sculpture does have a particular capacity to make relations palpable. It occupies space, has weight, ages, casts shadows, resists and invites touch, and is exposed to weather, maintenance, ecology and public behaviour.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Today, many artists are also expanding what sculpture can be and how it can be made. Rather than treating it solely as a process of carving or chiselling a material into form, they construct, assemble, weave, cast, adapt and reconfigure it through handmade, industrial, organic and found materials. This shift is not simply technical. It brings different worldviews, ancestral and embodied knowledges, and urgent contemporary frameworks into the body of the work. Sculpture becomes a means of holding questions of extraction, migration, labour, care, ecology, repair and inheritance, as much as questions of mass, form and composition.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Even apparently still sculpture is not inert. Its materials are undergoing change; its meaning is continually revised by light, season, proximity, memory and use. While sculpture retains an immediate connection to the human body and to human scale, contemporary practice is extending its capacity to articulate how we relate to the world around us, and how that relation is narrated, shaped and contested. In a park, this becomes particularly visible. A work is never simply placed before a landscape: it enters an existing field of human, vegetal, animal, climatic and social relations. Sculpture can therefore help us perceive ourselves not as detached observers of the world, but as materially implicated within it.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8ba71008-339f-4b13-b19e-b9a77b0f16a7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220765127454023,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x675/b85d5f7b29/timur-si-qin-1-gfx04437-1-copy.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Timur Si qin, ast of the Wild and Free (Rhododendron Calophytum), Frieze Sculpture 2024, London (UK), courtesy Albion Jeune",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2b2503f6-f9a2-43a0-9521-7713e0ca15cf",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: Your curatorial vision is profoundly post-anthropocentric. We are far from sculpture conceived as a monument to human mastery or glory; instead, these works reposition the human within systems of matter, technology, climate and non-human life, not above nature but inside it. Does contemporary sculpture mark a decisive turn from celebrating the human towards expressing interdependence? And when the human is no longer placed at the centre, how can this decentring intensify rather than diminish our accountability for the damage we continue to inflict on the biosphere?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FU: I would not describe this as a clean historical turn. Sculpture has always registered our dependencies: on stone, labour, ritual, land, extraction, belief and collective memory. What may be changing is the urgency with which artists refuse the fiction of human exceptionalism.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"We are at a crossroads in how we perceive and organise our relationship with the world. The challenge is not only to recognise the limits of anthropoce
77ntric thinking, but to unlearn its deeply embedded habits without simply reproducing its assumptions in a new vocabulary. This is where art becomes necessary. It can provide a kind of protective or experimental space: not a retreat from reality, but a force field in which unfamiliar ways of seeing, sensing and relating can be encountered gradually, without demanding immediate and total surrender to an unknown future.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art offers glimpses of the changes already gathering on the horizon. Through material, image, scale, duration and encounter, it can prepare us intellectually, affectively, socially, and even neurologically, to take seriously other ways of being with the world, in the world and for the world. Its value may lie in its capacity to make this transition perceptible: to allow us to rehearse forms of attention, care and solidarity that extend beyond the human, towards all the beings and systems with which we are entangled.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Decentring the human does not mean diminishing human responsibility. Quite the opposite: it makes responsibility more exacting. If we understand ourselves as embedded in ecosystems and infrastructures rather than standing outside them, then the damage caused by extraction, consumption, militarisation and technological expansion cannot be displaced onto some supposedly external âenvironmentâ. There is no outside. The question is not whether art can solve that condition, but whether it can make it felt, thought and contested differently.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c3b67c5e-95db-4f5a-a541-b1bad94cc2eb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220793720479747,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5335x8000/9119ff6953/aye_erkmen_model_for_moss_column_2023_dirimart_frieze_sculpture_2023.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"AyÅe Erkmen, 'Model for Moss Column', 2023, Dirimart. Frieze Sculpture 2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"46815774-3ebf-42bb-9bad-9236aaca938b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220794011361297,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4668x7000/66f3b34d37/suhasini_kejriwal_garden_of_un-earthly_delights_2023_nature_morte_frieze_sculpture_2023.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Suhasini Kejriwal, 'Garden of Un-Earthly Delights', 2023, Nature Morte. Frieze Sculpture 2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"081b8b4d-7c67-446e-b22a-ed703684af96",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: The white cube presumes a stable frame within which an artwork can be separated from the world. Yet we no longer experience reality as a fixed frame: bodies, technologies, ecologies and infrastructures continually co-evolve and remain entangled. In such a world, can sculpture still be conceived as an autonomous, stable object? Must sculpture in the twenty-first century become evolutionary, not necessarily by moving or changing physically, but by remaining open to transformation through environment, use, interpretation and time? Or can stillness and permanence themselves constitute radical responses to a world in flux?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: Autonomy remains a useful tension, rather than a condition we should simply discard. An artwork needs some degree of formal coherence in order to be encountered on its own terms; otherwise, it risks becoming merely illustrative of its context. But that coherence need not imply isolation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Even as we step outside the presumed neutrality of the white cube, we continue to operate within frames of perception. No context, no mode of display and no act of looking is neutral: each brings particular histories, values, exclusions and expectations. The task, then, is not to imagine that sculpture can exist without a frame, but to become more conscious of the frames through which it is made, situated, encountered and understood, and to test how those frames might be opened or recalibrated.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Interconnection does not require the erasure of boundaries. On the contrary, boundaries, difference and a degree of autonomy are essential to any meaningful relation. A sculpture can be porous without dissolving into its surroundings. Its material and conceptual integrity allow it to receive and reflect its environment, while also maintaining the specificity of its subject matter, form and purpose. This is perhaps where sculpture becomes especially enticing today: it can hold a position while remaining responsive; it can be distinct, and demonstrably entangled.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I am interested in sculpture as a proposition that is both specific and permeable: materially present, yet changing through its exposure to site, duration, interpretation and encounter. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Stillness can be radical in a culture that demands constant optimisation, circulation and response. Sustained attention to sculpture is therefore important. It enables the encounter to deepen over time, rather than being exhausted in an instant of recognition or consumption. In maintaining space for close looking, returning and conversation, sculpture can continue to nourish a wider discourse about art, relation and the conditions through which we understand the world.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"8e6b1459-888a-4708-8070-aeaa6959aab6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220768759500175,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6240x4160/5efdd9a254/li_li_ren_to_find_a_way_home_2023_sherbet_green_frieze_sculpture_2023.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Li Ren, 'To find a way home', 2023, Sherbet Green. Frieze Sculpture, London (UK) 2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a7390ceb-ef1d-41cf-8d7d-e014b7dc63d5",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS:The digital layer is now part of the biosphere. It is neither a separate virtual realm nor simply a tool: it is entangled with matter, energy, climate, infrastructures, bodies and behaviour, and it participates in shaping the conditions of life. When this continuously evolving layer crystallises into physical matter, can sculpture be understood as a moment of arrest within that perpetual transformation? How does this condition alter what sculpture can be?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FU: The digital is often spoken of as immaterial, but this is one of its most consequential myths. It depends on mines, cables, data centres, energy systems, logistics, labour and planetary resource extraction. It is already ecological and geological.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the same time, the digital is a new language, perhaps the most active and dynamic component of contemporary visual culture. Like any language, however, it is neither equally available nor equally legible. Information is distributed unevenly, as are access, literacy, agency and the capacity to use digital tools critically and inventively. We need to treat the digital not merely as a technical instrument, but as a cultural resource through which new forms of perception, expression and relation are being written.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When digitally generated or mediated forms become sculpture, I do not see this simply as a translation from a virtual realm into a real one. Rather, the work makes visible that digital processes were always material. It can condense an otherwise dispersed network of calculations, infrastru
77ctures and decisions into something with scale, surface, vulnerability and consequence. Sculpture becomes a point at which we can confront the physical costs, seductions and residues of computation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This also changes the terms of encounter. Art is no longer defined only by what it is, but by where and how it is encountered: across gallery space, public space, screens, platforms, archives and networks of circulation. The digital has become inseparable from the hybrid reality we inhabit: an amalgamation of the physical, virtual and imaginary. Within that condition, sculpture can offer a moment of arrest, not as an escape from digital transformation, but as a way of making its effects tangible, shareable and open to reflection.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bb49eeb3-646b-46eb-88c2-8f77271c7b00",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220769773768093,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x600/455c1a9ca1/frieze-week-london-2024-bloomberg-connects-frieze-scultpure-photograph-linda-nylind.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Libby Heaney, Ent- (non-earthly delights), 2024, Gazelli Art House. Frieze Sculpture 2024, London 2024",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"92b50e0a-b48d-45ff-84c7-7018654cd7d7",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: Digital processes unfold in time: they iterate, mutate and remain capable of becoming otherwise. Sculpture, by contrast, traditionally occupies space and acquires meaning through persistence. When a digital process is materialised as a physical object, is time effectively being translated into space, and becoming into being? Does the resulting sculpture preserve the memory of its computational evolution, or does materialisation bring that evolution to an end? And might this arrest be not only a loss, but also the condition that makes sustained attention, contemplation and deep looking possible?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FU: Materialisation can be understood as an arrest, but arrest does not necessarily mean closure. A physical object retains traces of the decisions, iterations and constraints that produced it, even if those processes are no longer visible. The object may hold the memory of becoming while initiating another kind of becoming through weathering, encounter, conservation and interpretation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is also an ethical question in making something endure. In a culture of incessant updates, a sculpture asks for a different temporality: attention that is neither extractive nor immediate. Its stillness can create room for uncertainty, for sustained looking and for forms of knowledge that cannot be reduced to speed or utility. We should not romanticise that arrest, but neither should we assume that mutability is always more progressive than duration.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ac475c89-5092-4f93-b2e3-d598d531b8be",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220824301183991,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1142x1142/89d699c2d0/screenshot-2026-09-17-at-01-35-47.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1142x1142"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Daniel Widrig,Materialising the Digital courtesy the artist and curatorial office",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e9e2eb25-4918-41c3-87da-5048e3fb773b",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: Casting has long made sculpture plural: a mould produces a series, and industrial reproducibility extended that logic of repetition. Digital modelling and simulation now move beyond the reproduction of identical objects by making potentially infinite variations of a form possible, each capable of further mutation before materialisation. In this new e
77conomy of multiplicity, does the artistâs decision to interrupt the simulation and select one state restore singularity to sculpture? Is uniqueness no longer an inherent property of the object or the mould, but the consequence of a decisive arrest among innumerable possible forms?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: Digital tools complicate the old opposition between unique work and reproducible series. They make variation native to the process: there may be no single original, only a field of related possibilities. In that sense, the artistâs decision to select a state, materialise it and accept its contingencies becomes especially significant.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This also intersects with a longer economic history in which scarcity has been used to produce value. Within capitalist frameworks, the unique object has often derived its desirability from what it withholds: its limited availability, exclusivity and the fact that it can be possessed by only a few. However, the conditions of desire may be shifting. In a culture shaped by social platforms, viral images, hypes and rapidly shared references, value is increasingly generated through collective attention. What is desirable may no longer be only that which no one else can have, but that which has become desired, recognised or experienced by many others.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This does not necessarily diminish the importance of the unique work, nor does it replace artistic specificity with popularity. Rather, it asks us to reconsider what uniqueness means. A workâs singularity may not reside solely in its status as a rare object, but in the particular relations it generates: the contexts to which it responds, the material and social conditions of its production, and the forms of attention, use or conversation that gather around it.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c09f639d-deff-4894-9935-9b5f39d598f7",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: If an exhibition proposes a field of co-evolution rather than a collection of autonomous objects, curating can no longer consist simply of selecting and arranging finished works. Does the curatorial idea become one of the forces through which artworks, site, public and non-human agents enter into relation?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FU: Yes, although I would say the curatorial idea is not the force that governs the field but one force among many. The site, artists, fabrication processes, weather, institutional conditions, maintenance teams, visitors, animals and plants all exercise forms of agency. Curating, for me, is the work of establishing conditions in which these relations can become legible without pretending to control them fully.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I have always understood curating beyond the straightforward arrangement of objects in a room. My approach begins with context, scale and the potential of place: the habitual behaviours, values, histories and rhythms that shape a site before any work arrives. An exhibition, in this sense, is not simply a display but a temporary ecology, one that can hold different temporalities, forms of encounter and degrees of openness.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is also why I am interested in exhibitions that remain generous to the unplanned. A strong curatorial proposition should not over-determine every relation; it should create the conditions for something to happen between artworks, site, public and other forces that may not be immediately visible. The most dynamic displays are often those that feel alive to their environment, and to the questions their environment returns to them",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"a0b976fa-0678-4592-be94-fe824b9920d8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220780651458222,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6079x4160/3673171d60/catriona-robertson-gigantic-pile-2023_saatchi-gallery-garden-rhs-chelsea-flower-show-photography-stephen-studd-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-the-muse-gallery.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"6079x4160"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Catriona Robertson,, Gigantic Pile, 2023, (part of 2026 curation , image taken not in situ iof 2026 Sculpture Park) ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d0920904-cfae-4f41-aed0-87944a92d7db",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220798433870085,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/720x980/ee0fe4649f/screenshot-2026-09-16-at-23-50-45.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Catriona Robertson,, Gigantic Pile, 2023, (part of 2026 curation , image taken not in situ iof 2026 Sculpture Park) ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9731d6d2-5d6f-4e2e-a4ab-280c224d53ee",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220780651445931,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x1800/256892f056/douglas-white-black-palm-ii-2026-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-leila-heller-gallery.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1200x1800"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Douglas white,blackcpalm,cii,c2026,courtesy Leila Heller-gallery (part of 2026 curation , image taken not in situ iof 2026 Sculpture Park) ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"26d344fd-ab59-445b-81bd-8b5e2f7de93a",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: Angel Oteroâs subterranean threshold, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendranâs two-faced figure, Ivana BaÅ¡iÄâs brutalist form and Tarini Sethiâs perforated steel screens establish radically different relationships with the body, the ground and the surrounding landscape. How did you compose the tensions among these works while allowing their distinct histories and cultural references to resonate without dissolving their differences? At a moment marked by hardened borders, technological control, relentless optimisation, exclusion and binary thinking, can art help us reimagine how we relate to one another and to the world? Is it naïve to speak of art as a force of reconnection, care and presence, or has that capacity become politically necessary?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FU: The exhibition deliberately resists reducing these distinct practices to a singular narrative thesis. Angel Otero, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Ivana BaÅ¡iÄ, and Tarini Sethi each operate with highly individualised material vocabularies, geographical origins, iconographic frameworks, and modes of engaging the physical body. The primary curatorial objective was to cultivate proximity without imposing equivalence, allowing each work to converse across difference while safeguarding the specific density of its respective references.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Oteroâs intervention draws our gaze downward toward subterranean realms of concealment, holding memory across dual realities and offering a poetic threshold between spaces of social belonging. Treating the surrounding environment as an expanded canvas, he inscribes a door directly onto the site. Conversely, Nithiyendranâs double-faced figure disrupts singular perspectives and fixed notions of identity, confronting themes of race, gender, the coexistence of ancestral lineage, and the wearing of inherited skins.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"BaÅ¡iÄ revisits Bogdan BogdanoviÄâs spomeniks, re-infusing the brutalist concrete monuments of post-WWII Yugoslavia with a deeply human presence. By integrating a heart, multiple brains, and rhythmic breath into a humanoid form, her sculpture bridges the tangible and the intangible, recasting the monument as an entity that speaks directly to human vulnerability. Meanwhile, Sethiâs perforated steel screens mediate visibility, protection, permeability, and movement. Incorporating Hindu symbolism, her work explores the dual nature of existence, shaped by actions, deeds, thoughts, and aspirations, as well as by ancestral and contemporary mythologies.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Together, Nithiyendran and Sethi articulate the fluid multiplicity of identity alongside our coexistence with cultural artefacts, mythologies, and more than human, whether deities, animal forms, or elemental forces like fire. Oteroâs work, in turn, functions as an imaginative portal capable of transporting the viewer.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beyond these four artists, numerous other works throughout the park extend and enrich this constellation.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"de17170f-023a-47dd-9ec8-3711d30cfe2f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220792355581888,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3024x4032/a635662af4/carolina-aguirre-held-2026-artwork-render_courtesy-the-artist-and-ruttkowski.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CarolinaCAguirre, Held, 2026, Artwork render, Courtesy Ruttkowski (part of 2026 curation , image taken not in situ iof 2026 Sculpture Park)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c1d8b49a-7399-4139-8ff5-8fca9633443c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220780651441834,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x3600/2bf1926300/ramesh-mario-nithiyendran-warrior-figure-2026-side-01-photography-phillip-huynh_courtesy-the-artist-jhaveri-contemporary-and-sullivanstrumpf.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2700x3600"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rmesh Mario, NithiyendranWarriorfigure-2026, -photography by Phillip Huynh, courtesy Haveri Contemporary and Sullivan Strumpf (part of 2026 curation , image taken not in situ iof 2026 Sculpture Park)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"042fddf8-966c-4354-b239-10b417bfdc20",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220780651515567,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5466x3872/b618cb2cc2/tarini-sethi-preparatory-drawing-for-the-sun-bathes-its-friends-and-neighbours-2026-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-rajiv-menon-contemporary.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"5466x3872"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tarini Sethi, Preparatory drawing for the sun bathes its friends and neighbours, 2026-,courtesyof Rajiv Menoncontemporary.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3cbe05e8-2db1-40c0-b4bb-4bede39777ec",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: This is your fourth year curating Frieze Sculpture. At what point does continuity become a method, and at what point does it risk becoming a formula? What have you deliberately had to unlearn since your first edition, and which encounter between works made you realise that the 2026 exhibition had found its own identity?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: Continuity becomes a method when it supports attention rather than repetition. Returning to Frieze Sculpture over several years has allowed me to understand the site not as a neutral backdrop but as a changing partner, altered by seasons, audiences, institutional pressures, artistic practices and the broader atmosphere of public life.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is my fourth and final edition of Frieze Sculpture, and in each edition I have sought to bring a new body of artists and practices into view. We have explored performance as sculpture, sound as sculpture and, this year, text as sculpture, with sculpture becoming a performative invitation to audiences. I have always set myself the challenge of not repeating what I have done before, while ensuring that each edition is both horizontally and vertically connected. That continuity can be seen in the relationship between the different locations and the works shown within them, as well as in the repeated methodology of allowing the park to function as an informant rather than a backdrop.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The danger, naturally, is that familiarity produces a re
77cognisable curatorial signature that is mistaken for a living methodology. I have had to unlearn the desire to resolve the exhibition too quickly through a central argument. Increasingly, I have tried to begin from the particular demands of each artwork, and to allow the overall proposition to emerge through their frictions.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Each year has also been shaped by one or more themes that inform the selection. But the park itself is never fixed: it changes continuously. New trees arrive, while this year, because of the drought, we lost three trees that died and had to be cut down. It is sad to witness such an immediate change. The park is also home to animals, whose presence we respect; at one point we even had a bird bath that a robin made very good use of.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What made this year distinct was the way the park itself entered more insistently into the proposition. The encounter between works was no longer only visual; it was spatial, temporal and environmental. I am interested in refusing repetition, but also in expanding the demographics of representation, showing artists at different stages of their practice and career, and bringing an international pulse on sculpture today to UK and international audiences through the lens of an English garden.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"83b648fa-af43-4e9b-bb73-50ff6b1066b8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220791694045117,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1682x1106/65fee50d68/screenshot-2026-09-16-at-23-15-40.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãzlem Günyol & Mustafa Kuntâs âPossibilities for a Sculptureâ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a21f1bd-267c-43ea-86e0-fb6a0daa409b",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: A few days before Frieze Sculpture opens, what did you know about this exhibition that no press release can yet know? What remains fragile, unresolved or capable of changing once the works, the park and the public finally meet?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FU: A press release can describe intentions, participants and ideas, but it cannot predict encounter. A few days before opening, the most important unknown is how the works will recalibrate one another once they are fully installed, and how the park will reciprocally alter them.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What remains fragile is the balance between legibility and openness. The exhibition must offer visitors points of entry without prescribing a correct experience. Outdoor sculpture is especially exposed to contingency: a change in weather, a new route taken by visitors, the sound of the city, the pace at which someone moves through the space, even an unplanned pause can reorganise the workâs meaning. I do not regard that as a deficit. It is the condition of making an exhibition alive.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"eece9bb4-fc99-4ed0-b613-975017fec8c7",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: Frieze Sculpture is free, but Regentâs Park is not necessarily a popular or socially neutral setting, and the wider Frieze ecosystem remains associated with wealth, celebrity, invitation-only access and a relatively closed art-world network. Does placing sculpture outside the tent genuinely open that model, or does it merely give an exclusive system a public-facing layer? Who is the exhibitionâs public in practice, and what would meaningful democratisation require beyond free admission and high visitor numbers?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: Free admission matters, but it is not the same as access. The question of who feels entitled to enter, linger, interpret and return is shaped by class, race, disability, geography, language, time, confidence and prior experience of cultural institutions. Regentâs Park and Frieze carry particular social codes, and we should not pretend that placing art in the park dissolves them.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Frieze Sculpture opens a real point of contact beyond the fair tent, but it does not absolve the wider ecosystem of its exclusions. Meaningful democratisation would require sustained engagement beyond the event: investment in long-term local relationships, different forms of mediation and learning, accessible routes through commissioning and employment, transparent accountability, and more equitable distribution of resources and decision-making power. Attendance figures are useful, but they cannot tell us who felt addressed, who felt welcome, or who had the power to shape what was presented.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"727f45f4-4a53-4f7f-897d-4cc9e62dc2c3",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: Regentâs Park may appear natural, but it is itself an artefact: a designed, cultivated and regulated landscape. Its composition is less visibly rigid than that of a formal French garden, yet its apparent freedom is also the product of human decisions about space, movement, vegetation and social use. When you place sculpture there, is the work entering nature, or entering another human composition that already frames how nature should look and be experienced? How does this constructed naturalness influence your curatorial choices? Could the ultimate ambition of such a sculptural route be to turn the works into portals, thresholds through which visitors briefly imagine another way of inhabiting the world?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: Regentâs Park is neither untouched nature nor merely an artificial stage. It is a cultivated commons, shaped by histories of land ownership, design, labour, governance, leisure and control. Its appearance of openness has been carefully produced. That matters because placing sculpture there does not bring art into an unmediated natural world; it introduces one set of cultural propositions into another.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This awareness guides the exhibitionâs spatial decisions. I am attentive not only to sightlines and the formal relation between work and vegetation, but also to routes, thresholds, pauses, obstructions, intimacy and exposure. The aim is not to make works disappear elegantly into the landscape, nor to make them dominate it. It is to create moments in which the park becomes strange again, moments that interrupt habitual movement and invite visitors to sense that the ways we organise land, bodies and public life are neither neutral nor inevitable.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In that sense, sculpture can become a portal: not an escape from the world, but a threshold through which the world appears otherwise.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"2ce262f7-fc4b-42b3-8d2e-dca7c8552503",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220802780049785,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1578x1038/436343b51f/screenshot-2026-09-16-at-23-15-31.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãzlem Günyol & Mustafa Kuntâs âPossibilities for a Sculptureâ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d63f010-7565-4baa-ae4b-aa3b5f1c2a6e",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: Frieze Sculpture is inseparable from a highly codified market system and from the image of Frieze as one of the international art worldâs defining gatherings. That affiliation gives the exhibition visibility, resources and influence, but it also creates a contradiction: can a project generated
77within the established market help invent alternatives to it? At a moment when the art world is in transition and urgently needs new economic, institutional and social models, could the Sculpture Park become an avant-garde testing ground for them? What would have to change for that possibility to become real?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FU: The contradiction is real, and it should not be disguised. Frieze Sculpture operates within an art economy shaped by uneven access, speculative value and entrenched power, even as it benefits from the visibility and infrastructure of Frieze itself. It would be disingenuous to claim that a temporary exhibition within this system can stand outside it. The more serious question is whether it can work productively within those conditions to shift them, even modestly.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Institutions and markets are not monolithic; they are made up of decisions. A project like Frieze Sculpture can use its position to test other values, but only if those values are built into the structure of the project: how resources are allocated, which artists are supported, how partners are chosen and how publics are addressed. In that sense, the bursaries we give to artists each year matter, because they expand access and create conditions for a broader range of artists and galleries to take part.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"419e5cfe-65b1-4836-8285-6e270783dffa",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS:Through FRANK Fair Artist Pay, you advocate fair remuneration, fair working conditions, transparent contracts and fair representation. Can those principles be applied fully within Frieze Sculpture, which is both a free public exhibition and an extension of a commercial art fair? Who carries the financial risk when an ambitious outdoor work exceeds its production or installation budget?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: Through FRANK Fair Artist Pay, I advocate fair remuneration, fair working conditions, transparent contracts and fair representation. I believe those principles should apply fully to the art ecosystem. However, Frieze Sculpture sits at the intersection of public presentation and commercial infrastructure. But that also means being honest about the structure: Frieze is a fair, galleries pay to participate, works may be sold through the fair, Frieze does not take a cut from those sales, and Frieze Sculpture itself is not a profit-generating project for Frieze. It is a public-facing programme operating within a commercial environment, and that distinction matters.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In that context, I do not think artists should be expected to absorb the financial risk of ambitious outdoor work. When production, transport, installation, insurance, deinstallation or contingencies exceed the available budget, that responsibility cannot simply be pushed onto artists. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That is why transparency is essential to me. If institutions are going to work with artists and galleries in this kind of setting, the relationship has to be clear, fair and responsible from the outset. That means binding contracts, realistic budgets, honest conversations about scope, and a willingness to reduce ambition when the resources are not there to support it properly.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0d20e0f0-2172-446e-89fe-9e406e87a21e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220811207054162,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/446
77x606/7bbe476c2c/screenshot-2026-09-17-at-00-40-55.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"446x606"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1b226dff-63dc-41d1-8578-412913cd32ad",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220809405489983,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1276x1620/c87e2c81b5/screenshot-2026-09-17-at-00-33-17.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1276x1620"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cd02d4e2-63f7-4576-a484-f599af0f3c0e",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: In The Art Institution of Tomorrow, you argue that institutions must realign their structures and economic models with their core purpose. If you could implement one element of that proposal immediately, not as a symbolic gesture or temporary programme but as a structural change, which redistribution of money, authority or decision-making power would you begin with, and who would need to relinquish power for it to succeed?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FU: If I were to realize a single foundational proposal from The Art Institution of Tomorrow right away as a permanent structural shift, rather than a short-lived project or token gesture, I would start by reallocating funding toward multi-year, unrestricted grants for artists and cultural workers while embedding them directly into organisational governance. Current funding frameworks rely far too heavily on rigid deliverables, transient initiatives, and metric-driven evaluations, leaving practitioners trapped in persistent precarity and draining the capacity required for deep research, experimentation, and mutual support.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Enacting true institutional transformation requires redirecting substantial resources away from prestige building, promotional spectacle, and branding, and chaneling them into guaranteed living fees, production budgets, accessibility, research time, and co-designed programming. Simultaneously, decision-making power and accountability must extend beyond boards, executive directors, and financial backers to encompass artists, staff, local communities, and the broader public.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Achieving this shift requires key stakeholders at the top of governance and financial hierarchies to surrender authority: grantmakers would rather step back from dictating outcomes, governing boards to diversify and dismantle structures of legacy privilege, and directors shifting from top-down leadership to shared stewardship. This process is inherently challenging because it fundamentally redefines not only an institution's public image, but also its core mission and the constituencies it serves.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b1715afb-b49c-45cf-af62-87d7b9361b11",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: The Art Institution of Tomorrow was published in 2024. Two years later, which argument in the book now seems too cautious, incomplete or already overtaken by events? What have you underestimated about institutionsâ resistance to meaningful change?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: I remain skeptical of rapid solutions; genuine transformation requires duration. Above all, we must acknowledge that our established modes of operating can no longer be sustained. This transition represents a profound sense of loss, one that traditional institutional frameworks regularly fail to register. Any real loss demands a process of grieving, traversing non-linear stages as individuals and communities move at their own pace. Only when we confront this loss and process its grief can we begin to construct viable frameworks for our emerging paradigm. The shift itself is already underway and change remains inevitable, yet it has not been fully digested, let alone recognised as an implicit farewell to the familiar, the comfortable and the convenient. Neurologically and physically, our bodies inherently resist such shifts, as forging new neural pathways demands re-evaluating our patterns, behaviors and fundamental ways of being in the world.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3ba6337b-ce06-411f-bcc3-1ec353b9bce7",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PRS: You are frequently described as visionary or avant-garde. Such labels can celebrate an independent voice, but they can also neutralise dissent by turning it into a personal brand. As Frieze Sculpture prepares to open, what would convince you that the exhibition has translated a genuinely challenging position into lived experience rather than simply reinforcing that label? On the morning of 16 September, before the visitors, reviews and attendance figures, what sign would tell you that the exhibition is alive, and what sign would force you to admit that it is not yet working?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FÃ: erms like âvisionaryâ or âavant-gardeâ warrant careful consideration. While flattering, such labels risk framing systemic critique as a matter of personal style or individual temperament rather than a shared call for structural change. My focus remains on staying accountable to current realities rather than striving to be positioned ahead of my time.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For the exhibition to be truly lived rather than merely branded, it should foster modes of engagement that transcend attendance figures, market reach, and social media metrics. It succeeds when visitors pause, revisit, debate, invite others, discover unforeseen connections, or experience a shift in their relationship to the park. Equally essential are the underlying conditions of production: whether the artists, technicians, fabricators, and operational staff felt respected, fully supported, and empowered to engage in open dialogue throughout.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On the morning of 16 September, before public entry, the vital sign of success is whether the artworks begin to transcend the curatorial framework I established, asserting their presence while sparking fresh inquiries. Conversely, the primary indicator of failure would be an exhibition that feels overly controlled, seamless, and neatly resolved prior to any visitorâs encounter, as an exhibition ought not to arrive with its meanings fully predetermined.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1bcbb6cf-b2fd-42d3-949b-b6056ae78b13",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ediitorial note :",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This conversation was conducted by email between FatoÅ Ãstek, located in London (uk) and Philippe Riss-Schmidt, located in Paris (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This interview forms part of our ongoing series of in-depth interviews for Refresh Magazine, featuring forward-thinking, visionary people from all over the world who bring diverse perspectives to a shared ambition: structural change. Grounded in the realities of a world in multi-crisis, they do not seek to be seen as ahead of their time, they want to move it forward.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artâs capacity to reimagine our relationships with one another and with the living world is powerful. Exploring that capacity requires nuance and conversationânot easy answers.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bringing together voices from contemporary art, curatorial practice, literature and technology, these interviews confront the shift in which familiar certainties have fallen away and new models need to be built.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This conversation is not a review of Frieze Sculpture 2026. We will be attending the exhibition in October and will write a review .",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-15 00:00",name:"From the Radical Nuances Series: A conversation with the \"visionnary FatoÅ Ãstek",quote:"Decentring human does not mean diminishing human responsibility. Quite the opposite: it makes responsibility more exacting.",artist:"FatoÅ Ãstek",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"interview",video_url:"",color_dark:{_uid:"ae97c4f3-30c5-4510-ad70-bae637fc59ef",color:"#91a400",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c336da91-89a2-457e-9159-cc4cffa28806",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220757803179086,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2338x1550/5779cecf
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77 to look at images traveling in time one has to zoom out and consider the infrastructures transporting them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"f6751a33-8679-4af3-b51d-7b4722a7c29b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220371374424401,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2746x1732/83d8c350f8/screenshot-2026-09-15-at-18-52-40.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"John Humphreys Alien \"Autopsy\",2026 \"AUTOPSY\" site specific artwork at Seventeen Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f78a5266-abc6-4bb8-b5cf-0db4f04d29ab",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Entering the gallery, and before encountering the alien corpse by John Humprheys, the visitor meets a yellowish room with sparsely hung work on all four walls of the space. With a blanket-like sculpture on the floor â Anni Puolakkaâs",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:" Skin Kin 2 ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026) â and brown floor to ceiling window blinds on opposite walls of the room with a telescope peeking out one of them in front of a camp bed â Viktor Timofeevâs ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Exact Fantasy",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (2025) and ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"2+2=0 ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026) â the space reminds of nothing less than one where windows are covered in foil and the notion of truth or facts donât emerge from a set of rules, institutions, or researched knowledge.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On closer inspection, the visitor is reminded of a kuriositätenkabinett from another time and space in how the room is built around smaller, image-persistent works that create a madly affective scene. Joel Slotteâs painting ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Head Behind Jar",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (2025) is at the same time a canned human head and a twisted face following the visitorâs gaze from an almost chameleon point of view. Slotteâs ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Still Life Painter Putting Together a Vanitas Motif ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"creates a haunting pair: a self-portrait of the artist organizing a scene of reminder of death. Or maybe preserving his head in the open jar, lid held up in a vulcan salute, only to be met in the first painting as the artistâs never dying self. Jaakko Pallasvuoâs small laser engravings, such as ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"THE GESTURE OF TURNING A MASK AROUND ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026) are reminders of hidden personalities in the memeified landscape of social media and, in this, c
77ontinue the logic of the exhibition â an ontological theatre of sorts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"35f291ab-47fc-4558-9882-a616a90f2853",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220342872257679,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8194x5463/953684b3bf/autopsy_pic3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"AUTOPSY\" Install shot, Seventeen, London 2026,",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"326ac364-b0ab-454e-ae95-14e384ef981f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220347272025654,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1984x2235/7fd1bc79a4/slott.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1984x2235"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joel Slotte, Still life painter putting together a vanitas motif, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8a9d83a3-c510-43db-b106-bbb2317b55c5",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"348911f0-5f64-45fd-b33a-24c2c5d9d8da",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220347271931445,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1984x2777/d2edbab5dc/slot2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1984x2777"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joel Slotte, Stleeping Sun1, Vampire lost in reverie, Steeping Sun II , various dates",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f9284312-d504-4d6e-8f10-6cb4f72b46d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220350156674906,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1983x1320/5aded47008/viktor.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1983x1320"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Viktor Timofeev, Exact Fantasy, 2025 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6714f07f-e18f-440c-baf9-cff53fa0c7f5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220369736245530,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4008x5611/95f7f59429/autopsy_pic7_joel_slotte_head_behind_jar_2025.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joel Slotte, Head Behind Jar, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0c82d914-74f0-47b5-9766-ff1e0422cf9e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220351290984322,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1388x1752/6141a33420/screenshot-2026-09-15-at-17-30-21.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1388x1752"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jaakko Pallasvuo,QUINTET, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dc522f51-c173-44ee-b1a4-a74ee3710c59",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220367871709203,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2750x1568/a1367e5553/autopsy_pic6_teo_ala-ruona_-_collaborators_rea-matere.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Photo from a performance by by Teo Ala-Ruona and Collaborators,",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dabc2b7f-1719-49d3-a554-cfc921500090",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220421404167524,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1984x2574/91f62b3450/holder-lemurian-2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joey Holder, Lemurian, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"ce9582ca-2ef0-4542-a9f5-fbb1f218e804",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220421404151139,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1984x2560/5a02b104f8/holder-atlantean-2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1984x2560"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joey Holder, Atlantean, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a2119a12-87f7-42c2-8e75-0bc98c281fbe",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the next room, the visitor can shop for alien merchandise. T-shirts, caps, posters and little green inflatable men are presented in a shop-like layout. Benjamin Orlowâs enchanting video work, ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"You know I was a snake ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026), presented on an old Samsung TV, underlines the roomâs pop-imaginary atmosphere. Moreover, other video work in the exhibition â such as Paul McCarthyâs and Mike Kelleyâs legendary ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Sod & Sodie Sock Comp, O.S.O",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (1998) and Chino Moyaâs ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"AutoXenoSim",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (2026) â also contribute to our thinking of how different digital visual tropes have changed â from cartoon to Beepleesque images to television aesthetics. The latter seems to pierce through the show, founded also on how the Rosewell phenomena has figured in the history of television.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The alien themselves is presented in the middle of Ausgang Studioâs site-specific installation ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Age of Data",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (2026) and next to Moyaâs video in the last room of Seventeen. Lying under a blue light in the dark room, it feels like someone has tried to dissect the corpse but faild to do so â or maybe this is what an alien post-autopsy looks like.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a recent essay, Jamie Sutcliffe noted that aliens are booming in our cultural landscape â again. Sutcliffe wrote that âif the aliens truly are here to stay, what matters most might be our insight into the causes theyâre enlisted to serve.â Teo Ala-Ruona's and collaboratorâs performance during the opening returned to the insights, literally and bodily. The work turns inwards to the body, the figures eating their faces, or maybe masks thereof. The deeply moving work echoes what the exhibition at large seems to suggest: that parallel â and paranormal â gestures communicate knowledge in a plurality of, often unknown, ways.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"52d6bbae-42fe-4c56-b222-0288f8d7891a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220378245841472,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x1024/e9ba28859b/shop.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shop, install shot, at Seventeen Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c48782d3-98ab-4749-9226-a1af39692405",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220362768702861,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3001x2384/3809244010/autopsy_pic5_orlow_you_knew_i_was_a_snake_2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3001x2384"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Benjamin Orlow, You knew I was a snake, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"805c1d31-aeab-4c62-8903-ad4db7b16fac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220362770365843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/bd34921b75/autopsy_pic_7_chino_moya_autoxenosim_2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"8000x5333"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chino Moya, AutoXenoSim, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"551e4001-7d63-4edd-8ac0-664dda52ad4b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220367016824777,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1983x1320/892f40809b/ausgang.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ausgang, Studio Age of Data, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4d0db60c-54d9-42c1-9a9d-a6a032cd81fe",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"b2ddb8a2-90a8-42b5-89f8-49eada3ad31a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220362770206098,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7949x5299/0098d09114/autopsy_pic2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"7949x5299"},is_external_url:false},caption:"John Humphreys, Alien Autopsy, install shot at Seventeen gallery in 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75f02d93-d675-45a3-9e35-69600ba0d3d0",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"AUTOPSY\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artits: Teo Ala Ruona & Collaborators, John Humphreys, Mike Kelley, Zein Majali, Paul McCarthy, Chino Moya, Anna Mikkola, Benjamin Orlow, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Anni Puolakka, Joel Slotte, Ausgang Studio,Viktor Timofeev, Teo Ala-Ruona and Collaborators,",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Assembled by Joey Holder with special thanks to Julia Greenway",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"This project was supported by The Finnish Institute UK & Ireland, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Taike, FRAME Finland and Kordelin.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Seventeen Gallery, London (UK) Until 15/08/26",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Editorial Note:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:" The terminology used in this review are those of an independent writer and do not necessarily reflect those of Refresh Magazine EDT. This applies to the concepts of âpost-internetâ and âpost-digital,â which remain widely debated among art critics. Please consult our glossary for further information. We remain committed to supporting independent journalism.and this article has been proudly approved by Refresh Magazine editorial committee.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-15 00:00",name:"\"AUTOPSY' ÷ Endless Alienspace Sadness",author:"Eero Kanjalainen",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f2f81105-cf92-42f9-9e34-ca59ad42c210",color:"#8b664e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"afbfb572-db00-4021-bd33-6447a170b909",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220304012246548,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3093x2656/ac256a9bd6/15.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"John Humphreys, Alien \"Autopsy\" 1995 , exhinition 2026, courtesy Seventeen, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"autopsy",full_slug:"directory/reviews/autopsy",sort_by_date:null,position:-1510,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c0a60734-48eb-4dab-aea5-55e533b422b0",first_published_at:"2026-09-15T17:17:24.8
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77ptimisation can destroy the very plurality that keeps a system alive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What happens when optimisation becomes the only way of thinking? âCaution Bot Crossingâ arrives at a hinge moment, when the automation of tasks is spreading rapidly while the human gestures that sustain them have not yet disappeared. fragmentin follows the tracks of autonomous machines through warehouses, roads, beehives and overheated phones. The exhibition reveals how a world reduced to data, efficiency and binary choices may eventually eliminate the variation it needs to evolve.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Standard/Deluxe in Lausanne, âCaution Bot Crossingâ opened onto a disturbance on the gallery floor: tyre marks cutting across the space. They were too deliberate to be accidental, too irregular to be fully machine-made. The exhibition suggested an autonomous robot moving through the gallery, arranging the works and leaving evidence of its passage. Yet the robot never appeared. What remained was a fiction of agency, and a warning about systems designed to organise the world until nothing unexpected can enter it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"No bot. Only the evidence of its route.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition did not treat automation as a distant technological fantasy. It located it in warehouses, roads, monitoring systems, markets, phones and industrial signs. These environments were not presented as separate examples. They formed one operative landscape in which movement, attention and behaviour are translated into data. Data is used to correct whatever refuses to fit.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The painted tracks give that logic a physical form. Derived from the movements of autonomous warehouse vehicles, they look like diagrams of efficiency: directional, repetitive and apparently rational. But the marks are made by hand. They drift slightly. Their imperfections expose the effort required to imitate machine precision. Human gesture appears as an imperfect copy of automation, while automation reveals itself as a fiction produced by human gesture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3fd78f2d-6106-4400-8a74-40fa7a43b0e4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216171675655130,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x667/800d40a829/cbc_web-1-1000x0.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1000x667"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"95132d3b-a027-4ac8-898d-c1b4184e766f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216380792272268,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1434x1802/dfb1780d1a/screenshot-2026-09-04-at-12-15-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"867998b4-8247-4b2f-bdec-7ed5a3ca5073",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216438502042021,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x1350/72438d1e21/main.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3e47bdbd-2dbb-428d-8285-cfa2ba2466dd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216093565690581,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/ec920910a8/cbc_3-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1400"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"71756d7d-3fbb-43fd-b3f5-7772406a056c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216171704859612,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1394/b31a311daa/wilde_13-01-252681_copie-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1394"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2d8d0f72-41be-471b-8c74-62d383cc06c9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216178224807547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/e507364471/img_2702_1_reduit-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1400"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e67170f4-159b-4180-8307-ce60b6f7f50c",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"One route. One answer. No outside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The problem is not the use of digital tools. It is the closed logic that can grow around them. Optimisation wants one frame, one correct route, one answer that can be repeated. It turns a plural world into a binary one: useful or useless, efficient or defective, inside the model or outside it. When data replaces experience, prediction suppresses uncertainty and efficiency is mistaken for resilience, anything unmeasurable begins to look irrelevant. Difference becomes noise. Error becomes failure. Surprise becomes a defect.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where the exhibitionâs post-natural argument becomes unavoidable. Technology no longer stands outside nature as a neutral instrument. It enters the rhythms of bodies, animals, climates and landscapes, changing the conditions in which they can continue. The world is plural by necessity: life evolves through variation, failed attempts, divergent paths and unexpected relations. That plurality is not an obstacle to evolution; it is its engine. A system that compresses this multiplicity into one optimised frame may look intelligent while exhausting the conditions that allow it to change. Once every deviation has been removed, the system has nowhere left to go. It does not become stronger. It simply runs out of alternatives. Collapse begins there.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Remove the deviation. Remove the future.The hive becomes a balance sheet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The pressure remains visible in âHIVE Indexâ, the exhibitionâs most exacting encounter with the quantification of living systems. Developed with Apian, the work brings together a sculpture and a series of short films. The sculpture takes the form of a mechanical hand closing around a beehive. At the fingertips, small screens speculate on the colonyâs value, turning the hive into a financial interface. The image is not a metaphor added from the outside. It stages the mechanism itself: a living community translated into indicators, rankings and projected returns.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The films move through different forms of contemporary beekeeping, placing traditional, industrial and migratory practices within the same field of observation. Their real subject is not the bee as an isolated emblem of nature, but the network around it: beekeepers, crops, climates, machines, markets and data. A colony becomes something that can be monitored, valued and managed, while the dense relations that make it alive disappear behind the numbers. The bee, the worker and the machine are not the same. They are, however, exposed to the same demand: become legible, become useful, become measurable. âHIVE Indexâ shows what is lost when plurality is flattened into a single metric. The hive does not become clearer. It becomes poorer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The heated glass enclosure containing a smartphone pushes this contradiction toward the absurd. The phone becomes a small dependent organism dealing with the climate it has helped intensify. It c
77an search for an answer, but it cannot step outside the conditions of the problem. The joke is immediate: a phone, placed under a heat lamp like a fragile pet, is apparently asked to manage its own crisis. But the humour does not soften the critique. It sharpens it. A system is attempting to repair itself without questioning its own design.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The phone is the punchline, and the patient.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The floor painting holds the argument without turning it into a slogan. Its lines describe a controlled passage through the gallery, but any body can interrupt them. The visitor remains an inconvenient variable. So does the hand that painted the route. One error can reveal that the system was never as stable as it claimed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs clean visual language also contains its own contradiction. The infrastructures it evokes are not clean. Warehouses conceal exhaustion. Logistics networks distribute ecological damage. Algorithmic management turns attention into a resource. Against this hidden complexity, the works place small disturbances: a route that does not quite behave, a machine that cannot be fully regulated, a phone overheating inside a glass box, a beehive caught in a financial image.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the entrance, a folded industrial safety sign lies abandoned on the floor. The scene has the deadpan quality of a workplace gag: a warning normally protects humans from machines; here, the bot appears to be the one whose crossing must be anticipated. The sign marks a redistribution of responsibility. The question is no longer how technology can serve human needs, but who has to adapt when technical systems begin to determine the conditions of common life.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bbbf6992-1eba-42c4-8840-ad5b7ad21449",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216173433089110,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/019032e895/hive_index_web_3-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d7658e3d-82f6-485a-ad9c-7d503282ba12",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216398235535852,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1401/6a619af422/photo-hives.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"50606946-7ff5-41da-a722-dcb5c314700b",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"41ee20ec-7465-4be9-bce6-9dd77abd7f45",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:216175380200830,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/7622a61eeb/g16_web_2-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0cce98b3-57e0-4f28-acd2-dbfa3fde28ec",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216178224811644,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/5f5ca207e3/g16_3_web-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1400"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"a3d79133-5d5b-4e13-aae3-34a15491a497",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216178224819837,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1280/c1261cec09/img_0234_site_reduit-1920x1280-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x1280"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a4e192eb-4418-432d-a79c-51937a8cd36f",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The safety sign has lost its subject.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âCaution Bot Crossingâ ended without offering a solution, and that refusal still feels more intelligent than a polished answer. Its machines do not become conscious protagonists, and humans do not disappear into a ready-made dystopia. Instead, the exhibition shows a shared choreography of measuring, moving, delegating and correcting. Its absent bot is not a character. It is a logic already at work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The final warning is blunt: a living world cannot be reduced to one optimised frame. It needs friction, error, difference and relations that escape calculation. The slight failures in fragmentinâs painted traces keep the system open. They are not imperfections to be corrected. They are evidence that plurality is still working. Another route, another response, another form of life can emerge. Without them, the optimised system does not reach perfection. It exhausts itself and collapses.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition delivers this warning without spectacle. Its means remain almost stubbornly low-tech: painted tracks, a mechanical hand, a heated phone, a displaced safety sign. Nothing becomes grandiose, catastrophic or loud. That restraint makes the proposition harder to dismiss. Beneath the modesty of its devices, âCaution Bot Crossingâ points to a more decisive shift: data has become a currency, and whoever controls its circulation gains power over what can be seen, valued and acted upon. The exhibition does not announce collapse. It shows how quietly the conditions for it are assembled.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition also underlines and examines the intensifying global state of crisis, and technologyâs role within it. As artificial intelligence and computational systems promise solutions, they remain entangled with invisible labour, extractive practices, energy consumption and geopolitical shifts. Nothing is immaterial here. Every clean interface has a physical cost, and every automated decision rests on a chain of human and material dependencies.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From data feedback loops to material cycles, the works trace the technological, social and environmental conditions that shape the present. They question the collapse of established models of thought while gesturing towards other forms of coexistence, knowledge and responsibility. The point is not to reject technology, but to stop treating its outputs as neutral, inevitable or complete.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-03 00:00",name:"Everything Under Control÷Collapse Pending",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"458d702f-5ab9-4fe6-829e-eded54c09a35",color:"#8a929d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a638fafe-b3e5-439b-ba32-04484af2d931",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216171636591574,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/27a1b2c33d/hive_index_web_5-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1400"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"caution-bot-crossing",full_slug:"directory/reviews/caution-bot-crossing",sort_by_date:null,position:-1490,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"256137f5-69d8-40c1-aa27-46f9b35c9979",first_published_at:"2026-09-03T20:37:30.425Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Shu Lea Cheang: LOVER LOVE",created_at:"2026-08-22T23:37:49.154Z",published_at:"2026-08-30T17:45:44.929Z",updated_at:"2026-08-30T17:45:44.945Z",id:211977294481515,uuid:"6e93b264-45d3-404f-b0
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77chnological, and social agents that make transformation possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d2e122c0-a319-4d75-83e3-a9cf1aa442a5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211983063350921,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/e96645fa26/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-101-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"BTS and Installation Images: Shu Lea Cheang LOVER LOVE, 2026 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fde58c9a-0cbf-4f45-a11e-a8d027976ad1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211983272926858,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/dec370a7ca/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-97-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3400x2550"},is_external_url:false},caption:"BTS and Installation Images: Shu Lea Cheang LOVER LOVE, 2026 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b906eae9-abbb-433e-85cd-8a8034883179",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211986767548053,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/b3d0560bce/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-104-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"caption",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4828d6da-33a1-4da7-bdf1-3fa32a74ad65",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A cyberfeminist and posthumanist, Cheang has long grounded her work in relationality. In Brandon (1998â99), the landmark web-based project prompted by the 1993 murder of trans man Brandon Teena, she used the internetâs non-linear form to connect Teenaâs story with wider trans histories and archival material. Fresh Kill (1994), her experimental science-fiction feature, turns queer ecology into a combustible plot: a lesbian couple use hacking to take on corporate conspiracy and an environmental crisis that leads to their daughterâs disappearance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For LOVER LOVE, Cheang filmed in Tucson, Arizona, in collaboration with local queer communities. Its participants appear in shifting registers: music performances unfold in open-air and semi-clandestine settings; trans and queer people recount personal experiences; intimacy and kink are staged; queerness is simply asserted as a way of being. The film moves between the everyday and the otherworldly. Participants may begin by speaking of their lives through mythical figuresâvampires, for instanceâbefore moving into performance or a community dance party. Elsewhere, digital fantasy enters the frame. One group performance ends with a celebratory portrait, only for CGI cacti to rise, flower, and overlay the performers. The final sequence mirrors the opening image of Negrot drifting freely as a futuristic seraph: against the Arizona desert, a UFO summons her into animation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this way, LOVER LOVE proposes a more expansive account of transness. Cheang has long regarded transition as a definitive enactment of cyborg theory, grounded in the physical interventions that transition can entail. Speaking at the 2025 Women Make Waves International Film Festival in Taipei, she returned to the relation between the subject who is becoming and the object with which that becoming takes place: body and machine. In a trans context, however, the machine is itself bodily, taking shape through surgery, hormone therapy, and other forms of intervention. Cheang pushes this framework beyond the human scale, towards trans-species life, queer ecology, and the cyberqueer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Negrot herself spoke of moving between transition, detransition, and transition again. For her, this was simply life: âa constant transition.â The phrase refuses the comfort of a fixed identity and recasts life as a state of perpetual movement. It reverberates throughout LOVER LOVE. One Tucson participant resists having their identity suppressed and their humanity denied; elsewhere, the seraph, the cacti, and accounts of becoming creatures from another world open onto a perspective beyond the human. The accounts are deliberately unscripted, resisting any single narrative of queer life. Their ambiguities e
77cho Negrotâs understanding of existence as mobile and unfinished.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The installationâs mechanics extend this proposition. Just as the film makes room for multiple narratives, its four movable screens generate a series of metaphors for queer lifeâand, crucially, for its entanglement with the wider social world. In her Frieze interview, Cheang likened the audienceâs power to divert projected images from their intended paths to the societal brutality inflicted on trans lives. Yet that same intervention also calls up Negrotâs celestial presence by triggering her song. As visitors experiment with the screens, the footage is distorted, layered, refracted, or blocked by light. The ongoing adjustment becomes a search for a wholeness that never arrives. It is difficult, if not impossible, to watch the film in its entirety; but that impossibility is precisely what asks viewers to remain with change, and to recognise the kinetic force of queer lives in transition.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Will queerness ever arrive? Not, Cheang suggests, in any settled or imminent form. Still, LOVER LOVE mourns the past, works in the present, and imagines a future. Cheang has said that she feels both âquite marginalâ and âat the centre of the world.â The installation distils that tension and turns it into momentum: a reason to persist, and to keep imagining what might come next.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9c9bc315-6a60-4453-9531-43df0baf4331",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211987371450006,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4096x2160/dd7d05dee7/loverlove-4channel-4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c213fa49-d4ec-4032-ac03-d2e6ff7c1838",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LOVER LOVE Tucson Artists & Collaborators:",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Vikó Velázquez Morales, Flor de Nopal",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Forrest, Forrest",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Graham Downing, Forrest's Lover",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Monica Jones, Monica Jones",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Emilia Villegas, MizSkoden",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jade A. Dominguez, Nadir",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Darla Rodriguez, Ash Wednesday",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Azrael Fayme, Azrael",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nimshi Bernice, Nimshi",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Veni, ERA 19",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tania Arballo, ERA 19",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gianna Purcell, Biker",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sam Bloom, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jazzy Benson, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Noah Austin Lopez, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Victoria Fitzgerald, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Shawna Shawnte, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Red Samaniego, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jazzy Benson, Producer / Casting Director / Locations",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Katie Burkholder, Producer / Production Manager",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Eryka Dellenbach, Director of Photography",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Clarice Bales, Assistant Camera",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Marizó Siller, Gaffer",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Graham Donohoe, Data Wrangler / Lighting Support / Drone Pilot",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Melrose Mcclain, Sound Recordist / Boom Op",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Reed Chandler, Assistant Director / Script Supervisor / Slate",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Julia Franco, Art Assistant",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-08-23 00:00",name:"Shu Lea Cheang ÷LOVER LOVE",author:"Wei Huang \t",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"bfa3f701-4
77c4f-48fb-808b-c1f2aae241a4",color:"#710907",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"74d5ee93-0464-4ed5-bf9a-29b95a6144b2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211977809616504,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4096x2160/96b4bc6b59/burning_angel1.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"4096x2160"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shu Lea Cheang LOVER LOVE, 2026 Four-channel digital film (color, sound, 28:00) with movable screens and interactive speaker system Courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"shu-lea-cheang-lover-love",full_slug:"directory/reviews/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love",sort_by_date:null,position:-1460,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"eba1674c-9e15-467e-9a5b-a890a6e49e45",first_published_at:"2026-08-23T00:16:42.838Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"taiwan pavilion",created_at:"2026-08-24T21:01:14.873Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T12:04:43.353Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T12:04:43.370Z",id:212646604307670,uuid:"476d98df-e148-46a0-995e-fd19324786de",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"5edd4a37-97bd-46a0-9813-646f0788fde3",title:"Defending Freedom of Expression: Standing with Taiwan",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:212651331069755,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/767x586/8e46d9a2b3/the-last-supper.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"767x586"},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Taiwan Pavilion, Gwangju Biennale 2026, Taiwanese contemporary art, artistic freedom, cultural censorship, cultural sovereignty, geopolitics and art, ChinaâTaiwan relations, Asian contemporary art",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"An essay on the Taiwan Pavilion controversy at the 2026 Gwangju Biennale, exploring cultural censorship, political pressure and Taiwanâs artistic freedom"}],_uid:"b79a7f8f-250e-49fe-b368-b594ceffa733",body:[{_uid:"bafc9be3-072d-4176-b7b4-50f219505b5a",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The pavilion that lost its name and then got it back.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A row over a poster in Gwangju shows how the old authoritarian order still strangles what's trying to be born, and time is running out to stop it",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A single word vanished from a poster, and it said everything. Taiwan's contribution to the 2026 Gwangju Biennale, contracted as \"Taiwan Pavilion,\" was quietly relabelled \"NTMoFA\" while every other participant, from Mongolia to Unesco, kept its name. Ten artists and their curator called it what it was: political censorship. This is not a footnote. It is happening now, in a democracy, at an event built to honour resistance to dictatorship, and it should alarm anyone who thinks the fight against authoritarian pressure is someone else's problem.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The organisers deny censoring content. That denial is the danger. The old order no longer needs to ban work outright. It erases a name, quietly, at the edges, and moves on before anyone can call it what it is. By the time the pattern is visible, it has already normalised itself.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And it is a pattern, accelerating. The same soft power quietly editing a poster in Korea is pouring billions into gleaming new museums across other part of the world buying Western institutional names, in states where LGBT people are criminalised and dissent is crushed. This is not cultural exchange. It is a transaction: prestige and cash moving one way, silence about who gets to exist, let alone create, moving the other. Every museum that takes the deal without saying so out loud makes the next erasure easier.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d2b2dfec-abc0-467e-a665-6da5594a98c1",quote:"Taiwan is what the old model cannot afford to let stand: one of Asia's freest artistic sce
77nes",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"cb0f5e0f-e32b-4740-b1ec-0ec920d2bf04",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Taiwan is what the old model cannot afford to let stand: one of Asia's freest artistic scenes, thriving precisely because it refuses these terms. A new model, plural, open, uncontrolled, cannot be allowed to take root, which is exactly why it must be defended now, not debated later. Every pavilion renamed, every museum bought, every artist quietly dropped from a lineup is a small test of how much authoritarian reach the free world will absorb without resistance. So far, the answer has been: quite a lot.",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dictators are afraid of art. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That fear is not incidental, it is a fact worth using. If a renamed pavilion can rattle a regime enough to demand the erasure, then art is not a soft, secondary front in this fight, it is one of the sharpest weapons available. To believe another world is possible is not naive. It requires courage in the face of dictators, and a refusal to grant them more power than they actually hold. A diverse world, one where art is free to exist in all its forms, is not a luxury or a sentiment. It is the only ecosystem in which freedom itself can survive, and it is worth using that fear against the very people who feel it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"note",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Since this statement was written, the pavilion has regained its name. China, meanwhile, withdrew from the Biennale with great fanfare, prompting South Korea to apologizeânot to Taiwan, whose name had been erased, but to Chinaâand to reiterate its âOne Chinaâ position. The sequence reads as a warning, barely disguised and almost insultingly unsubtle: Beijingâs participation in the arts remains conditional upon submission to its political vocabulary. This is artwashing deployed as an instrument of soft power, with cultural exchange offered only on the condition of obedience. Yet such coercion also betrays fragility. China may be less powerful than it claims; otherwise, why would it be so threatened by a name? And what might happen if Taiwan reclaimed its name not only in one pavilion, but everywhere?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Read the official statement of AVAT",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Other Side of the Maninbo",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To Everyone Who Signed for âTaiwan Pavilionâ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#333333"}},{type:"italic"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On August 25, the 16th Gwangju Biennale agreed to restore the designation âTaiwan Pavilionâ across the venue, official promotional materials, and related documents. On August 26, the venueâs management body, the National Asian Culture Center of Korea, notified the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts that it could re-enter the venue to begin installation on the 27th. On the official website, the word âTaiwanâ has returned.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A few days ago, we issued a statement titled âThe Reverse Side of the Roster.â In it we said:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âA pavilionâs name has never been a label; it is a statement of position. To erase the name of a national pavilion is to erase the names of an entire people.â",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Today we are writing the other side of that same statement. The return of the name âTaiwanâ was not granted by any institution. It came about because, one after another, a growing number of people chose to write their own names beside it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"TO THE ARTISTS, CURATORS, AND ARTS WORKERS WHO JOINED THE PETITION, FROM AROUND THE WORLD",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#1F1F1F"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"358 artists, curators, critics, and arts administrators from around the world signed their names to the petition. Most have no national tie to Taiwan, and none were under any obligation to take on risk over the name of a pavilion on a distant island. Yet each of you chose to leave your name, because we all understood:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âThe name that can be changed today is âTaiwanâ; the name that can be changed tomorrow could be anyoneâs.â",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this petition protects is not only Taiwan, but the rights of artists everywhere. Once the right to name oneself becomes something negotiable at an international exhibition, everyoneâs opportunity to exhibit is placed at risk. Your decision to sign is a democratic value we are able to hold onto.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"TO THE CURATORS AND PARTICIPATING ARTISTS OF THIS EDITION OF THE GWANGJU BIENNALE",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#1F1F1F"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"36 curators and artists from this yearâs Biennale issued an open letter titled âYou Must Change Your Name.â By changing a single word in Artistic Director Ho Tzu Nyenâs theme for this edition, âYou Must Change Your Life,â they turned a phrase addressed to the audience into a question addressed to the organizers.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"TO THE ARTISTS OF KOREA, AND OF GWANGJU IN PARTICULAR",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#1F1F1F"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The âDeclaration of Gwangju Artists Standing with Taiwanese Artistsâ was jointly issued by 21 organizations. Among them, Artistsâ Solidarity Against Censorship published âWho Is Afraid of the Name âTaiwan Pavilionâ,â calling for the name to be restored, the decision-making process to be made public, and a formal apology to be issued. In an interview, Kim Hwa-sun, chair of the Gwangju Association of Minjung Artists, said that something like this should never happen in Gwangju, a city that champions democracy, and offered an apology to Taiwanâs artists and curators. We must say in return: this was not something you caused, and there is nothing you need to apologize for.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In our earlier statement, we wrote that what we were asking of the Gwangju Biennale was never to âsupport Taiwan,â but simply not to âbetray Gwangju.â It is precisely because Gwangjuâs own artists stood up that this line did not go unanswered.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"After May 1980, it was artists who wrote the names back, one by one. In August 2026, that same act happened again. This edition of the Biennale is exhibiting paintings by members of the âMay Mothersâ Houseâ â mothers who lost their children and who, for more than forty years since, have not stopped saying their names. This time, you made sure that no self-contradictory gap appeared in that same promotional material.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"TO THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ART CRITICS AND TO MEMBERS OF THE PRESS",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#1F1F1F"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Our thanks to the Taiwan section of the International Association of Art Critics for formally writing to the international body, which helped draw the attention of the international art-critic community. Our thanks also to e-flux, Artforum, ARTnews, artnet, Refresh Magazine and more and to journalists in Korea and Taiwan, for keeping this matter in public view through the long period during which the organizers offered no explanation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"WHAT REMAINS UNRESOLVED",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#1F1F1F"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Association must still note one point: publicly, the organizers have described this outcome as âapproving an application to change the name,â rather than as restoring the name originally specified in the contract. We understand the pressure all parties faced within a very short period of time, and we recognize the significance of their willingness to correct course. Still, so that this outcome does not become a precedent to be invoked later, we continue to hope that the Gwangju Biennale Foundation will make public its decision-making process and the sources of outside input it has received since June.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"CONCLUSION",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#1F1F1F"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Association of Visual Arts in Taiwan hereby commits: should any artist or arts worker who signed for âTaiwan Pavilionâ this time ever, in the future, have their name changed, removed, or silenced in any exhibition on account of nationality, gender, belief, or political position, we will stand beside you in exactly the same way.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-08-24 00:00",name:"Gwangju Biennale as ÷Taiwan Pavilion",author:"Philippe riss Schmidt",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"6091bfc8-7b1f-47f6-bc11-8af166f3643c",color:"#757486",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"70ba37f9-d7be-4c51-a5b9-2dc2c9f404ad",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:212651331069755,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/767x586/8e46d9a2b3/the-last-supper.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:"9"},slug:"taiwan-pavilion",full_slug:"directory/essays/taiwan-pavilion",sort_by_date:null,position:-260,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"d2239003-c07d-4c84-a29f-2a9a5f9fb166",first_published_at:"2026-08-24T21:17:00.906Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"LOUIS POHL KOSEDA: COMPLEXITY AS A WAY OF MAKING SENSE",created_at:"2026-08-16T15:13:39.076Z",published_at:"2026-08-16T16:33:26.025Z",updated_at:"2026-08-16T16:33:26.041Z",id:209730023761445,uuid:"f67ac51d-0c84-48a6-9519-74804216fc28",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"b4f350c6-ef06-4746-b0bf-e2690c9afd40",title:"LOUIS POHL KOSEDA÷COMPLEXITY AS A WAY OF MAKING SENSE",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:209732990236937,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2414x1790/5cb5403935/screenshot-2026-08-16-at-17-25-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"LOUIS POHL KOSEDA÷COMPLEXITY AS A WAY OF MAKING SENSE",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"LOUIS POHL KOSEDA÷COMPLEXITY AS A WAY OF MAKING SENSE"}
77],_uid:"ea6897c7-587e-45ce-8a6d-3302305270fc",body:[{_uid:"e8f6632c-d428-4a3e-8d86-cf87facf684c",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Louis Pohl Koseda: Complexity as a Way of Making Sense",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Iâm arriving later than planned at a gallery in South East London. As I approach, silhouettes of figures blur against the frosted glass, the words SEAGER announcing the relatively nondescript front of my destination. I make my way in, ducking past groups of smokers stationed right next to the front of the building, only to find Louis in the depths of an animated conversation, leaning in and gesticulating something to a few enraptured conversation partners. I take my opportunity to scout out the space. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Iâve been a fan of Louis Pohl Kosedaâs work for a long time. We first crossed paths during, what is now a fairly hazy memory of, a summer spent digging a hole in the side of a Swiss mountain almost ten years ago. Louis was carrying out a vaudevillian campaign during a collective annual gathering of architecture students called EASA (European Architecture Student Assembly). Whipping up nearly 500 students into a populist frenzy, with the aim of digging one really big hole in the side of the Swiss alps. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Since then, Louisâ work has been profoundly characterised by a search for some kind of objective truth. One that is reflected through his vast and intricate drawings as if looking through a funhouse mirror, the absurdity of the underlying structure that is the subject of his works stretched taut, held up at times with comic relief, but mediated by an equally strong refusal to present it as anything other than a subjective narrative. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In The Palace of Magnolia and the Notification, Louis took on the challenge of addressing how the creep of the digital world in our real world has retroactively changed our perceptions of colour and, by extension, our perception of everyday physical reality. A rather ambitious undertaking to use his art as a mechanism to reflect on the way perceptions around colour have been shaped by the digital form - The premise is complex and densely layered with personal reflections, observations about the human lives at the coal face of global systems. In this collection of works, itâs possible to start to piece together his worldview. But only if you sit and lean into his works; give them the attention that they demand. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The kind of eclecticism that comes with Louisâ work feels a little overpowering at times, but it also resonantes and draws you in, in the same manner as a scrolling square feed of hyperbolic faces and brilliant flashing colours you might quickly glimpse over the shoulder of a stranger on their phone at a bus stop, flashes of worlds blaring out of the tableau and into the street. Itâs a specific curation of ideas, images and references that equal parts fantastical narrative and intimately biographical, barely contained within the physical limits of their medium. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When I first met him, Louisâ art was highly tonally driven. In his Ink drawings, characters were often drawn as if emerging from shadows, negatives that danced into life to the rhythm of an unseen campfire (Ecclesall Road and James Harrington, Roman Road, Again Begin). Louisâ intellectual enquiry seemed driven in parallel with his pen and charcoal explorations, oftentimes one line skimming the surface of the other. His drawings were almost journalistic in nature, capturing moments of connection or mundane simple settings that were immediately around him (Cafe life 3, Magnolia Bath). ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"607fb345-e8c6-4b91-862a-94ca20046ee6",quote:"In this exhibition, Louis took on the challenge of addressing how the creep of the digital world in our real world has retroactively changed our perceptions of colour and, by extension, our perception of everyday physical reality.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"f4598f3f-0dad-414f-b2e6-3bfdc5a3873b",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"More recently, Louis has begun experimenting with paint. Playing with swashes of colour as a textural mass, drawing out writhing shapes on the canvas from the background. Expanding layers through intense flashes of vivid tones and doused in pastel washes. Though experimental, pieces such as Marloweâs Room (2023), a painting recognised by the jury of the 2025 John Moores Painting Prize, break out of lines that contain familiar forms. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Combining the manic detail spilling out of personal, almost autobiographic, paintings like Marloweâs Room and The view of the flat is nice from Peckham Rye (2023), with the contorting meticulous planetary scale charcoal drawings, you arrive at his more recent works, hot day (2026) and Swimming (2026). When seen in retrospect, this creates a feeling of watching a line trend towards an asymptote. Converging towards something on its way to being articulated. Rehearsals for the big performance, perhaps. When viewed in sequence, the paintings layer neatly on top of each other. Earlier forays into colour are presented, in this exhibition, as more still life and at times quite gestural, behaviour (2023) and Rename or cancel (2023). The blending of the personal and the systemic, therefore, carries through into the choices of colours Louis uses; amplifying the intensity of these worlds to dizzying new heights. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"ca42d682-159c-4a18-9386-3893e76f976d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209742812203467,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4894x7014/add0552696/28-cafe-life-3.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a3cff530-edd3-457e-8760-b532dc7a2a01",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209742604483017,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3329x4117/16b44d0278/1-marlowe-s-room-76-bus-2023-paint-and-mixed-media-1mx1m.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f72f7c22-2514-49b8-b662-cf306e7a65e4",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Layers upon layersâ¦",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Louisâ fascination with complexity is evident in his work, Society of the Speculator (2024). An expansive pen and ink drawing taking some of the big names of the speculative economy (J.P. Morgan and Citibank to be precise) to task. The drawing itself pulls into focus at particular moments, as the rest of it fades away into ghostly suggestions of emotion and movement. In the centre of all this, your eyes may rest on a woman rendered in high contrast swinging a Gucci bag over the head of another, falling away into a pale figure just behind her. The image is an Athenian battle, where no one seems to be winning. Skyscrapers emblazoned with prideful logos of high flying global finance drag the observer back into the 21st century. The composition and the details between the carefully curated and rendered characters feels religious, bodies flying through space in an unholy fracas. Vanishing into the horizon, two monuments laden with a multiplicity of meaning held in place with guidelines into the centre of the image, a narrowing Bank of England and a faint No.1 Poultry Street. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" âToday, the issues within the financial system are getting worse. With politicians exploiting the information discrepancy to avoid the root, systemic issues. Spreading misinformation about the nature of economics to capitalize them-selves. The line between lie and reality becomes more blurred. Digital media becomes more centralized. The use of AI and bots creates complex perception ânudgesâ over time as a system of multi-level marketing. As speculative bubbles grow bigger, we also see social bubbles become foam - more isolating and individual. This was supposed to be the future.â Louis Pohl Koseda ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Through its use of plurality of perspective, Kosedaâs work always resists the singular. By combining one, two or even three point horizons, bodies and objects start to float out of place and time. Sometimes neatly, other times less so. When I spoke to Louis about this, at a previous show he curated in the City of London, I found him moving fluidly between referencing works by some of the Old Masters in the same breath as details of brutalist buildings from the 1960s. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e0cd9983-fb99-44b2-a431-bef8cdd92adf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209744121674203,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3834x2352/1f98909f4f/11-society-of-the-speculator_-drawing-speculative-finance-and-new-media-relationships-2024-pen-and-ink-drawing-1-2mx2-4m.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"society of the speculator\", 2024",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"829687d3-3c8f-49d8-bf0b-62d0f7398236",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The direct references to architecture are not only the surface of this influence, having spent three years studying Architecture at the University of Sheffield, it runs pretty deep in Louisâ worldview. His tools and the way he bends them feel informed directly by the drawing conventions that architecture school drills into you. An astute sense of awareness of the observer, and the shape of the observed. How an edge might fall away from you as you take one step to the right. Or another step backwards. Breaking these conventions, in the right moments, creates a layer of confusion in its denial to provide a clear anchor to which the observer of his drawings might hold onto. In some of Kosedaâs pieces, this broken structure is literally left exposed.
77Criss-crossing lines that guide the layers of perspective are left in place, scaffolding as facade perhaps (Society of the Speculator, 2024). ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The density of Louisâ work, expressed sometimes through composition and other times through raw tone, is not stylistic. Rather, itâs a necessity. Ask Louis to explain any of his singular works and you will find lengthy and interconnected theories around social structure, macro-economic policies and references to obscure British television shows from the 1990s. Koseda is driven by lines of social and political inquiry first and foremost. The form is a crystalled set of ideas around how the world is, meditations on how the personal meets with the global in one set of drawings. Propositions on the machinery of the political and economic in another. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Itâs not a surprise, then, that this kind of tangential thinking is one that lends itself to a particular understanding of the world as a moving set of systems. Reading his artwork as grand theories of the systems that shape our society, and our experience of it. The challenge with this approach, however, is the difficulty in parsing these layers of meaning. Where Louisâ resistance to the prosaic creates variegated and intricate landscapes, it also can overwhelm. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The complexity and density of Louisâ art reflects the density and aspirations of its author. His internal thought process is one profoundly led by a deep curiosity. Itâs no wonder drawings are bursting at the seams. Of course, this complexity can be overwhelming, or outright offputting for some. But I suspect that the intensity of the work is the point. Itâs work that demands attention. This necessitates a specific kind of engagement with Kosedaâs drawings - One akin to a form of meditation. Presence that the viewer is encouraged to lean into.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c00ea08f-f1e8-445d-94bc-b2ced760babf",quote:"Most people that visit my shows tend to spend around 45 minutes to an hour in the gallery, which is very high retention for contemporary art works⦠People are relieved that they are seeing slower artworks that they can spend time with.",author:" Louis Pohl Koseda ",component:"quote"},{_uid:"f310cc4b-aa70-4103-881c-9314bf64e655",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209747077118535,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1170x951/682b604032/11-landscape-mode-2022-oil-pastels-on-paper-29-7x42-0.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c6be339c-d675-4fa0-b3aa-895479cb5337",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209747933125203,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2753x3937/c2f7ddb480/8-screenbreak-2020-mixed-media-on-paper-297x420.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"73ad3cd1-043a-4085-a896-10d84769ca02",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209748026272340,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1316x1820/05831588fa/screenshot-2026-08-16-at-18-21-37.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1316x1820"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7a0c7313-4913-4e0e-91d0-9017f020e0a4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209748258814550,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2450x1826/c52c436369/screenshot-2026-08-16-at-18-27-38.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c1eb66f1-b9e1-4a63-856b-09b07389eebf",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A sprawling narrative ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Back in the southern edge of Deptford, as the sun began to slip over the horizon, I continued to pace around the crowded room slowly. I recognise some pieces from his previous exhibitions, and scan for any new additions. Quietly considering the link between these pieces, as a set of curated images and reflections. Louisâ work, whether it's laying out a vast tapestry of cityscapes across a canvas or a fantastical spiralling multi-headed hydra fighting a hindu god is inherently relational. It's a set of actors, bodies often flung in space, that are always in motion - acting on or being acted upon by others, but always by a visible force. These forces are often metaphors of systems and s
77ocial structures that are abstracted enough right up to the point they become highly intelligible visual elements. In my many conversations with and about Louisâ work, Iâve come to refer to these drawings as narrative diagrams. An image that is depicting a set of relationships, mediated by an action of some sort, but ultimately depicting a system at work. As such, they serve to, both, elucidate and reify complex links and relations at the heart of each of his works. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As a multi-disciplinary artist, Kosedaâs experimentation is right at the front of his work, often leaping out of the canvas and into three dimensions. His previous exhibition at No. 1 Poultry street was one such example. T-shaped panels stood proudly in the oblique space, mimicking the playful formal elements that made up the iconic building in the heart of the City of London. The panels were arranged as such that they present two-tone contrasts based on the position of the viewer. This three-dimensional experimentation is continued at this SEAGER show, with his use of what he calls Rhizomatic Modules. These small modular elements, CNCd from plywood, rise up from the floor of the gallery. Interlocking at perpendicular angles, they support the weight of a few pieces in the centre of the space and push a few others off the white walls. From certain angles, the lines made by the simple geometric shapes blur into an incredibly dense lattice, complexity that emerges from the iteration of a simple motif. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Itâs hard to not attribute this literal spatial element of Louisâ work, in part, to his background in architecture. To someone who has been through architectural education, this deeply practical approach to construction and modularity feels incredibly familiar. The tessellated forms are made with a particular awareness of how they can be formulated as a self-supporting structure, or a âthree dimensional cellular automatonâ as described by the artist. But the attention here is not on the form itself, but rather the ideas that the Rhizomatic Modular presents - a structure in service of an idea or a concept. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âStarting from a single piece as a seed, as more pieces are joined together a hidden rhythm is revealed. The structure expands in any direction of choice without boundaries, centres/margins or limits, becoming more complex over time. Pieces of pipework, a timber can be threaded through the entire structure, creating a framework for artworks and greater layers of complexity.â Louis Pohl Koseda ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These Rhizomatic Modular elements inform a kind of language that Koseda seems to be building as an ongoing part of his practice. The use of the term Rhizome suggests a particular organic and meandering quality, tendrils rooting around in the soil in search of something, an apt description of Kosedaâs artistic journey in some way. Presented in this exhibition, and taken as a whole, Louisâ work feels like a consistent way of making sense. Whether that is of the world that we are encased in, or in the different chapters of his life as they unfold. By tying together the systemic and the personal, and driven by a deep intellectual curiosity, Koseda presents an idiosyncratic view of contemporary life in an uncanny blend of the surreal and the hyperreal precisely. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-08-16 00:00",name:"Louis Pohl Koseda÷Complexity As a Way of Making Sense",author:"Hani Salih",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"793e2315-652a-4ec0-a505-52616d9a178a",color:"#999b98",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"87a29ae7-b7fa-4e1a-9526-413619a1e319",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209732990236937,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2414x1790/5cb5403935/screenshot-2026-08-16-at-17-25-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2414x1790"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"louis-pohl-koseda-complexity-as-a-way-of-making-sense",full_slug:"directory/reviews/louis-pohl-koseda-complexity-as-a-way-of-making-sense",sort_by_date:null,position:-1450,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"88035355-dcc8-4e95-8b37-dae256f47cce",first_published_at:"2026-08-16T15:43:14.947Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Entre chien et loup",created_at:"2026-07-18T10:29:14.743Z",published_at:"2026-07-18T10:44:12.693Z",updated_at:"2026-07-18T10:44:12.706Z",id:199397190663856,uuid:"94236776-3d92-4e7c-92f1-8da09d4218fa",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"ae653591-2e7e-48b7-8fc3-024753f2a4b3",title:"test",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:199397495286609,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/aace6268f9/3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"test",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"test"}],_uid:"ad745f83-d2dc-43bb-ac3a-ef95a75e36c1",body:[{_uid:"f410be3a-025a-4cf0-afde-8c1213720004",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Entre Chien et Loup\" by Abbas Akhavan at the Canadian Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"As far as I can remember, I have always had a particular fascination with botanical gardens, an interest pre-dating any interest in the contemporary arts field. Having always lived in dense urban environments, the opportunity to enter a public, curated green space in which each species would narrate a story and a world was surprising.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In Abbas Akhavanâs work for the Canada Pavilion at the
7761st Venice Biennale, I found myself drawn back to this interest in botanical gardens, not only for their aesthetic appeal but also through a political, layered lens. At the same time, the work drew a surprising parallel between the botanical garden and the Biennale format, making their political sides collide.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"The pavilion narration is centred on the giant water lily, a plant species imported from South America to the United Kingdom on the occasion of the Great Exhibition of 1851, when it was named after Queen Victoria and exhibited at the Crystal Palace, and later moved to a dedicated pavilion in Kew Gardens, where itâs currently housed. The plant was transported across the ocean in a Wardian case, a precursor to the contemporary terrarium and a surprising technological advancement for the period. Taking from this history and from the fact that the water lilies pavilion in Kew is currently closed for refurbishment, Akhavan took seeds from the plant, grew them in Paduaâs botanical garden and then transferred them into the Canada Pavilion, converted for the occasion into a contemporary Wardian case, an offshoot of Kew inside a garden dedicated not to plants, but to art practices. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"044ae6cd-f9fb-4d18-80b6-5aae0155e6a2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:199399705808378,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/40ace6992e/1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup, 2026, Canada Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. © Abbas Akhavan. Photo: Francesco Barasciutti",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9bc3dbf6-cd4d-4835-82db-bc6f1d3d99bf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:199399539015103,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x667/df76e94135/2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup, 2026, Canada Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. © Abbas Akhavan. Photo: Francesco Barasciutti",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"98035297-ece3-4b44-a32f-a7ca9ff28337",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Akhavan bridges the botanical garden and the Venice Biennale gardens for their shared political undercurrent: in the case of the botanical garden, it is a colonial one founded on plants being imported from colonies through the British Empire system; in the case of the Venice Biennale, instead, it is its inherent political dimension, which we have experienced lately with the cases of the Israeli and the Russian pavilions. Akhavan approaches the political side of gardens through the non-human lens of the giant water lilies and silently embroiders this narration with multiple topics: the colonisation of Canada by the British Empire and the non-human entities as the first to be put in cages as a spectacle for Western audiences.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"The whole project works within a penumbral environment, where what appears and what lies behind the appearance coexist: Canada is only obliquely mentioned through the discourse on British colonialism, and the shady political system of the Venice Biennale is hidden behind a curtain of aesthetics and international cooperation. The title itself ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Entre Chien et Loup ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"brings forward this idea: in the twilight a wolf can be mistaken for a dog and viceversa, just as a botanical garden can a
77ppear as a simple aesthetic exercise while carrying testimony of colonial violence or as the Biennale Gardens can perceived as a display of current aesthetics while they are instead a powerful tool to lure through culture political recognition even for countries who are accused of war crimes.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"61st Venice Biennale. Abbas Akhavan represents Canada with his installation \"Entre chien et loup\" â Giardini, May 9 to November 22, 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-17 00:00",name:"\"Entre Chien et Loup\" ÷Abbas Akhavan ",author:"Iacopo Prinetti",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"878d1c62-f725-4047-a082-518ed7ab4a65",color:"#792a33",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d941a306-1448-4fdb-8339-acc85c4bad17",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:199397495286609,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/aace6268f9/3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: \"Entre chien et loup\",Canada Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"entre-chien-et-loup",full_slug:"directory/reviews/entre-chien-et-loup",sort_by_date:null,position:-1430,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1f6de932-e1ef-423a-af10-5d7594024208",first_published_at:"2026-07-18T10:43:38.479Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Kyiv Biennial",created_at:"2026-07-10T03:06:29.763Z",published_at:"2026-09-09T05:46:04.490Z",updated_at:"2026-09-09T05:46:04.507Z",id:196457225300718,uuid:"0965db5a-4e62-4016-a87c-41e341a23da5",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"cc3663e7-9296-4ec1-bdf0-392337c634af",title:"Kyiv Biennial 2026 Berlin Review: Art Made Inside the Condition",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:196461179174392,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/5ec0542d56/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_lida_abdul_0701_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Kyiv Biennial 2026, A Bird That Cannot Land, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Hito Steyerl, Mona Hatoum, Dana Kavelina, Lesia Vasylchenko, Samia Halaby, Flaka Haliti, Lida Abdul, Saodat Ismailova, Geta BrÄtescu, Oleksiy Radynski, contemporary art Berlin 2026, nomadic biennial, art and war, post-digital art, poly-crisis art, Ukrainian art, art under conflict",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A review of the Kyiv Biennial's 2026 Berlin edition at KW Institute: art made inside war, mutation, sentiment, and the post-Instagram condition."}],_uid:"ca7b974f-6b62-40d4-953b-db8b3d52c5e0",body:[{_uid:"0726f5d6-cc21-4458-81b5-0cefaa8da516",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"A Bird That Cannot Land\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Kyiv Biennial exists. It simply does not stay in one place. Its current chapter lands at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, a nomadic biennial that has been moving across European cities since the war made Kyiv an impossible host. This Berlin edition operates from a single, exacting premise: that war is not a subject to be represented but a condition that restructures the very act of making: the time available, the materials accessible, the forms that remain possible. And not only war. The full weight of a world coming apart at several seams at once, where the climate, the political order, the social contract, and the body itself are all shifting. This is also the first post-Instagram war: fought with consumer drones, documented on Telegram channels that double as intelligence feeds, its atrocities verified through geotagged stories and TikTok videos posted by soldiers and civilians alike. The image is no longer a record of what happened. It is part of how the war is fought. At KW, the question is not how artists respond to crisis. It is what imagination becomes when the phone in your pocket is simultaneously a camera, a
77weapon, a survival tool, and a propaganda machine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"936c7e7d-20e8-4103-a7b8-18f55c7eb8a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196463456669184,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/2bb49f571d/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0222_hito_steyerl_oleksiy_radynski_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hito Steyerl, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1f9c7913-5bb4-4f7d-87c7-3de5cffe38e1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196463398780415,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/071ce0d650/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_hito_steyerl_philipp_goll_0238_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hito Steyerl.and Philipp Goll, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2e9e4d39-716c-4fc0-996d-7ca3d02cddcf",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hito Steyerl's installation \"Trassniki\" (2026), made in collaboration with Philipp Goll and Oleksiy Radynski, fills a room with metal pipes, sound, and video to map the extractivist logic of Russian imperialism, tracing the pipeline infrastructure that made Nord Stream 2 possible and, by extension, the fossil-fuel opportunism that allowed the war to be funded and deferred for years. Radynski's own video \"Where Russia Ends\" (2024), shown alongside, extends this into the territory of language and naming: where does Russia end, geographically, culturally, historically? The question, posed without irony, turns out to have no clean answer. Together, the two works make the same argument from different angles: the war was built out of pipes and gas and money, and art made inside this reality has to find a way to hold that inside its own structure. The pipes are not a metaphor. They are the actual architecture of the breakdown.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From this material starting point, the exhibition draws a map that no atlas re
77cognizes. It calls the territory \"Middle-East-Europe\": a corridor running from post-Soviet Eastern Europe through Central and Southwest Asia to the Mediterranean, held together not by geography but by shared histories of dispute, coloniality, and recurring conflict. Each new war here reopens the wounds of the one before it. The biennial's wager is that this continuity, this broken continuity, is not a regional particularity. It is the central condition of contemporary life. The artists in this exhibition are, many of them, working from outside the countries that formed them: displaced, relocated, in transit between identities and territories that no longer hold their original shape. Exile here is not a biographical footnote. It is the structural condition from which the work is made. And that condition does not exist in isolation. The war in Ukraine did not arrive alone. It arrived alongside climate breakdown, the fracturing of democratic institutions, the erosion of shared reality, the weaponization of information, and the accelerating damage of digital technology itself: the algorithmic amplification of fear and division, the AI-generated image that makes the evidence of atrocity indistinguishable from its simulation.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e870d406-e3a1-4e4c-b49b-7712f83c0ab9",quote:"I believe contemporary art helps us remain open to others. It invites us to recognise connections across different histories without flattening their differences. In a world increasingly organised through borders, exclusions and militarised identities that capacity to imagine relationships differently may be one of its most valuable contributions.",author:"Sofie Krogh Christensen, Curator (source IG)",component:"quote"},{_uid:"b7bf13de-69c8-4c1d-aeea-8ae06da17bdb",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"e369a2b2-b8f3-43f0-930e-4240da0b8406",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Time Reorganized",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lesia Vasylchenko's monumental video projection \"Night Without Shadows and Light Without Rippling of Waves\" (2025/2026) opens on a sky that looks like a romantic landscape painting, a swollen red sun rising behind dense clouds, and then refuses to let that reading stand. The image is too hot, too pressurized. It reads as nuclear. Beneath it, Vasylchenko weaves footage spanning from 1918 to 2025 into a single, unbroken night. Power cuts, bombardments, crowds in the dark: not a sequence, a coexistence. Time, under the conditions of permanent war, does not move forward. It accumulates laterally, images piling on images, each one undermining the last. The war has not only destroyed cities. It has destroyed the idea that events have a sequence, that causes precede effects, that history moves in a direction. In the adjacent room, Saodat Ismailova draws on Central Asian oral traditions and archival footage to produce a different image of the same rupture: time as a body of water, deep, slow, indifferent to the urgencies of the present. Her \"As We Fade\" (2024/2026) is visually ravishing, its surfaces luminous and dense, and it makes the surrounding urgency feel, by contrast, thin. Together, the two works describe the temporal condition of artists who no longer have access to the framework art history has always assumed: a stable present, a retrievable past, a legible future. The imagination does not expand under this pressure. It mutates. It learns to read the rubble.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"65a1db7a-8cb0-4aa2-9dab-7a3035370808",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196466949099065,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/5e3a26350d/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0470_lesia_vasylchenko_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lesia Vasylchenko, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"0efea75e-d4b1-43b7-9089-b86e1ed04545",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196470682881622,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/56ff621808/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0616_saodat_ismailova_foto_frank_sperling_lq_2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Saodat Ismailova, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"624e8eee-a7d3-4488-ba2d-2f23901a8137",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Feeling in the Dark",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dana Kavelina's stop-motion film \"Grey Earth\" (2026) registers this at the level of feeling. A cow, the casualty of an industrial landscape, and a soldier, the casualty of an industrial war machine, drift together through memory and dream. The logic is not narrative but associative, hallucinatory, close to the way the mind processes disintegration: not as a clear sequence of cause and effect, but as a series of images that refuse to cohere. The sentiment the film produces is not grief, not anger, not even sadness in any conventional sense. It is a disorientation that has calcified into something stable, a permanent low-frequency static that the body has learned to live inside. This is what feeling looks like when breakdown is no longer exceptional. When it is simply the weather.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The same pressure runs through the rest of the show, differently materialized. Mona Hatoum's \"Misbah\" (2006â07) does not need the context to justify it, but the context sharpens it: the Palestinian-British artist's hanging lantern casts intricate shadows across the walls of the KW, shadows that resolve, on closer inspection, into the outlines of a world map drawn from barbed wire. You notice the beauty first. Then you notice what it is made of. The sequence is the work. Lida Abdul's \"In Transit\" (2008), made in Afghanistan, shows workers whitewashing the ruins of Kabul's bombed buildings, painting over the evidence of destruction with a coat of white that is itself a kind of violence. The work is twenty years old. Nothing about it has softened. Its presence here is a reminder that this condition is not new. It is simply, at this moment, impossible to ignore. Gulnur Mukazhanova's \"Material as Memory\" (2026) works in a quieter register: heavy red velvet fabric hanging in a sealed chamber, its weight and texture carrying the physical memory of something that cannot be said. The material holds what the feed cannot process. It does not stand in for anything. It is the thing itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Samia Halaby's kinetic paintings \"Lighthouse\" and \"The RED CANARY and the grey spider\" (both 1993/2025) stop you. The Palestinian-American artist, now in her nineties, has been making computer-generated kinetic paintings since the 1980s, working with the machine as a partner in form long before that became a conversation anyone else was having. Here, the works pulse and shift with a controlled, almost meditative energy. They do not illustrate anything. They move. In a show about the mutation of form under pressure, Halaby's practice is the proof of concept.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1952e590-94de-4eaf-ba3b-eae711252bc7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196981210288908,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/f6b042d418/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0355_dana_kavelina_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dana Kavelina, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"6e2e887a-967e-4c4a-bf0f-b9d8123da8e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196479671754435,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/81c5f44e94/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0534_gulnur_mukazhanova_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gulnur Mukazhanova, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e631412f-7733-4e2c-9fbf-3f42e4746c6c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196480325308112,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/27ab2e9cc8/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_mona_hatoum_0390_foto_frank_sperling_lq_1_.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mona Hatoum, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e3049377-7b73-4532-acc8-e39c8a14e44f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196480435838673,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/352ae6e7e3/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0632_samia_halaby_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Samia Halaby, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"624c6d4c-e774-47aa-9d6b-44aa7e906149",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Imagination Under Pressure",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Geta BrÄtescu's \"The Traveler\" (1970/2026) is a wooden stool with eyes. It sits in a corner of the KW's ground floor and watches. Made under CeauÈescu's regime, when the Romanian artist was denied access to public exhibition and worked in radical isolation, the piece carries a specific kind of knowledge: that surveillance is internalized before it is imposed, that the artist who cannot show becomes, over time, her own most attentive audience. What connects BrÄtescu's practice to the work of artists living through the war in Ukraine is not suffering as such, but a shared formal consequence of constraint: the retreat into the oblique, the oneiric, the encoded. When direct speech is dangerous or impossible, form becomes the argument. The work does not illustrate constraint. It is its residue.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Flaka Haliti's \"I SHOUT, YOUR ECHO BOUNCE, WHAT AM I?\" (2023) takes this problem into the acoustic. Haliti, whose practice has long interrogated the political conditions of recognition and self-naming, constructs a space in which the act of articulation produces its own undoing: the shout returns as reverberation, the statement as question, the self as echo. What the piece stages is not the failure of language but its constitutive instability under conditions where naming is itself a political act. You leave the room not knowing what you heard. That is not a formal trick. It is a description of the epistemic situation. Nearby, Aykan SafoÄlu's floor puzzle \"1991\" (2026) offers the most unexpected figure in the exhibition: a whale. Specifically, Tichka, a beluga who in 1991 swam freely across the Black Sea as the Soviet Union dissolved, crossing borders that were simultaneously hardening and becoming meaningless. An androgynous figure rides her, indifferent to the cartographic anxieties below. SafoÄlu's humor is precise: the whale does not know about sovereignty, and this ignorance is not naivety but a kind of structural freedom. The body, the work suggests, has always operated according to a different logic than the state. In 1991, and again now, the question of which borders hold and which dissolve is answered differently depending on whether you are a bureaucrat, a soldier, or a beluga.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"550d6f1b-7fd9-4a77-9a08-61cb7c39333e",component:"mobile-newsletter"}
77,{_uid:"a472ace8-0b44-42b8-8c31-33100229890c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196959726236156,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/4dd0ff6868/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0353_aykan_safoglu_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Aykan Safoglu, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6840d01d-c95d-422c-b2c7-d9c9ce875c6b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196959288889850,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x5999/5e7d96a986/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0371_geta_bratescu_foto_frank_sperling_lq_2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Geta Bratescu, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7da684f2-077d-46f2-90c6-c70eeb6139d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196959522750971,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x5999/beeb65b84a/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_flaka_haliti_0475_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Flaka Haliti, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d09b821-fbde-41cc-842c-3f9e74366bb0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"A Bird That Cannot Land \" is not a political exhibition. It is not a didactic one. It does not ask you to take a position or leave with a clearer understanding of the geopolitical situation. The exhibition holds open the question of how pasts and presents speak to each other across geographies that official history has kept separate. The works here carry the weight of lived experience: rupture, displacement, the memory that survives in bodies long after the event that produced it, the traces that persist in the spaces we move through without knowing what they once held. These are not themes. They are the material the exhibition is made of. It is sumptuous: the works here have a formal density, a slowness, a formal commitment to inhabiting the condition, that makes it one of the most sustained shows in Berlin this year. It asks something harder, and more beautiful, and more emotional: to stay with the imagination of artists who are making work from inside the condition. What does form do when the ground is gone? What does sentiment become when the emergency has lasted long enough to become ordinary? The exhibition holds these questions open without resolving them. Four years in, that refusal is not a weakness. It is what the imagination produces when representation itself is under pressure: not a picture of the world, but a form that carries the weight of its transformation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"A Bird That Cannot Land\" runs at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, until 13 September 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists : Abdullah Miniawy, Adam Hanieh, Alona Karavai, Anna Ehrenstein and Yara Mekawei, Anna Zvyagintseva, Anton Kats and the Grounded Outer Space People, Assaf Gruber, Aykan SafoÄlu, Azar Mahmoudian, Bulgarian Voices Berlin, Dana Kavelina, Eda Aslan, Farahnaz Sharifi, Fehras Publishing Practices, Flaka Haliti, Geta BrÄtescu, Gulnur Mukazhanova, Heinali and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko, Hito Steyerl, Hiwa K, Ihor Tsymbrovsky, Ivan Krastev, Joyce Joumaa, Julia Cimafiejeva, Katarina Gryvul, LABOUR (Farahnaz Hatam & Colin Hacklander), Lesia Vasylchenko, Lida Abdul, Lucia Kagramanyan, Madina Tlostanova, Majd Abdel Hamid, Mona Hatoum, Nazanin Noori, Neda
77Saeedi, Nour Sokhon, Oleksiy Radynski, Philipp Goll, Samia Halaby, Saodat Ismailova, Sattar Stas Shärifullá and Ziliä Qansurá\u2028, Seyyare â Anatolian Womenâs Choir, Stefaniia Bodnia and Jack Dove, Tjan Zaotschnaja, Tolia Astakhishvili, Ulrike Herrmann, Wafaa Saied",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by : Sofie Krogh Christensen",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-11 00:00",name:"Kyiv Biennial ÷\"A Bird That Cannot Land\"",author:"Refresh team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"b896c4ae-5384-46c7-845c-17fc61cd6c33",color:"#feb700",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"7d09107f-029e-48ce-958e-ff7be9ede95e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196461179174392,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/5ec0542d56/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_lida_abdul_0701_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lida Abdul In Transit, 2008",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"kyiv-biennial",full_slug:"directory/reviews/kyiv-biennial",sort_by_date:null,position:-1420,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"331cde26-9064-4bb4-b084-dba8fb21024d",first_published_at:"2026-07-11T15:10:28.407Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"nature-after-nature-old-masters-algocene",created_at:"2026-07-02T18:27:18.563Z",published_at:"2026-07-05T22:20:16.653Z",updated_at:"2026-07-05T22:20:16.669Z",id:193852369182509,uuid:"38b12abb-fa36-4d1b-a173-5b8096b6507d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"73cefff4-af93-4d9d-9368-74fcb4d1c981",title:"Nature After Nature: Old Masters in the Algocene | rectangle",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:193854512434873,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1362x863/e6db30aabb/valla.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"art ecology digital age, Algocene art, post-anthropocentric art, digital nature representation, net art ecology, Alexandra Crouwers, Clement Valla, Jan Robert Leegte, Auriea Harvey, Joan Heemskerk, Lorna Mills, rectangle Brussels, Wouters Gallery, contemporary art Brussels, post-digital art, nature representation, photogrammetry art",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Six artists â Crouwers, Harvey, Heemskerk, Leegte, Mills, Valla â at Wouters Gallery, Brussels: a show about the representation of nature at the moment the digital became part of its fabric."}],_uid:"0be1caee-cc5b-48bf-acd8-69b745574b9a",body:[{_uid:"0dec7271-1c99-4c9a-a3e6-ded882af1dce",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Old Master in the algocene",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rectangle presents \"Old Master\" at Wouters Gallery in Brussels, bringing together six artists â Alexandra Crouwers, Auriea Harvey, Joan Heemskerk, Jan Robert Leegte, Lorna Mills, and Clement Valla â whose practices map the entanglement of ecology and digital infrastructure. Working across photogrammetry, net art, GIF animation, generative software, and 3D scanning, their work converges on a condition rather than a thesis: the digital does represent nature. It has become part of its fabric.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nature is not a backdrop to human civilisation. It is not something external that we act upon from a position of sovereign distance. We are inside it, and what we are unravelling is not nature in the abstract but the precise conditions that sustain us, and countless other forms of life, in their specificity. The ecological crisis is not a crisis of nature. It is a crisis of cohabitation, and it demands a post-anthropoce
77ntric rethinking of what constitutes an entity, what constitutes agency, and what constitutes our habitat.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That rethinking has entered a second phase. The Algocene names the moment at which algorithmic systems superimpose a pervasive digital infrastructure upon the physical transformations already in progress. A new nature has been taking shape, post-natural, hybrid, neither fully organic nor fully synthetic. The digital is not a representation of this emergent nature. It is embedded within it, an invisible yet decisive stratum that conditions every relation between organisms and their environments. The boundaries between human, machine, and the living world have been superseded.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Old Master\", presented by rectangle at Wouters Gallery, is about the representation of nature in the digital era. It is not a digital art exhibition. Digital art asks what the computer can do; art in the digital age asks what the world has become now that the computer is inside it. The distinction is ontological, and \"Old Master\" belongs entirely to the second category: the digital here is not the medium or the subject but the condition, a restructuring of reality so complete that no practice can stand outside it. The canonical old masters painted nature from a position of exteriority: the surveyed estate, the storm endured, the garden subdued. Their images were acts of possession. In the Algocene, that exteriority has been foreclosed. The image is immanent to the system it renders. The scan is embedded in the landscape it reconstructs. The algorithm is a participant in the ecology it models.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7fa2a93a-4cb2-406a-9ea2-79af197031c8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194902301537220,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6960x4632/61726ae31f/_dsc2892.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view Old Master, Rectangle, Brussels 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"95e7395c-6d7e-4551-b9c4-4536c9e0a71e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Alexandra Crouwers's \"Summoning a Forest\" (2026) is a photogrammetric reconstruction of a clear-cut woodland annihilated by Ips typographus, the bark beetle whose proliferation was accelerated by successive droughts and the collapse of frost cycles. Crouwers presents not the resolved model but the process: raw point cloud, untextured mesh, ghostly blue tracking markers registering her own movements through the site. She appears in the reconstruction as a lacuna. The forest has ceased to exist. Its data persists in a condition that is neither archive nor monument, a geometric ghost occupying coordinates that have no season and no entropy. The accompanying audio piece The Compositor / Composing closes the circuit: the beetle's tunnel system, traced to paper and run through image sonification software, produces a sound that was never intended as music and is all the more devastating for it. Ips typographus means compositor, the one who sets type. The insect inscribes; the software deciphers; the forest is transposed into code it never elected. The biological and the computational are not analogous here. They are continuous.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jan Robert Leegte's \"Waves\" (2026) extends that continuity into the digital's own stratigraphic logic. Bleached interface fragments, the residue of web 2.0 platforms, text worn past legibility, are suspended in an oceanic simulation at the precise moment they are being replaced by AI systems that generate content on demand and leave nothing behind that can be located, stored, or cited. The digital is subject to erosion, sedimentation, and irreversible loss of form. The Algocene metabolises its own prior iterations. \"Shadow\" (2025) works through the inverse register: an unattributable square of darkness traverses a wind-tormented Unity landscape with the pace of a geological event, admitting no explanation and permitting no removal. The computational intrusion has been so thoroughly absorbed into the sensory world as to have become indistinguishable from it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"4e3d3126-5233-49c0-a88e-ddf7eb0eb587",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194899532526478,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6015x3539/e53cda5f09/_dsc2922_02.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ALEXANDRA CROUWERS Summoning a Forest process image of photogrammetry scan, 2026 print on dibond 59.5 x 33.3 cm open edition Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"53d4da40-1baa-4c81-9a3f-f8e7276843b8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194899532931983,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7006x4094/ad7c2040e0/_dsc2919.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ALEXANDRA CROUWERS Summoning a Forest process image of photogrammetry scan, 2026 print on dibond 59.5 x 33.3 cm open edition Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0240d6f3-2c05-4996-a696-0b6949901615",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194900607669165,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3024x1590/021476522f/jan-robert-leegte_waves.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"JAN ROBERT LEEGTE Waves 2026 software Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6647d6d6-4362-4cad-afe3-2920cc8904ab",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Clement Valla was a pioneer in understanding that the digitisation of the world is not a neutral act of recording but a system of choices, compressions, and distortions that produce their own version of reality. His earlier work exposed the structural failures of platforms like Google Maps, where the algorithm's attempt to flatten a three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface generates impossible geometries: bridges that fold into rivers, roads that dissolve into sky. The world, when processed, does not simply become data. It becomes a particular kind of data, shaped by the assumptions and limitations of the systems doing the processing. Pointcloud.garden (2020) and Overgrowth (2021) carry that inquiry into ecological territory. Gardens and yards released to rewilding are presented as raw 3D scan data, unprocessed, unresolved, held open at the threshold between image and object. The living world is now subject to the same biases, the same reductive translations, the same productive distortions that Valla identified in the digitisation of geography. The point cloud is not a representation of the garden. It is the garden in another state, shaped by the logic of the scanner as much as by the logic of growth. To relinquish a space to nature is also, now, to relinquish it to data. What appears to be a return is simultaneously a capture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"603fcedc-2f58-4f8a-bd42-c0d8f4f496a7",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"04f2ff6b-de0a-4319-a9c3-21c4626cb16b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194903293010889,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7071x4706/0368a22b11/_dsc2924_01.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CLEMENT VALLA pointcloud.garden 2020 website Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"19f83836-7092-4da9-be7a-a51484983480",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194903386104779,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4447x5853/f150c6fa8a/_dsc2941.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CLEMENT VALLA Overgrowth 2021 Still images, PNG format 1240 x 1754 pixels print on dibond variable dimension Edition of 1000 (each unique) Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
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77cture. The coast is where the data is.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Auriea Harvey's Me and My Ghost (2001/2024) is a webcam capture reworked two decades after its making to exploit glitches that had not yet materialised when it was first produced. The digital has its own material temporality, its own modes of ageing and unforeseen mutation, its own capacity to become something other than what it was. Lorna Mills's GIF animations, assembled from the most corrosive strata of the dark net, insist that the internet has an underside as decomposed and as generatively fecund as any ecosystem's anoxic layer. Both works register the digital not as a clean infrastructure but as a living, degrading, self-transforming system, one that has acquired the opacity and the unruliness we once reserved for nature alone.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The title is precise. The old masters were not simply skilled painters. They were the authorised image-makers of a world in which nature was a resource, a spectacle, a possession. Old Master takes that authority and relocates it: to a moment in which the image-maker is inside the system being imaged, in which the forest and its scan, the coast and its signal, the garden and its data are not two things but one thing in two states. The Algocene has its own masters. They are working now.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Old Master â Wouters Gallery / rectangle, Brussels ( European Union) until 25 July 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-01 00:00",name:"Nature After Nature÷\"Old Master\"",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f4898c80-fc1b-4a74-9ee9-1e8cdcc167e8",color:"#024220",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"4de3f5b9-5d8f-48d1-b88b-4962958e2546",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:193854512434873,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1362x863/e6db30aabb/valla.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CLEMENT VALLA pointcloud.garden 2020 website Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"nature-after-nature-old-masters-algocene",full_slug:"directory/reviews/nature-after-nature-old-masters-algocene",sort_by_date:null,position:-1390,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"59f1dd5a-eb02-46b6-ba5b-8814c7981931",first_published_at:"2026-07-05T18:07:39.648Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"s3lf.tech â Ãmilie Brout & Maxime Marion",created_at:"2026-06-27T20:00:56.653Z",published_at:"2026-07-09T22:38:28.630Z",updated_at:"2026-07-09T22:38:28.645Z",id:192105908877166,uuid:"1733cdc6-6d02-4ecd-a7a1-ebcb90b95ee6",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"5d438628-0bb1-40bf-bb06-b49c66f5b319",title:"s3lf.tech â Ãmilie Brout & Maxime Marion | Exhibition at 40mcube Rennes",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:192107760476085,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/fd25217c34/broutmarion_s3lftech_stills-6.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"s3lf.tech, Ãmilie Brout, Maxime Marion, 40mcube, Rennes, digital art, contemporary art, VTubing, avatar, digital identity, Grimes, BJD, video installation, exhibition 2026, net art, artificial intelligence, fan fiction, Villa Kujoyama, virtual idol, algorithmic slop, post-internet",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Ãmilie Brout & Maxime Marion examine digital identity and VTubing at 40mcube, Rennes. 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Ãmilie Brout and Maxime Marion have built around her a multi-layered apparatus, loaded and legible, in which every object, every screen, every surface upholstered in black fur presses the same question a little harder: at what point does an image stop being a reflection and start being a skin?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The central film, \"s3lf.tech\" (17 minutes, UHD 4K), is the engine of the whole. Grim3s presents her fans with a fictional tool for vocal self-multiplication, a direct extension of elf.tech, the real Grimes software capable of absorbing any voice into her own. The video was actually streamed on YouTube by the artists: chat comments pile up on screen, questions come in, the artist responds. Then a technical glitch exposes the setup. That ending, deliberately flat, is where the project's dark humor lands hardest. Not a bug. A confession. The machine cracks, and in that crack, the whole architecture of belief goes with it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77work inside the algorithmic image with that kind of lucidity, and with something that looks, against all odds, like affection, is to accept going under in order to surface with something the system did not know it contained: a subjectivity that was not there before, an expressivity that belongs to no single author. Grim3s does not illustrate a thesis. She is what happens when that wager pays off.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A second chapter of the same project will open in September at Zoo art centre in Nantes, taking a more contemplative form: a digital sanctuary conceived as a space of memory, connection, and collaboration. Rennes gets the noise. Nantes gets the silence. Both are necessary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"40mcube, Rennes (European Union) â until December 19, 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-27 00:00",name:"She is not real÷Neither are you.",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"7090ea64-2bcd-4a90-99fe-1f6103ffba5f",color:"#251923",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"7beecf34-0344-4efb-9908-0da4a30385d4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:192168539353855,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3936x2624/554e8df2c8/dsc00628-copie.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"s3lf-tech-emilie-brout-maxime-marion",full_slug:"directory/reviews/s3lf-tech-emilie-brout-maxime-marion",sort_by_date:null,position:-1380,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fb87fd46-e3c5-4687-bc89-06cbb8edee9a",first_published_at:"2026-06-28T00:40:04.182Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Walls at the World's End",created_at:"2026-06-25T20:27:25.177Z",published_at:"2026-06-26T08:43:52.863Z",updated_at:"2026-06-26T08:43:52.881Z",id:191404626674832,uuid:"5c1c4455-b66e-4d7f-9fe1-ac77244e011d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"3ada32c9-0582-4b42-b76e-a35468a842f2",title:"Louis Morlæ, Walls at the World's End, Tranen Copenhagen",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:191405477741603,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1800/8a2d97ad63/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_012_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Louis Morlæ, Walls at the World's End, Tranen, Copenhagen, contemporary art, AI art, generative art, robotic sculpture, perpetual evolution, co-evolution, data-driven art, avant-garde, Toke Lykkeberg, illy Present Future Prize, living systems, algorithmic art, post-human, technology and art, nervous system art, ecosystem change,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Louis Morlæ's Walls at the World's End at Tranen, Copenhagen â an AI-driven exhibition where architecture co-evolves with live global data in real time."}],_uid:"044451db-ade2-4d7d-b8f1-d3dcfc050709",body:[{_uid:"62055005-6695-495d-b792-27219d79a0cf",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Walls at the World's End\" by Louis Morlæ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Tranen (Copenhagen) the walls move. Not as metaphor, not as installation effect, but as a consequence of what is happening in the world at the moment you are standing in the room. Louis Morlæ's \"Walls at the World's End \"is built on that condition: an AI system continuously harvesting live data from the internet, translating it into spatial reconfiguration, producing an architecture that co-evolves with global events in real time. The exhibition operates as a nervous system â sensing, processing, responding â and it has no off switch.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8c196e9c-0579-4fb8-8e63-f988d0684c13",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Under Toke Lykkeberg's direction, Tranen has become one of the most genuinely avant-garde exhibition spaces, a place that c
77onsistently programmes artists at the edge of what contemporary practice is thinking and building. Louis Morlæ's \"Walls at the World's End\" arrives as a precise articulation of that ambition: an exhibition less concerned with representing collapse than with constructing the conditions under which collapse becomes a lived, navigable experience.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The centrepiece of the show consists of three robotic walls mounted on wheeled vehicles, each one a scaled replica of Tranen's own architecture. Their movement is not choreographed but generated: an AI system harvests live data from the internet, processing it through poetic concept pairs of Morlæ's devising, among them \"the fence and the horizon\" and \"the furnace and the tide.\" What results is a spatial condition in perpetual evolution, one in which the room continuously reorganises itself around its occupants. Passages form and close. Configurations that existed minutes earlier are already gone. The visitor does not move through a fixed exhibition so much as negotiate an environment that is itself in motion, absorbing and reprocessing the data streams of a world it cannot fully contain.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"49756d12-b14e-415d-ac04-e4fab75d4589",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285559427,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1790/bfee1c09e1/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_011_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"88cc5766-2fae-4f1e-b122-067d366c8635",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409825678490,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1525/c63c6396a7/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_001_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7fd23608-97b4-4d7e-99b7-bea185f48f6d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285559428,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1975x2700/ab07cd629f/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_017_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fd44ca39-cf93-4493-8f3b-02927112fd6e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285338241,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x2700/5e9ae3eb33/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_020_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"016acddc-a097-4ddc-84d5-04f9dd6c6a0a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409825834141,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1865/2691f05003/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_002_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"512110c9-7288-40c3-a1c7-ec66d4e63551",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Crucially, Morlæ has acknowledged that the underlying logic of this system remains opaque to him. This is not a rhetorical concession but a structural fact about a generation of AI systems whose operations exceed the comprehension of their own authors. The artist works with that incomprehe
77nsibility as a material, treating it neither as a failure of understanding nor as a mystical property, but as an accurate index of the conditions under which technological infrastructure now operates. No stable vantage point is available from which to read the work as a totality. That is not a limitation of the exhibition. It is its premise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Suspended above the moving walls is SFB03 (Larsen), 2026, a monumental airbag in silicone-coated nylon with reflective panels and flashing lights, measuring 500 à 500 à 70 cm. The work can be inflated to physically constrain the walls' range of motion, functioning simultaneously as an emergency brake and as a sculptural image of the tech industry's self-regulatory apparatus: large, luminous, and constitutively hollow. The kill switch, Morlæ implies, is always already a performance of control rather than its exercise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0d54d571-6da1-491f-af2e-deff71e0785b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409825727643,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1929x2700/643dc63a2a/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_006_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3717d28b-8f5e-4822-97d8-7a2f5b61fcef",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285686406,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1963x2700/3fa3454931/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_009_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"287dcdbc-b24e-4e22-9413-7289fa62b664",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191406109029449,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/25052dfb55/vid_20260625_120308_419-1.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"764921aa-94e1-4e78-aaa8-a41d4467b844",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Three films complete the exhibition, each produced using the most recent AI video generators available at the time of making. Morlæ describes them as hallucinations, borrowing the term from the vocabulary of large language models, where it names the phenomenon of confident, fluent, and factually unmoored output. One film follows a Peter Thiel-type individualist consumed by a degraded version of his own future visions. A second depicts an eco-collective's rural techno rave interrupted by alien abduction. A third presents a post-human multispecies society rendered from the perspective of ecstatic bees. These are not predictions or critiques in any conventional sense. They are fever-images of possible futures that simultaneously function as a record of what generative tools can and cannot imagine at a specific moment in their development, mapping the ideological limits of the machines as much as the scenarios they produce.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Morlæ trained at Manchester School of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, and completed a Creative Technologies Fellowship at Somerset House Studios and the UAL Creative Computing Institute. He was awarded the illy Present Future Prize at Artissima 2025, with a solo exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin to follow. His practice operates at the intersection of industrial fabrication and speculative narrative, combining sculpture, film, robotics, 3D printing, and engineering with a material obsessiveness that is itself part of the work's argument: the more precisely a system is built, the more completely it exceeds the intentions of its builder.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"d5200bed-d5b0-4de6-81ca-a95cba893e34",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285158015,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1800/f86838fed3/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_012_photo-by-david-stjernholm-copy.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"35343190-f02c-4824-9b5c-be3cb47441fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When Art Develops Its Own Nervous System",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is less a meditation on collapse than on ecosystem change: the slow, irreversible reorganisation of the conditions under which art, technology, and human perception operate together. A new class of work has emerged from this shift, one that does not respond to the world but mutates with it, ingesting live data, processing environmental signals, and generating form in real time. The perceptual proposition is genuinely novel: not a representation of change, but a live feed of it, updating at the speed of the world it draws from.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These works are not the product of a single authorial hand executing a predetermined programme. They emerge from a sustained negotiation between human artistic intelligence and algorithmic logic, a collaboration in which neither party fully controls the outcome. The algorithm brings to the work capacities of a different order: the ability to process data at scale, to operate across temporal registers simultaneously, to produce configurations that no individual imagination could have arrived at alone. What the artist contributes is not instruction but orientation, the establishment of conditions within which emergence becomes possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This redistribution of agency transforms the artist's role.. Morlæ functions here less as author than as architect of a system with its own decision-making capacity, its own relationship to time, its own capacity to surprise. The work is autonomous in a precise sense: it makes choices, develops strategies, and produces outcomes that its creator encounters rather than anticipates. The exhibition does not document that process. It is that process, running continuously, for the duration of the show.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Louis Morlæ. \"Walls at the World's End\". Tranen, Hellerup, Copenhagen ( European Union). Until 16 August 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-25 00:00",name:"\"Walls at the World's End\"÷The Art of Perpetual Evolution",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"8e7790bd-1aea-48d0-ab46-aa06d8106935",color:"#cc5c2d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"3eb482cd-f91a-4249-9958-26c32e5b8c4f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191407027897437,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1742/ad070e7442/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_004_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"walls-at-the-world-s-end",full_slug:"directory/reviews/walls-at-the-world-s-end",sort_by_date:null,position:-1370,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"90a06e87-5548-403a-a5a5-75e83196f9a1",first_published_at:"2026-06-25T20:38:26.043Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Still Joy : The World Rebuilt Through Love",created_at:"2026-05-17T03:04:42.493Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T12:20:37.699Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T12:20:37.719Z",id:177346488335324,uuid:"c94421c4-0926-4fa9-be06-45d8ae718714",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"cf709099-4206-4a31-b68b-ac553386b6bb",title:"Still Joy: Ukraine Rebuilds the World Through Love",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:177377219727812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2398x1326/03c445b3ea/17-roman-khimei-yarema-malashchuk-dedicated-to-the-youth-of-the-world-ii-2019.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Still Joy, Ukraine, Venice Biennale 2026, Ukrainian contemporary art, PinchukArtCentre, art and war, joy as resistance, love as resistance, Philippe Riss-Schmidt, Björn Geldhof, Oleksandra Pogrebnyak, independent art magazine , in-depht art criticism",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt reviews Still Joy at the Venice Biennale 2026, where Ukrainian and international artists turn love and joy
77into resistance."}],_uid:"f61e6649-dac4-43d6-a131-36a274ce74d1",body:[{_uid:"3dcefa24-ef5b-481d-b0fb-ef89958aab41",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" : The World Rebuilt Through Love",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In Venice (European Union), in May 2026, a Ukrainian marine who survived captivity walked into a palazzo on the Grand Canal and spoke about a strawberry chocolate bar. What followed was one of the most important exhibitions of the year.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"War doesn't leave much time for beautiful words. But there is still something it has not managed to destroy. It is the bond between people. And when we speak of joy, it may seem inappropriate in the context of war. But joy is the proof that we are still alive and that we are fighting.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Yuliia \"Phobia\", Senior Sergeant, Ukrainian Armed Forces and combat medic, Venice, 7 May 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"993b2654-7122-431a-996f-58a7e0438187",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177378139025861,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1992x1316/adff6df23e/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-06-37.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"JuliaâFobiaâ.StillJoyâFrom Ukraine Into The World /BiennaleArte2026. PinchukArtCentre.Photo:ValentynaRostovikova/PRYZMphotography",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"69faf6db-9a81-4f31-89fa-31bcfd6aa818",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy â From Ukraine into the World\" is an exhibition built on a question that refuses to be deferred: how can anyone still speak of joy when their country is being destroyed by war? The PinchukArt Centre (Kiyv, Ukraine) offers no ready-made answer. It offers a visceral experience, an unsparing testimony to the human capacity to remain alive to beauty in the midst of annihilation. Its power is inseparable from its restraint. \"Still Joy\" is subtle and fine-grained, operating through nuance rather than declaration, and it is in that very restraint that its underlying force becomes irresistible. Joy and love are not its themes. They are its supreme intelligence: the deepest, most demanding form of understanding available to a civilization under pressure.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this exhibition refuses, above all, is the consolation of heroism. The Ukrainian and international artists gathered here do not aestheticize suffering, nor do they flee it. They inhabit it. The video by Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, superimposing images of Kyiv raves before and during the war, makes this inhabitation visible with disarming clarity: the faces are the same, the music pulses with the same intensity, the bodies move with the same abandon. Joy here is not a departure from reality. It is its most precise reading. A ferocious refusal to let war become the only frequency on which a life can be lived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" does not ask for sympathy. It asks for something harder: the willingness, intellectual, emotional and moral, to hold joy and devastation as a single, indivisible condition of being alive. The dominant cultural grammar around war tends toward two poles: mourning or resistance, as though grief and defiance were the only legitimate responses to destruction. \"Still Joy\" proposes a third term: love. Not unconditional love, not love as surrender to feeling, but the kind of love that keeps its eyes open, that refuses both sentimentality and despair, that demands of itself the full weight of what it means to remain attached to the world while the world is being taken apart. To love a person, a plant, a piece of music, the warmth of chocolate melting against your skin, in the middle of annihilation, is not naivety. It is the most serious, the most demanding, the most uncompromising thing a human being can do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"fc7ce668-d2ba-439e-9c14-d477b50b6ca0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177377219727812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2398x1326/03c445b3ea/17-roman-khimei-yarema-malashchuk-dedicated-to-the-youth-of-the-world-ii-2019.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Dedicated to the Youth of the World II, 2019",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"87930ae8-fe21-4c93-867a-4b0ca01649bb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Architecture of Testimony",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This proposition is grounded not in theory but in lived testimony, and that choice is the exhibition's most fundamental declaration: a manifesto written not in words but in the irreducible weight of what people have actually lived. Hlib Stryzhko, a marine, veteran and former prisoner of war, spent years after his captivity interviewing fellow survivors, not about death, but about the moments of joy that kept them alive. His stories are presented in a visual language of deliberate lightness, creating the exhibition's first and most decisive tension: the surface is a fairy tale; the content is not. Lost limbs. The smell of marshland on survivors. Grief without a name. And within all of it, the extraordinary persistence of small pleasures: a strawberry chocolate bar softened under the thighs of a prisoner whose teeth had been broken, offered by a guard in a moment of inexplicable humanity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That detail is not anecdotal. It is philosophical. It tells us that joy does not require permission from circumstances. It erupts anyway, through the body, through the senses, through the bond between two human beings in a situation designed to destroy all bonds. Conflict journalist and co-founder of The Reckoning Project Nataliya Gumenyuk contributed her own gathered testimonies alongside Stryzhko: voices from the field, from the rubble, from the impossible ordinary of wartime survival. Together, they establish the exhibition's ethical foundation: \"Still Joy\" is not an artwork about Ukraine. It is an artwork made from Ukraine, from inside the experience, from the irreducible fact of people who are still here and still feeling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens with this foundation and immediately expands it. Kateryna Aliinyk's landscape paintings, in which small animal life vibrates under a soft moonlit glow, propose a world that continues to breathe at the margins of catastrophe. Piotr Armianovski's video essay blends the reality of war with the dreams of Mariupol, a city that no longer exists as it was and yet persists in the imagination of those who loved it. Simone Post's immersive installation reimagines the palazzo's interior through a structure made of candy, an architecture of childlike joy that is also, in this context, an act of radical insistence on the right to pleasure. These three works together establish the exhibition's first argument: that the world does not stop being beautiful because it is being destroyed. It becomes more so.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4c6d1c66-23a2-4539-afcc-4cbd6aaed526",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177387446878694,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2002x1320/3ce2f09ff5/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-51-01.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"PiotrArmianovski,cMeandMariupol, 2017, \"StillJoycFromcUkraine IntoTheWorld\" /BiennaleArte2026.PinchukArtCentre.©PhotoOKNOStudio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"7a2ef441-e428-49d2-a7e0-1377bca4d439",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177414497444483,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2143x3000/b8e9596a6f/6-simone-post-she-knew-she_it_they-would-melt-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Simone Post, She Knew She/It/They Would Melt, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cdbabf14-6af6-4a5e-9ff9-ca511cb550ce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177387049447902,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2006x1328/6424334c55/arte-2026-pinchukartcent-okno-studio.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kateryna Aliinyk, Night in Heaven, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"022429ff-2014-48a1-867b-a3009e368594",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Love as the Only Adequate Response",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial decision to bring international artists into dialogue with Ukrainian voices is not a gesture of solidarity. It is an argument. Loss and love are not Ukrainian conditions. They are human ones. And the works that carry the most weight here are those that understand love not as warmth but as precision: the exact, specific, irreplaceable attachment to a particular person, a particular gesture, a particular world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tacita Dean's 39-minute 16mm film \"If I Were in the Adlon\" (2025) makes this argument with surgical precision. Filmed over a single afternoon with Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov and his wife and lifelong collaborator Vita Mikhailov, the film does not document a relationship. It inhabits one. Joy here is not an emotion. It is the accumulated weight of decades of chosen proximity, what love becomes when it survives long enough to be taken for granted, and then, under the pressure of history, is no longer taken for granted at all. Cardiff and Miller's \"Conversations with My Mother\" (2023) presses this further: a row of telephones, each carrying the voice of someone gone. Love does not end when the person ends. It continues, unresolved, looking for a receiver. These two works together make the exhibition's most precise philosophical claim: that love is not a feeling but a form of sustained attention, one that outlasts the body, outlasts the war, outlasts the silence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gabrielle Goliath's video works bring another register entirely into the room, and in doing so, make the exhibition's argument about love more precise and more demanding. The intimate testimonies of Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ soldiers and civilians speaking of joy are not a statement about identity politics. They are a statement about the nature of love itself: that it persists in conditions designed to deny it, that it constitutes a form of knowledge precisely because it is contested, that the people who have been most systematically told their love does not count are often those who understand most clearly what love costs and what it is worth. In a war that has made every form of human attachment a target, these testimonies hold survival and beauty as inseparable, not as a consoling idea, but as the most rigorous position available. That insistence is the exhibition's moral spine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ãlvaro Urbano's painted-metal \"Kalyna\" â a viburnum branch, the emblematic Ukrainian plant, rendered in a material that cannot be smelled or plu
77cked â holds this tension in a single object. The joy of recognition is immediate; the impossibility of possession is equally so. Julian Charrière and Ryan Gander each trace, in their distinct registers, how human presence leaves marks in the world: the geological, the atmospheric, the intimate. Daniel Turner's work operates in the register of material endurance, what survives when everything else has been consumed. Lesia Vasylchenko, Katya Lesiv, and Kateryna Lysovenko each bring the body and its memory into the room, through drawing, through gesture, through the insistence that a person's inner life is not erased by the circumstances imposed upon it. Pavlo Kovach and Oleksiy Sai & Yury Gruzinov extend this into the territory of collective memory, of communities that hold their shape even when the ground beneath them has been taken away.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4ca99ed1-4057-4b76-9440-16a23cd03572",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177382048522694,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2010x1336/9676c410a4/biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tacita Dean, If I Were at the Adlon, 2025. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"35dd8d6e-4ce0-4c2a-a666-16bbd75a36ae",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177382843597256,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2024x1338/8df91cf060/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-31-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gabrielle Goliath, Personal Accounts (a quiet rush), 2025. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3e970863-4257-4672-82fa-a97857b39f30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177415650001546,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x3000/e19a18081d/36-alvaro-urbano-disobedience-after-hilma-af-klint-kalyna-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãlvaro Urbano, Disobedience After Hilma af Klint (Kalyna), 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f89ccefc-da20-4574-9d80-f7fecb263f6e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177415747838603,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x3000/29ea315581/34-alvaro-urbano-disobedience-after-hilma-af-klint-kalyna-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãlvaro Urbano, Disobedience After Hilma af Klint (Kalyna), 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cb0390af-9be7-46a5-a7aa-a041e6a10c18",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177418129027732,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/2a9d1d02f1/41-julian-charriere-where-waters-meet-2019-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julian Charrière, Where Waters Meet, 2019. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c4082653-b86f-42b4-ade7-f5e19012a0ff",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424737489608,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/9cfbe00661/27-lesia-vasylchenko-1534-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lesia Vasylchenko, 1534, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ce785913-5501-4e12-8c84-4437832fbc74",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Body as the Last Territory",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"War makes the body its primary site of violence. \"Still Joy\" makes it the primary site of resistance. Alevtina Kakhidze's tattoo salon inside the exhibition is philosophically precise about this: to be tattooed by the exhibition is to refuse the separation between aesthetic experience and lived life, to insist that what happens here is permanent, an act of sovereignty over the only territory that cannot be bombed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zhanna Kadyrova's light-box photographs of bombed interiors each contain a single surviving houseplant amid the rubble, plants she rescued and carried to Venice. The image resists symbolism. It is simply factual: something lived, something continued, something carried across the wreckage. And Ashfika Rahman's monumental sculpture of tiny bells, each bearing the fingerprint of a displaced woman, does not mourn. It rings. The work's argument is the same as Kadyrova's, stated in a different register: love is the refusal to let a person be reduced to their absence. Every fingerprint is a person who was somewhere, who touched something, who insisted on leaving a mark.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fb514128-cfdf-443e-823d-bbfe634e3c79",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424676770503,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/7d974bb0ab/1-ashfika-rahman-than-para-no-land-without-us-2025-ongoing-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ashfika Rahman, Than Para â No Land Without Us, 2025âongoing. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a4050c3e-440b-4abe-897f-171f5023b60d",quote:"\"Still Joy\" is beautiful. It is moving. It carries an intelligent and universal message with the full weight of what has been lived. What if the world rebuilt itself through love? ",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"e4dbf803-fa3b-4aeb-8920-ce5996b34392",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424676516550,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/fa88b85984/14-zhanna-kadyrova-refugees-2023-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zhanna Kadyrova, Refugees, 2023. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a3f19fee-32a3-4fdd-b93b-3b5c8cd8875e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nikita Kadan: Where It Ends",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition closes with Nikita Kadan's monumental drawing of a silent rave: bodies pressed together in the dark, moving without sound, finding in collective movement what language cannot hold. In Kadan's drawing, bodies become a landscape. Emergence and loss are indistinguishable. The rave is a funeral. The funeral is a rave. Joy and grief share the same breath, the same gesture, the same room.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the image \"Still Joy\" leaves you with: not resolution, not consolation, but the full weight of human beings insisting on being alive together, in the dark, without words, without explanation, insisting that this insistence is enough.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this exhibition ultimately proposes is that love is a practice. A discipline. An ecology. It extends beyond the human, leaving its marks in rock, in ice, in the slow chemistry of the earth, in the subversive kinship between the organic and the synthetic; The boundaries between species, between bodies, between the living and the lost, are not walls but membranes, permeable, trembling, alive. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"To love is to engage in a profound act of world-making, one that refuses the hierarchy that places destruction above survival, despair above attachment, absence above the insistence on contact.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, joy is not a passive state. It is an act against systemic collapse. The boundaries between the personal and the political, between the intimate and the historical, blur and dissolve. What remains is the raw, unmediated fact of people who are still here, still feeling, still reaching toward one another, across every distance that has been imposed upon them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" is beautiful. It is moving. It carries an intelligent and universal message with the full weight of what has been lived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What if the world rebuilt itself through love? ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Not unconditional love, not love as surrender,but the kind of love that keeps its eyes open, that holds the full weight of what has been lost and chooses, with full knowledge of that weight, to remain attached.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists gathered in this exhibition understand that to love is to engage in a profound act of world-making. They expose the friction between the organic and the synthetic, mapping an ecology where desire extends far beyond the human. We navigate through the intimate architecture of queer ecologies, where the toxicity of our environments forces new, subversive kinships. We confront the posthuman body, where vulnerability is stripped of its romantic veneer to reveal a raw, unmediated entanglement with the other, whether that other is flesh, flora, or the slow chemistry of the earth.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, joy is an act of resistance against systemic collapse. Submission to grief is repurposed as a political tool to dismantle established hierarchies. The boundaries between species blur in works that function as contemporary cathedrals for bodies that have been marginalized, displaced, bombed, and yet remain. That insistence belongs to no flag, no front line, no particular season of catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy â From Ukraine into the World\", Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice. until 1 August 2026. A Collateral Event of the \"Biennale di Venezia\". Presented by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the PinchukArtCentre. Curated by Björn Geldhof and Oleksandra Pogrebnyak ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"de9d09a6-966c-426f-b3f6-5838ee15dcf2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EDITORIAL NOTE :",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Refresh Magazine is an independent publication committed to freedom of speech and avant-garde thought. We have proudly published this article despite certain pressures, and we will continue to build a proper art journalism that holds its ground. We will re-publish this essay in a different format in our upcoming Print issue, distributed worldwilde.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-17 00:00",name:"\"Still Joy\"÷The World Rebuilt Through Love",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e023d6b7-620e-44a5-bf0a-39988326b51d",color:"#727272",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a82f7b07-6ba5-45c7-bc08-4ef1ddcf6620",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177389904421370,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/e67f09556d/7-nikita-kadan-after-all-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nikita Kadan, \"After All,\" 2026. \"Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World\" / Biennale Arte 2026. 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That insistence on non-extraction is the work's first act of care, and it sets the epistemological terms for everything that follows.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Care, in Si-Qin's practice, is a discipline of attention before it is anything else. The months spent in the forest before the scan was made were not preparation but practice: a sustained effort to attune perception to the temporal logic of a living system rather than extract from it. To register the particular movement of water across a pond surface, the behaviour of insects in the canopy, the quality of light at a specific hour, requires a quality of presence that has more in common with meditation than with documentation. It is that quality of presence that Mariposita carries within its material form, and that makes the work's scale feel earned rather than monumental.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ef182023-a681-4b80-bb5f-9512f4bd50b4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188405292240095,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1667/1eebc30b2a/0d6a3252.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1dd3ba3d-d2b9-4c3a-bcfe-6d289909c919",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The stainless steel is cold, industrially precise, unapologetically technological; the moving image breathes and keeps time at the pace of the forest. Si-Qin has consistently maintained that their practice is about nature rather than technology, and Mariposita makes that claim structurally legible: the technology is the available instrument, directed here with a degree of care so total that the living world it mirrors comes through with something approaching fidelity. The distance between the industrial material and the organic subject is not a problem the work solves; it is the site where the question of our relationship to the non-human world becomes impossible to set aside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That question drives New Peace, Si-Qin's ongoing project, which proceeds from the conviction that the ecological crisis is not a deficit of information but a failure of affect. Mariposita does not illustrate this argument; it enacts it. The concept of the pristine that Si-Qin returns to is not a nostalgic category but a perceptual one, naming the experience of an ecosystem so intact and so densely interdependent that it registers, from within the rhythms of contemporary urban life, as almost impossible. The Ucayali exists. The Renaco tree stands in the forest where the scan was taken, untouched. Mariposita asks its audience not to mourn that fact but to hold it as fully real, and to recognise that the capacity to do so is itself something that has to be cultivated, slowly, with the same quality of care that produced the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"4e9e5c92-723b-4809-991e-386d52d75780",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402608274024,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x2500/0fc5a28346/0d6a2914.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c9073bb3-53a5-4bec-861f-1395d1a882a7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188404441041944,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1667x2500/03d6093837/0d6a2951.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"45b9f45d-c59c-43d6-96c7-7e519624c760",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402607589990,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x3750/3c5b36f9c2/0d6a3244.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"011a39ce-4ded-4af6-aa7d-b98e755399a5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402608966250,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x2500/ebd302f094/0d6a2934.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"332a761b-39fc-4d01-889b-0c441f03634a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Standing inside the installation, the moving image draws the viewer into a recalibration of tempo that is quiet and cumulative. Si-Qin's practice has long treated spirituality as affective technology, a reprogramming of the perceptual reflexes through which we orient ourselves toward the living world. Mariposita is where that proposition becomes fully spatial: a work in which sustained, unhurried attention to what is being seen becomes, without declaration, an act of solidarity with it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The full body of Amazon-rooted work opens at Société in November 2026. This is where it begins.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Timur Si-Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, Basel, June 15â21, 2026. Presented by Société, in collaboration with Magician Space and the Sigg Art Foundation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-16 00:00",name:"Untouched, Translated ÷On Absolute Care",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"9d204e19-163f-43fa-a3c8-f884ab7be6c8",color:"#366041",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"4d57b1ca-95a3-446e-a941-d36ae1ff6c41",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402607155811,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3749x2500/d9f235a4c7/0d6a2901.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unl
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77,{_uid:"499938ae-aa07-4b6a-92dd-03edd28eb244",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183507577112898,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5537x3691/8e94d7075c/04-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"TSAI Pou-Ching, Song of the Russet Sparrow, 2022, Mixed media installation, video, photography, 11 min 42 sec, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"af48b83f-1450-47d3-b397-8bea648e2f3e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183515659050890,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3500x1172/49ebeecc53/02-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LU Ming-Te, Diagram of an Ecosystem, 1991, Object and acrylic on wood board, 182 à 546 cm. Collection of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"db6fbbaf-52e9-472b-b17b-f8d7a41c2bb6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183509212629642,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x750/d8befeb5dc/03.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Céline CLANET, Ground Noise - Unhatched arachnid egg, Bois de Vincennes, 2023, Micrograph (SEM), photographs, archival prints. Courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e9a82a5-c477-4429-927e-ff4c63e0d636",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sonja Bäumelâs \"A Living Artwork\" cultivates microbial colonies taken from human skin and presents them as living portraits in the gallery space. They grow on their own schedule, indifferent to opening hours, indifferent to the viewerâs presence or absence. The boundary of the self, which Western philosophy has spent centuries reinforcing, dissolves here not as a provocation but as a simple biological report. Tsai Pou-Chingâs Song of the Russet Sparrow operates at a different temporal register: artificial nests fired from the mud of the Zengwen Reservoir, placed in the landscape, waiting. The Russet Sparrow is critically endangered. The legend the work invokes is ancient. The conservation effort is ongoing. These three timelines do not illustrate each other. They coexist under pressure, and the pressure is the work.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Céline Clanetâs \"Ground Noise\" series produces a perceptual problem that cannot be resolved. Black-and-white film photographs of forest floors are placed alongside scanning electron microscope images of the same terrain at radically different scales. The eye cannot reconcile them. The forest does not become legible at the microscopic level. It becomes alien, specific in ways that exceed any prior claim to having seen it. Lu Ming-Teâs \"Diagram of an Ecosystem\" works through accumulation rather than incompatibility: eggs, shells, skulls, pelts, limbs, the full arc from genesis to remains, arranged without sequence or hierarchy. The distinction between natural object and fabricated sign collapses. This is Latourâs Critical Zone as visual field, a surface in continuous formation where nothing is simply itself.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"29a195a4-c686-460c-92c2-f5b0600ca560",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534028551400,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5184x3456/489a65ef19/06-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"WU Chi-Yu + CHEN Pu, Greenhouse Zero, 2026, Video installation, 15 min, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"6ff70c1c-40bf-4bfc-8b6b-22a0df35e4ba",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534215914739,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3973x2649/20f837c74b/07.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Simple Noodle Art, Latent Physionotrace, 2025, Mechanical installations, machine-generated drawings, algorithms, generative animation and mixed media, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artists.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1c47a666-4d69-4078-86da-9804ececb32a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534421161217,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4819x3213/a79867c31f/08.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"NOIZ Architects, Lazy House, 2026, Interactive Installation, 20 x 6.5 m. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ae89028a-be7f-468a-b8d9-ca8198c4f97c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs engagement with technology is its most precise intervention. Wu Chi-Yu and Chen Puâs Greenhouse Zero centres on the Wardian case, the sealed glass container that enabled the colonial transplantation of living ecosystems across 19th-century trade routes, moving Chinese tea to India and ferns and orchids into European drawing rooms. The work holds this object against the architecture of the generative AI database: two enclosure systems, two centuries apart, both selecting which versions of nature are worth preserving, both redistributing life on terms set by whoever controls the container. The parallel is structural, not rhetorical. Simple Noodle Artâs Latent Physionotrace runs a diffusion model through the operational logic of an 18th-century silhouette-tracing device, the physionotrace, which mechanically standardised the human profile for reproduction. The noise and randomness that AI image generation typically presents as evidence of creative autonomy appear here as the continuation of a centuries-long project to fix, classify, and reproduce the face at scale. NOIZ Architectsâ Lazy House, a soft architectural sculpture of cloth and tensioning structure fitted with sensors, deforms in response to the direction of the viewerâs gaze. The space is not passive. It is already watching. Baradâs intra-action made inhabitable.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yamashiro Chikakoâs \"Mud Man\" is where the exhibition finds its full weight. Three channels, Okinawa and Jeju Island, figures sinking into mud while migratory birds carry what the work calls poetic seeds across time. The histories of these two islands, occupation, massacre, the systematic suppression of local memory, are not narrated. They are present in the duration of the image, in the resistance of the material, in the precise distance between what the murmur on the soundtrack says and what the image is willing to show. Hito Steyerlâs \"Mission Accomplished: Belanciege\" runs at a completely different metabolic rate: a lecture-performance that tracks the mechanism by which a luxury brand absorbs street culture, activist aesthetics, and political posture and returns them as product. The format is fast, almost too fast to follow. That is the argument. The privatisation of collective imagination is not a slow process. It happens in the time it takes to scroll.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"61bb266f-f499-4a47-af54-4405cdbc980f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534628541704,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x563/aa23754f9f/09.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"YAMASHIRO Chikako, Mud Man, 2016, 3 channel video installation, 23 min. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"f3eb5047-aa99-4c9b-be0d-71dfbf09288f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534774756622,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x591/54cba9f5e1/10-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hito STEYERL, Mission Accomplished: Belanciege, 2019, with Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze and MiloÅ¡ TrakiloviÄ, 3 channel HD video (color, sound), environment, 47 min 23 sec. Courtesy of the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c7a994c-f9e1-4c15-975a-94f3bae3ca04",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534930425106,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5760x3840/2c80234d02/12.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CHOU Tung-Yen / Very Theatre, Shifting Connections, 2025-2026, Video, VR, 15-20 min, dimension variable. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a683638-b2a2-4593-b268-bfa7aaf7c497",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Chou Tung-yen and Very Theatreâs Shifting Connections closes the show with a condition rather than a statement. The XR work cannot be completed alone. Virtual lines form between participants, tracing a shape that has no existence prior to the gathering of bodies in the room. This is Baradâs intra-action at its most literal: not individuals who interact, but a relation that constitutes the individuals it connects.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yu does not position coexistence as a value to be adopted. She frames it as a condition already in operation, one that precedes any decision to acknowledge it. The rhythm in the title is not a musical metaphor. It is the pulse of things already entangled: the microbiome that has always been part of you, the sparrow waiting for a nest it may never find, the algorithm that has already decided what nature looks like, the mud that holds what the century tried to bury. The exhibition does not ask you to care about these things. It asks you to notice that you are already inside them.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Entanglements: The Rhythm of Being\", Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (Taiwan), Until September 20, 2026. Curator: Sharleen Yu.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-03 00:00",name:"Entanglement÷The Rhythm of Being",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f39c0523-82d1-49c1-93a0-9e091263ea05",color:"#a06f33",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d8bb32d3-0032-4f6b-b278-9c9876a7b0bb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183463616403730,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3010x1552/8bd285677a/sonja-baumel-a-living-artwork-2021-2024-film-and-publication-17-min-6-sec-23x16-cm-31x21-cm-courtesy-of-the-artist.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sonja BÃUMEL, A Living Artwork, 2021-2024, Film and publication, 17 min 6 sec, 23Ã16 cm, 31Ã21 cm. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"entanglement-the-rhythm-of-being",full_slug:"directory/reviews/entanglement-the-rhythm-of-being",sort_by_date:null,position:-1310,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"a6c10e61-3b85-44fc-8cb3-32833a3aff8e",first_published_at:"2026-06-03T14:48:54.591Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Proximity Music: The Ongoing Hum,",created_at:"2026-05-11T22:37:26.656Z",published_at:"2026-05-19T14:17:36.782Z",updated_at:"2026-05-19T14:17:36.803Z",i
77d:175511333532391,uuid:"92d7a95f-bc35-4f0d-9726-0aed4992b730",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f367755a-2daf-477d-b881-9350802c1280",title:"Everything Is Already Vibrating",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:175511779843053,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/1b66d024a0/w845_3313449-koenraad-de-groot-the-colour-of-chameleons.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Everything Is Already Vibrating",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Everything Is Already Vibrating"}],_uid:"9647e5b4-b825-4ddf-a163-c41560929779",body:[{_uid:"1094d3a0-b51b-4109-84f9-cb44d5676e86",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything Is Already Vibrating: How Rewire's Proximity Festival Opens Portals into the Multi-Layers of the World",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The raison d'être of Proximity Music is a recalibration of the senses in the face of a culture that has narrowed perception to the visual and the immediate. The festival insists on slowness, on physicality, on a form of listening that requires the whole body. It insists that the world is vibratory, that everything is interconnected at frequencies we rarely pause to register, and that art IS capable of making those connections felt rather than described. The hum was always there. Proximity Music simply refuses to let it go unheard.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a frequency running through everything. Through stone, through glass, through the walls of a church, through the body of a stranger standing next to you. Proximity Music: \"The Ongoing Hum\", the sixth edition of the joint exhibition programme by Rewire and iii '(instrument inventors initiative)', takes this as its founding conviction: that the world we inhabit is layered with rhythms, vibrations, and radiations we have trained ourselves not to notice, and that art can break that habit.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rewire is not a festival that positions music as a spectacle to be consumed from a seat. Its Proximity Music strand proposes something structurally different: that sound is a property of matter itself, that vibration is the connective tissue of a multidimensional world, and that the artist's task is to open portals into the dimensions of that world which ordinarily escape perception. This conviction is embedded in the physical logic of every work, every venue, every instruction given to the listeners.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Ongoing Hum\", spread across six venues in The Hague's city centre, gathers seven artists whose practices converge on this premise from radically different angles. The thread between them is a shared refusal to treat matter as passive. Ceramic vessels are not objects but perspectives; bacteria are not organisms but composers; a piano is not an instrument but a receiver for a parallel dimension. Each work is a portal, and each portal opens onto a layer of reality that coexists with our own, running through it at every frequency",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"20eece8f-bb44-4a1d-a5d6-7d0d0b55dca1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175513706339951,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x865/d8beff464e/w845_3314835-koenraad-de-groot-the-colour-of-chameleons.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Koenraad de Groot, \"the colour of Chameleons\", photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9683995f-8069-42e2-82e7-6982ce2c750b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178212263875972,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/d03c73071c/pm-day-edit_koenraad.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"video by Yasamin Zeinalizadeh and Tanja Busking ",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"d443f55f-749d-43ac-b23c-b10608833183",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Koenraad de Groot's The Colour of Chameleons at the Paleiskerk makes this tangible through an act of deliberate vulnerability. Large ceramic vessels act as resonators, filtering the ambient air pressure of the room and amplifying its microscopic fluctuations into barely audible tones. To listen, you press your ear against the vessel. Every material body carries its own acoustic reality, its own way of processing the world. Listening to the ceramic is a form of crossing over into a dimension of the space that human senses, left to their own devices, simply pass through without registering.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"447c4b0a-d2ec-4f8e-878e-fc437349390a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lena Kuzmich's Photosynthesizer at Pulchri Studio extends this logic into the biological. Cyanobacteria and microalgae, housed in glass vessels modelled after vascular structures, generate electricity during photosynthesis and translate it directly into sound. The microorganisms respond to the ambient light of the room, composing the soundscape in real time. The visitor enters a living system in which they are not the protagonist but a variable, another body in a room full of bodies, some of them microscopic, all of them entangled. Kuzmich's portal is ecological: it opens onto a world where agency is distributed across species, and where human centrality is exposed as a habit of thought rather than a fact.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ee82fb31-eac1-40f6-af21-fe0afdfd145d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175513706364529,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/9fe7bce474/w845_3315204-lena-kuzmich-photosynthesizer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lena Kyzmich, \"Photosynthetizer\", photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"28db06fb-af35-459d-b77d-98301ab40cd1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Floris Vanhoof's Antenna in the Duits-Evangelische Kerk is the exhibition's most unambiguous statement of the multidimensional. A grand piano laid on its side, fitted with a hexagonal antenna, captures the continuous electromagnetic traffic passing through the building: signals from satellites, submarines, mobile networks, the radiation of collapsing stars. These signals are routed to small electromagnets that set the piano strings in motion, producing harmonic glissandi that no human hand could generate. The instrument becomes a receiver for a parallel dimension, making audible the relentless, invisible radiation that passes through our bodies at every moment. The portal was always open. We simply lacked the antenna.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Anaïs Lossouarn's De CÅur En Choeurs at Amare â Swing opens a portal not into space but into time. Suspended stone fragments carry the recorded heartbeats of previous visitors, and as you stroke them, those rhythms pass into your hands and begin, subtly, to influence your own pulse. Vibration here is the syntax of connection across duration, a bridge between bodies that will never share the same room. Matter retains the traces of contact. The world is temporally as well as spatially interconnected, and listening is never a solitary act.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8f20a6f1-9d34-4141-835e-e45631ef2068",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752627215,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x929/02d66ff827/w845_3314127-floris-vanhoof-antenna.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Floris Vanhoof,\"Antenna\", courtesy the artist, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"77f5d6bc-3d81-4209-9fb2-1a280bf991b3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175513706372722,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/d3d3dfb142/w845_3314221-floris-vanhoof-antenna.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Floris Vanhoof,\"Antenna\", courtesy the artist, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"73ee7510-ee6b-47cb-a5af-1d061991d43e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178214128490092,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/6ac15c035c/pm-day-edit_floris.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"video by Yasamin Zeinalizadeh and Tanja Busking ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7d7eacfc-3386-4422-97cd-d6322b842f1f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752582157,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/69686b1c4f/w845_3314399-anais-lossouarn-de-coer-en-choeurs.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Anais Lossouarn,\" De coer en choeurs\", courtesy the artist, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"375440eb-a480-4842-87aa-a5f0192c5863",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178215401236257,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/e1b753761e/pm-day-edit_anais.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"video by Yasamin Zeinalizadeh and Tanja Busking ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d1701b4-cd87-4c81-b44f-e8882ab4ba10",quote:"Rewire is the most forward-thinking, multidimensional and ecocentric festival",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"fc1252cf-9179-4314-ad97-c4e743e3209c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mariska de Groot's BROM at Quartair fills the space with a ceiling-suspended choir of motorised instruments derived from the mechanics of a vintage spinning top. Each instrument is tuned differently, and the interference patterns between them shift continuously as they rotate, producing a hypnotic soundscape of air and reeds. The body alters the acoustic field as it moves through the space, becoming itself a variable in the composition. The multidimensional world the exhibition maps is not out there, beyond reach. It runs through the flesh.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Johannes Kreidler's Jet Whistles / The Grand Exhalation at West Den Haag brings the exhibition's logic into contact with the political. Motorised sheets of aluminium, steel, bronze, copper, zinc, and silver generate compositions of air, vibration, and pressure that physically impact the body. The work connects the elemental force of moving air to the climate crisis, to land rights, to the turbines installed on contested territory. Air is never simply atmosphere. It is a medium of power, and it connects every body on earth to every other, whether we consent to that connection or not.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"12adc839-5771-4266-a347-b623a6adb252",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752782865,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x828/74075f9f71/w845_3315674-mariska-de-groot-brom-performance.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mariska de Groot,\"Brom\", performance, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"506590e2-9ab2-468d-97a0-e576568565c4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752770576,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/09068aed16/w845_3316734-mariska-de-groot-brom.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mariska de Groot,\"Brom, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6cc38259-c23c-4772-a508-7f01af7c4481",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178215830755264,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/ebaf52e8cb/mariska.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"video by Yasamin Zeinalizadeh and Tanja Busking ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"da1d2f18-442e-454d-9e99-e0acddbf144e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752852498,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/986e124c97/w845_3313091-johannes-kreidler-jet-whistles-the-grand-exhalation.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Johannes Kreidler,\"Jet Whistles the grand exhalation\", ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b4ccba0c-f0e4-4458-bb25-e0979e166188",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The next iteration will take place 8-11 APRIL 2027 ",type:"text"},{text:"www.rewirefestival.nl",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://www.rewirefestival.nl/",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-12 00:00",name:"\"Proximity Music: The Ongoing Hum\"÷Everything Is Already Vibrating",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ac96654c-21db-4604-b78b-693218d184bf",color:"#eebdc4",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2bc591ca-28c9-4614-851e-6a2e33e473f1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175511779843053,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/1b66d024a0/w845_3313449-koenraad-de-groot-the-colour-of-chameleons.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Koenraad de Groot, \"the colour of Chameleons\", photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"proximity-music-the-ongoing-hum-",full_slug:"directory/reviews/proximity-music-the-ongoing-hum-",sort_by_date:null,position:-1270,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"cad9b697-3657-4d5d-89d7-6349b989024e",first_published_at:"2026-05-19T14:02:55.694Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"lamerde",created_at:"2026-05-08T19:26:20.116Z",published_at:"2026-05-11T10:51:11.363Z",updated_at:"2026-05-11T10:51:11.378Z",id:174402683394486,uuid:"ce7c0d15-b045-4a33-ad9b-4b816982fa5e",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"7d7dc07f-7324-491b-825d-f35717143536",title:"La Merde: Shame, Precisely",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:174402995265946,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3508x2339/9061123533/03-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"La Merde, exhibition, review, Aline Bouvy, Venice Biennale 2026, Luxembourg Pavilion, Arsenale Venice, contemporary art Venice, shame social construction, feminist art 2026, art exhibition Venice, Casino Luxembourg, Biennale Arte 2026, body and shame art, political art Venice, must-see Venice Biennale, excrement art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:" Aline Bouvy's La Merde exhibition at Venice Biennale 2026 is a masterpiece on shame, the body, and social control. The unmissable show at the Luxembourg Pavilion."}],_uid:"297668de-fb68-4f3c-a7a5-00f71d19ccf5",body:[{_uid:"fd675ad3-94be-49ce-ae3e-77919c81f4b2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"La Merde\": Shame, Precisely",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"With La Merde, Aline Bouvy delivers an intense, fully committed body of work that takes shame apart as a social construction. She maps the exact thresholds at which a body, a word, or an existence gets classified, tolerated, repressed, or simply erased. The result is a masterpiece in the truest sense: a work that holds its conceptual weight, its political charge, its dry humour, and its gut-punch emotional force all at once, without any of them cancelling the others out. The Luxembourg Pavilion at the Arsenale has never smelled this good.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Let us be honest. Nobody expected Luxembourg to be the one. And yet here we are, standing in front of a giant anthropomorphic turd on a cinema-grade LED screen, and it is the most coherent, funniest, and most politically loaded thing in the Arsenale. Aline Bouvy has spent years making work that causes friction just by existing. With La Merde, she has found her perfect subject.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The film follows an excrement figure through the full social obstacle course of being alive. It gets used as a prop in a classroom hygiene lesson, which is the kind of thing that happens when your body is considered a cautionary tale rather than a body. It gets shoved around on a tram. It tries to have a drink and negotiate desire in a bar, which, depending on your own experience of bars, may or may not feel familiar. In a bedroom, alone, the film sits with the slow, grinding cost of self-restraint, the daily performance of being acceptable. The protagonist holds it together for as long as any reasonable entity could. Then it does not. The resulting discharge is not a metaphor. Or rather, it is entirely a metaphor, and also completely literal, and Bouvy knows exactly what she is doing with that.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4f5bf96e-90fb-4525-9162-8cce49e81778",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174428039388198,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3508x2339/27f6827af7/03-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Installation view of \"La Merde\" by Aline Bouvy, Luxembourg Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2b0ff89d-5acd-4221-b9c4-20fc75cd45da",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174428042869808,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3508x2339/f199ed1d35/08-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Installation view of \"La Merde\" by Aline Bouvy, Luxembourg Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5284f223-efbc-478c-b28e-a997f30e0e26",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174428043783218,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3508x2338/0aab8f35d4/01-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Installation view of \"La Merde\" by Aline Bouvy, Luxembourg Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"453dfed6-b539-41b3-be00-791d3b1b1eb7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Between scenes, archival images flood in: centuries of bodies losing control, expelling, transgressing. The accumulation is not shocking. It is recognizable. Society has always produced this material and always worked furiously to pretend it has not. Bouvy assembles the evidence into a collective memory of suppression, a history of the things we decided were too much to look at.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The installation itself is built to make you feel the contradiction in your body. A massive, pristine LED screen, the kind usually reserved for blockbusters and product launches, broadcasts bodily waste with full cinematic seriousness. Pierre Dozin's spatial soundscape wraps around you in real time, a living, shifting environment that blurs the line between the film and the room you are standing in. A mirrored, semi-circular structure designed by Antoine Rocca catches your reflection from every angle. You came to look at the work. The work is also looking at you, and the mirrors make sure you cannot pretend otherwise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77,{_uid:"bfd8136f-2ec5-417e-841a-e7ac3da83bb2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174432641465638,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1548x1158/772ab3d7aa/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-23-44.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ba6ddb9b-8850-4e23-97df-518c355e27a7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174432641137956,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/822x1134/cff9b34a16/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-24-01.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e9b7964-88de-4cdf-952d-a32619471697",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bouvy has built a pavilion out of everything we are told to bury, and she has done it with the formal rigour and dark wit of someone who finds the whole situation genuinely funny and genuinely outrageous at the same time. La Merde is a Rabelaisian farce, a feminist manifesto, and an immaculate piece of contemporary art. Go see it. You will not regret it, even if you feel slightly implicated on the way out.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"La Merde\", Aline Bouvy. Curated by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Stilbé Schroeder - Organizer Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Luxembourg Pavilion, Arsenale, Venice. Until 22 November 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-09 00:00",name:"\"La Merde\"÷Shame, Precisely",author:"Refresh Team (Venice)",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"990a254e-e133-4828-a5b5-530f40b0a232",color:"#935100",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"9282c18d-04ce-4754-a0a6-0e193d9f257c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174430002670775,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2876x1480/0f41d2d058/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-17-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Aline Bouvy, La Merde (still), 2026. Courtesy The Artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"lamerde",full_slug:"directory/reviews/lamerde",sort_by_date:null,position:-1230,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fc5b9742-5484-4748-b905-c2905fc1b105",first_published_at:"2026-05-08T21:34:52.958Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"The World Is Sleepwalking",created_at:"2026-05-10T17:30:25.363Z",published_at:"2026-05-12T01:03:40.394Z",updated_at:"2026-05-12T01:03:40.409Z",id:175081985521609,uuid:"28685dee-a5eb-4456-a888-50d9597861cc",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"86c93b8d-193f-4326-b512-6df79bc5d620",title:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking÷Scroll, Repeat, Collapse",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:175089459692092,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2202x1082/2087519336/screenshot-2026-05-10-at-19-52-21.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking÷Scroll, Repeat, Collapse",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking÷Scroll, Repeat, Collapse"}],_uid:"a6372c22-ca7e-4b1f-af89-b0591273f528",body:[{_uid:"792b06dd-36b5-44ba-8e79-353387963fee",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sleepwalking Through the Apocalypse: Art as a Wake Up Call for AI Fatigue",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a certain genre of AI-critical art that arrives pre-loaded with its conclusions: technology bad, humans lost, screens everywhere, game over. \"The World Is Sleepwalking\", curated by Daniela Cotimbo at the Filodrammatica Gallery in Rijeka, is not that exhibition. The four artists gathered here are not technophobes issuing warnings from the analogue high ground. They are inside the machine, working with its materials, and their discomfort with what they find there is all the more credible for it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At some point in the last few years, the volume of synthetic content online crossed a threshold that is difficult to name but easy to feel. The scroll no longer delivers the world with distortions; it delivers distortion as a world in its own right. Memes, deepfakes, AI-generated text, resurrected voices, virtual faces: the feed
77is a continuous hallucination that has stopped pretending to be otherwise. Nobody adapted. We just stopped noticing. It is precisely these conditions that form the basis of \"The World Is Sleepwalking\", a program organized by Drugo More (The Other Sea) in collaboration with the curatorial platform Re:humanism, led by curator Daniela Cotimbo. The artists brought together here do not observe these shifts from a safe distance. They work speculatively and critically inside them, probing the ideological architecture of AI and its growing power to reshape what we perceive, what we believe, and what we can collectively imagine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c5b4e6aa-94b3-43bb-9470-464dbead0972",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175291973571558,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7636x5163/8d609b0dd5/the-future-is-weird-af-installation-view-re_humanism-pastificiocerere.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Silvia Dal Dosso ,\"The Future Is Now Finally Weird AF\" courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6ee3db92-3e8f-499d-b9e5-e522a8f00052",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175096472761565,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2300x1526/29fe500606/screenshot-2026-05-10-at-19-52-42.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Silvia Dal Dosso ,\"The Future Is Now Finally Weird AF\" courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ec16177c-b6ec-4526-82c6-2d32922ecbae",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The premise is cynical to its core. We have entered what the exhibition calls a regime of mass confusion, a condition in which the AI industry, while promising growth, has flooded public life with fabricated content to the point where our sense of what is true has quietly shifted toward whatever story feels most reassuring. The artists do not dispute this. They build inside it, which is either the most honest position available or a sign that there is no outside left. Taken together, the works interweave image, sound, and synthetic voice into something that functions less as a group of individual pieces than as a single, enveloping environment: a digital ecosystem in miniature, cacophonous and relentless, replicating the very bombardment it sets out to examine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Silvia Dal Dosso's The Future Is Weird AF opens with a synthetic version of Adam Curtis's voice narrating a landscape of resurrected celebrities, virtual influencers, and human-bot relationships. The choice of Curtis is deliberate and pointed: his voice has become so synonymous with the documentary of collapse that cloning it is itself a form of collapse. Dal Dosso delivers a critique of synthetic media through the very mechanisms of synthetic media. It does not resolve the contradiction. It is not supposed to.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fec48abd-0da9-4eed-961f-459b3ed7f3b1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175090435486340,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x1500/efd1520cf1/the-world-is-sleepwalking_installation-view-10-jpg-12-jpg-silvia-dal-dosso-the-future-is-weird-af-2023-2025-installation-view-background-the-bastard-fields-by-most-dismal-swamp-the-world-is-sleepwalking-filodrammatica-gallery-rijeka-2026-photo-borut-brozovic.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking\"i, nstallation view, Silvia Dal Dosso, \"The Future Is Weird AF\" installation view (background: The Bastard Fields by Most Dismal Swamp), Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, 2026. Photo: Borut BrozoviÄ.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"98831da6-7508-4b89-9b99-58adcb84fde4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175292691407882,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x1500/0032ff9544/the-world-is-sleepwalking_installation-view-18.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Most Dismal Swamp, The Bastard Fields, 2025, installation view, The World is Sleepwalking, Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, 2026. Photo: Borut BrozoviÄ.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"272be7b3-41e5-44de-b008-c85bda85ee8c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175094499693595,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2702x1514/40661d6a4f/screenshot-2026-05-10-at-19-52-31.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Bastard Fields (still) by Most Dismal Swamp, 2025, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"81c4a323-ae23-4406-965a-e851428ab632",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Most Dismal Swamp's The Bastard Fields is where the exhibition hits hardest. The collective builds a hallucinatory environment around the concept of model collapse, that process by which AI systems, fed on their own output, degrade into homogenous, toxic noise. The artists call this \"midification,\" and the term deserves wider circulation. The argument running beneath the sludge is ecological as much as technological: it is diversity that generates culture, and it is uniformity that kills it. When algorithmic systems mine the same archives, amplify the same patterns, and reward the same formats, they do not produce culture; they produce its slow erasure. The Bastard Fields makes this visceral rather than theoretical, populating its landscape with content-hustlers and platform producers who have extracted every last drop of meaning from the cultural corpus and left behind a sticky, incoherent residue. It is a world that looks busy and feels dead.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5f3decc1-8953-459e-a48d-1e43a5e5429e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175293316412442,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x1500/b9461fcb37/the-world-is-sleepwalking_installation-view-5.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zach Blas, IUDICIUM, 2022, installation view, The World is Sleepwalking, Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, 2026. Photo: Borut BrozoviÄ.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fb12f9fe-fd53-4a30-87dc-c327454e7465",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zach Blas's IUDICIUM frames AI through eschatological imagery, connecting the tech industry's messianic self-image to the quasi-religious ideologies that have always underwritten systems of judgment and control. The installation imagines AI as a god of judgment, borrowing the aesthetic of the sublime that the industry deploys to make its predictive systems feel inevitable. The parallel between ancient ritual and contemporary surveillance is not subtle, but the point Blas is making is not a subtle one: the impulse to reduce human life to a score, a rank, a prediction, is as old as power itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The collective Malpractice rounds out the show with AI Fatigue Rehab Agent, a conversational bot designed as a therapeutic interface for AI burnout. We are exhausted by AI, so here is an AI to process our exhaustion. The irony is structural, not decorative, and it points directly at the industry's reflexive claim that more technology is always the answer to the problems technology creates.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"5e475f6f-7401-4fa9-83ec-61a7a93baf29",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175293729965100,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1920/bf5d6b610a/malpractice-_-ai-fatigue-rehab-agent-2026.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Malpractice, Chiara Kristler & Marcin Ratajczyk, AI Fatigue Rehab (detail), 2026, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2423ecf2-2bb8-44c8-8cbc-763544598369",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175294319449165,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x1500/3ff2950970/the-world-is-sleepwalking_installation-view-14.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Malpractice, Chiara Kristler & Marcin Ratajczyk, AI Fatigue Rehab Agent, 2026, installation view, The World is Sleepwalking, Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, 2026. Photo: Borut BrozoviÄ.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5817c902-391a-4b71-908b-cb2eb3cca595",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What the exhibition understands, and what so much AI-critical work misses, is that the sleepwalk is not a failure of awareness. We know, more or less, what is happening. We scroll anyway. The systems we inhabit were not designed for us. They were designed to identify us, profile us, and extract value from us, in the service of commerce, attention markets, and forms of control that rarely announce themselves as such. The trance is not a side effect. It is the product.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And yet the exhibition does not end in resignation. The very act of making these works, of turning the machine's own materials against its logic, of insisting on diversity, on the hallucinatory, on the irreducibly strange, is itself a form of reappropriation. The show does not moralize about this. It simply points, quietly but firmly, toward something that the algorithm cannot process: the human capacity to look at the conditions of one's own capture and refuse to find them acceptable. Images no longer document; they prescribe. The shift is not technical but political: what we are shown determines what we consider possible, and the systems deciding what we are shown were not built with our freedom in mind. Against this, the exhibition proposes something unfashionably simple: that imagination, the capacity to picture what does not yet exist, remains a form of power that extraction has not yet managed to fully monetise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking\" is part of the 21st \"Mine, Yours, Ours\" festival, produced by Drugo More and curated by Daniela Cotimbo in collaboration with Re:humanism. Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, until 14 May 2026. With Zach Blas, Silvia Dal Dosso, Malpractice, and Most Dismal Swamp.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-12 00:00",name:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking\"÷Scroll, Repeat, Collapse",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e8cf7944-b109-45a8-976b-e47f6c68887d",color:"#3d6487",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"31eab8ef-739e-47aa-9ca3-b2d4173cb063",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175087641612849,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2288x1502/1caee874e3/screenshot-2026-05-10-at-19-52-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Silvia Dal Dosso, \"The Future Is Now Finally Weird\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-world-is-sleepwalking",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-world-is-sleepwalking",sort_by_date:null,position:-1260,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"bbd7beea-db6a-48c3-8c75-664902f30c16",first_published_at:"2026-05-12T01:01:47.478Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:".art award",created_at:"2026-05-08T11:07:38.562Z",published_at:"2026-05-11T16:57:57.096Z",updated_at:"2026-05-11T16:57:57.116Z",id:174280124702701,uuid:"3b33d93d-0258-498a-a021-b94614bb48a3",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"b7393532-d6fc-4fad-81d0-b5f2e9b804ff",title:".ART Turns Ten with a Prize That Changes the Terms",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:174285235758904,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6040x4027/22009b149e/stiles_are-you-ready-for-the-future__cibernetica-e-fantasmi-2023_courtesy-sineglossa.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:".ART Turns Ten with a Prize That Changes the Terms",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:".ART Turns Ten with a Prize That Changes the Terms"}],_uid:"cc04933b-bd91-4c37-8364-8a3baa24e622",body:[{_uid:"e4895d63-b813-474b-b5f5-0316eac3e667",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:".ART Launches a New Global Award Emphasing the Story Behind An Artwork",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:". An Award That Changes the Terms.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Own your context. In May 2026, the .ART domain registry marks its tenth anniversary with the launch of the .ART Award, a global prize open to artists of every geography, background and medium, with more than $50,000 in total prizes. It turns the creative process itself into the submission.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Every artwork has a story. Share yours. That is the baseline of the .ART Award, and it is also its entire argument. At a moment when the digital layer is inseparable from artistic practice, the prize positions the artist's online identity as an extension of the artwork itself, structured and personally authored. The baseline is not a marketing line. It is a statement of intent: the story of how a work came into existence carries as much meaning as the work itself, and it deserves to be told, preserved, and evaluated on its own terms. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To apply, artists present their practice through a .ART domain: a digital space that can take the form of a website, a portfolio, or a social media profile, anchored to the artist's own address. That domain becomes a living record of how an artwork takes shape, from the first research impulse through to material resolution. The submission carries the full weight of the practice",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What is being evaluated here is the methodology: the decisions, the evolution of an idea across time, the artist's own account of how their thinking moves. A domain built with rigour and intention holds this chronology intact. It is where context lives, where the artist's voice reaches the viewer unfiltered, where the arc of creation is readable in its entirety. Treated with this seriousness, the digital archive becomes the most complete expression of a practice.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"11cafed9-bc86-49f5-960d-dab615bfc7df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174285234689847,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2196x1464/311be4aed8/img_6707_baselsocialclub2023_courtesyplayrecordmint.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sasha Stiles, Basel Social Club, 2026, Courtesy Play Record Mint",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0864e0d4-898e-4618-9ba9-fbaa8e085a71",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ulvi Kasimov, who built the registry from a single domain extension into a network of over 700,000 registered addresses across 170 countries, has consistently argued that the value of an artwork lives in the surrounding information: the context, the chronology, the artist's own account of their decisions. The .ART Award gives that conviction institutional weight and financial consequence. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A $15,000 grand prize, residencies at Château du Fresne in France and Anfitrion in Marbella, and a premium .ART domain are among the prizes on offer. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The jury for this inaugural edition brings together Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic at New York Magazine and 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner; Regina Harsanyi, Media Arts Curator at the Museum of the Moving Image; Sasha Stiles, poet and co-founder of theVERSEverse; Irina Tarsis, founder of the Center for Art Law; Dean Phelus, Associate Vice President of Learning and Editor in Chief of Museum magazine at the American Alliance of Museums; Akanksha Ballaney, Senior Director of Business Development at Artsy and Artnet; Gijs Stork, curator and co-founder of Château du Fresne; Shlomi Rabi, Executive Director of the Per Artes Foundation; and Leo Crane, co-founder of AIFA Ventures.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This also raises the question of authorship over context. For decades, the context of an artwork has been produced by others: the curator, the critic, the auction house, the institution. The .ART Award places this authorship back
77with the artist. The architecture of the domain, the hierarchy of information it presents, the sequence in which the work reveals itself â these are creative decisions that belong entirely to the person who built it. What is being judged is the artist's capacity to construct the conditions under which their work is understood, and that capacity is itself a form of intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8e09bcb0-519f-4fa3-9d03-8eda6b33e2b0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174297111677319,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6771x4514/c74763847f/stiles_a-blank-garden_nft-paris-2025_courtesy-the-artist_img_0491.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sasha Stiles, \"A Blank Garden\",nft Paris, 2025, Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4328cc56-ba90-4f9f-84b9-edf56beac7fd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The initiative opens with a gesture that reinforces its own logic. On May 13, the registry is hosting a free live webinar on YouTube, anchored by a live performance from Sasha Stiles. A Kalmyk-American poet and language artist whose practice traces a throughline from ancient orality to generative machine intelligence, Stiles has been co-evolving with her AI alter ego, Technelegy, since 2018. Her work has been exhibited from MoMA to Art Basel and honoured with the Prix Ars Electronica and the Lumen Prize. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Opening the prize with a live reading places the act of making, the voice in real time is at the centre of the event. The session runs at 11:00 AM EDT and includes a conversation with the .ART team, a walkthrough of the philosophy and submission criteria, and an open Q&A. It is the first in a series of webinars running through the application period, each designed to unpack a different layer of artistic storytelling. Registration is free at ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"campaigns.art.art/webinar",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://campaigns.art.art/webinar",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_blank",linktype:"url"}},{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:".",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is also a structural concern that the prize addresses directly. The digital layer is built on fragile foundations: platforms fold, file formats become unreadable, and the archival memory of contemporary digital work accumulates gaps that institutions will struggle to close. A self-owned domain is durable infrastructure. The artist controls its architecture, its content, and its continuity. By making this the primary submission, the .ART Award creates an incentive for artists to build their digital layer with the permanence and intentionality the work deserves. The inclusion of Irina Tarsis on the panel signals that questions of longevity, attribution, and legal legibility are taken as seriously here as the aesthetic and conceptual dimensions of the submission.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The registry's broader infrastructure gives the project coherence. Its ID.art platform uses a patented Digital Twin process to credential and archive art objects. Its acquisition of HUG in 2024 established it as an active online gallery. These initiatives, taken together, describe an organisation building the conditions for a genuinely artist-controlled digital art world, one in which the archive, the credential, the gallery presence, and the critical recognition form a single, coherent structure. The .ART Award is the cultural dimension of that structure.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"81110ed8-8e9e-40f4-9ce3-948c7387aaa9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174297109494150,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2085x1390/c5fb09eba7/sasha-stiles_cursive-binary_fragments_outernet-london_2024_photo-by-marcus-peel_02-jpg.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sasha Stiles, Cursive Binary Fragments Outernet London, 2024, photo by Marcuc Peel",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2ef3e33c-cf3f-4ebb-aba2-ec10d9371ddd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The prize structure itself compounds its own logic. The $15,000 (",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"â¬13000) ",type:"text"},{text:"grand prize is substantial. The residencies at Château du Fresne and Anfitrion offer time and concentrated attention. The premium .ART domain, valued at $10,000 (",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"â¬8500)",type:"text"},{text:", extends the artist's digital infrastructure and amplifies the reach of the very archive that earned the recognition. Each prize reinforces the conditions that make the next one more productive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The digital layer is no longer separate from the physical world; it is entangled with it. Smart cities where traffic flows are managed by algorithms responding to real-time data. Financial markets where algorithmic trading reacts to news sentiment analysis in microseconds. Social networks that shape human behaviour, which generates new data, which reshapes the algorithms. The digital layer has become part of the world's operational reality, not a representation of it. This entanglement creates a hybrid world where the distinction between digital and physical loses its meaning. We live in a hybrid reality where the two are inextricably interwoven, where the digital layer generates its own evolutionary pressures, its own emergent properties, its own capacity for autonomous development. This is the constant at the foundation of the .ART Award. An artist's practice does not exist in spite of this entanglement; it exists within it, shaped by it, and the domain that archives that practice is as much a part of the work as the object it documents.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The .ART Award arrives at a precise moment in the evolution of this hybrid reality. The tools for self-documentation have never been more accessible. The stakes of permanence have never been higher. The prize brings these two realities together and asks artists to meet them with the full force of their practice. That is a serious invitation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Applications",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"open May 11 and close November 1, 2026, with winners announced on December 3 during Art Basel Miami. you can apply ",type:"text"},{text:"on ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"www.award.art",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://www.award.art",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-11 00:00",name:".ART New Award÷ For The Poetics Of Process",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"32921ad8-42db-4251-b279-a5c6c5a66e4a",color:"#670356",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"5b726c91-135b-4bfb-ba39-b8e51028d7b3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174300888099405,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2466x1368/402138321d/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-14-31-51.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false}
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77,{_uid:"3ecafc32-6c95-4195-99f0-dc5bcb5489f6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172542039115422,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x2715/7740e48b73/juan-blanco-poster_re-low-width-1920-format-webp.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Juan Blanco, \"Maillage des paysages\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b679c215-d9a9-4df5-ae2d-f73f76d43388",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172603077482719,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2678x1726/eda88b08d6/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-19-22-35.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Soya the Cow & Uhura Bqueer,Â©ï¸ Tarcisio Gabriel ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1285b91c-e480-47f9-ace3-726ac48ba36c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172645101972185,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2630x1668/e82e96147f/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-19-24-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Etter/Spozio, \"CHART\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6a12046c-e3dd-43b9-8789-47edcd61d8c1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the Comédie de Genève, the exhibition takes on a more performative and sensory dimension. Etter/Spozio works with the material transformations of the immediate region, while Séverin Guelpa, whose practice moves between urban infrastructure, desert landscapes and alpine geology, presents Energy as a Vehicle, a sonic installation that renders the city's subterranean pulse audible, setting the hidden networks of pipes and circulating fluids in dialogue with a choir and a solo voice. Soya the Cow & Uhura Bqueer stage Dé-domestication, a live performance that works the fault line between the human body and the animal, pressing on the question of what domestication has cost both sides. Olaf Holzapfel draws on non-Western craft traditions to question the hierarchies that separate \"art\" from material knowledge, and by extension the hierarchies that separate one kind of knowing from another. Christian Jankowski contributes a video work screened on the MIRE stations, his practice trained as ever on the mechanisms by which culture produces and legitimises itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e33c9eb8-b938-4604-89b3-c7fee3a13743",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172605259651320,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3333x2500/c358944626/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-118.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mathias Kessler, \"West Virginia Mining Landscape\" © Julien Gremaud",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c4ba017d-fcde-4d1b-a657-657bf2b27ce5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172614121519430,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1582x1250/51c4114d6b/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-20-08-26.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Christian Jankowski, \"Die Jagd\", video still, ©Christian Jankowski",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9cffebb8-45f7-41f8-bfd0-cf89f4b37562",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172585300006962,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8437x4615/b5a2612746/gabriel_massan_howdowegetthere_2024_screenshot.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gabriel Massan, \"HOW DO WE GET THERE?\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"245dd590-5c88-477a-95be-feb6a3063cdd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mathias Kessler examines the aestheticisation of catastrophe, the way natural disaster and resource extraction are packaged into images that neutralise their violence, and extends this in a collaborative work with Ahmet Civelek. Tidal Memories, by Jeewi Lee and Phillip C. Reiner, begins with grains of sand collected from three coastlines and magnifies each one to a scale at which its geological individuality becomes a portrait: a work about the invisibility of the materials that sustain global industry, and about what it means to look at something properly. Gabriela Löffel works with soil as a political and agricultural subject, examining the knowledge systems that govern land use and the bodies that depend on it. Gabriel Massan's digital practice imagines futures shaped by communities whose resources have long been taken, a speculative and post-colonial lens trained on the same extraction the other works document. The OMIJA Collective from Busan, five artists working under the shared name Mija, opens the work to forms of engagement that go beyond looking. Reconnecting Protocols, a collective framework woven through the biennial itself, proposes new modes of attention toward the living world, less a single artwork than a practice of noticing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nobody here is performing urgency. The urgency is already in the ground, in the sand, in the pipes running beneath the city. (re)connecting.earth has spent three editions building a biennial that trusts that fact: no insider language, no decorative ecology deployed to reassure its audience, no simplification for the four thousand schoolchildren who walk this route each year. It does not resolve anything. It makes the questions harder to ignore, which, in the current climate, is precisely the point.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"(re)connecting.earth, \"Ressources Sensibles\". Until 14 June 2026. 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77,{_uid:"35e65c4b-2f36-4940-887f-598f080b962d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:179578465456146,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/089e190d6f/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_video_01_3840x2160_30fps.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7744800c-b9a1-4db4-a37d-883b0e9aca8d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EPOCH opens the solo show with a work that does not announce itself. \"Between These Black Waters\" loads quietly, and then it starts asking. You are an entity with no memory, no origin, no name. The world around you assembles in real time, shaped by what you do. This is post Cartesianism made tactile: no fixed frame, no stable ground, no view from outside. You are inside the system and the system is watching back.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bakshi has built a space where choice carries actual weight. The world has its own conclusions and it reaches them regardless of your intentions. Each decision is not a branching path toward resolution but a permanent shift in what the space can still become. Choice is stripped of its liberal promise and returned to its original condition: something that costs, something that forecloses. The absence of a fixed frame is not a formal experiment. It is the only honest condition for a work about what it means to move through a world that was built without you in it, one that keeps assembling itself around your presence without ever stabilizing into a view you can step outside of.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The phrase \"black water\" was whispered into AI throughout the making of the piece. Not as a query. As a summons. The Black Water Ditch in the Taiwan Strait was, for centuries, the most feared crossing in the diasporic imagination of Taiwanese and Fujianese communities: a corridor of drownings, disappearances, and forced departures, the passage through which colonial histories layered themselves one over another. It is also, today, one of the most geopolitically charged bodies of water on the planet, a flashpoint between two superpowers whose rivalry is partly fought over the island that sits at its edge. Bakshi does not separate these two timelines. Diasporic memory and current geopolitical tension run through the same water, and the work holds both without resolving the distance between them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The machine processes this without knowing it processes it. The semiconductors that power the AI systems Bakshi employs are manufactured in Taiwan, on the same island those waters surround. This is the specific structure of AI and colonialism that the work makes visible: not as argument or illustration, but as condition. The postcolonial is not a historical category here. It is the operating environment. The machine is built from the labor and geopolitical precarity of a territory that has spent centuries navigating between empires, and it runs without any record of that debt in its outputs. Bakshi does not explain this to the viewer. She builds it into the structure of the work and lets it move through the outputs like a current that has no name in the system's vocabulary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is a protopian system in the most rigorous sense: not optimistic, not catastrophist, but permanently evolving, absorbing its own contradictions, generating form from what it cannot account for. The work does not resolve. It continues.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And it continues against a backdrop that makes its stakes impossible to ignore. Baks
77hi is half Taiwanese, and that biographical fact is not incidental to the work. It is the nerve through which everything runs.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The entity at the center of the piece, the one the viewer inhabits, wakes without memory and without classification. This is not an abstract philosophical conceit. It is the precise condition of a diasporic body that exists between two national imaginaries, claimed by neither in full, legible to both only partially. Growing up between cultures means learning early that identity is not a fixed coordinate but a negotiation, conducted differently depending on which side of the water you are standing on. Bakshi has built that negotiation into the architecture of the work itself. The procedurally generated world does not pre-exist the viewer's arrival. It assembles in response to presence, the way a diasporic self assembles in response to context, never quite the same twice, never quite stable.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"83d381ef-102a-49cb-8f34-0ca4616a3452",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:179578578993184,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/3dbd31e335/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_video_02_3840x2160_30fps.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"86e67300-739a-4d4a-9876-be122084835a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:179579024253026,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/3885877f44/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_video_04_3840x2160_30fps.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"263ff145-ac12-40a8-8a3d-9f0120e7ac5c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168321729154984,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/cc1386153e/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_still_05_3840x2160_300dpi.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5a102da3-07cb-400c-bfc9-21c941432a97",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168321728462757,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/282512b307/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_still_06_3840x2160_300dpi.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"eeef4390-f5a7-4d24-a5a8-828d6b8abda9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The choice of the Taiwan Strait as the work's central geography is equally specific. For Bakshi, the Black Water Ditch is not a historical reference retrieved from research. It is a family passage, the water that ancestors crossed or did not cross, the threshold that separates those who arrived from those who were lost in transit. That weight is carried in the phrase itself, whispered into the AI as a summons rather than a query, as if the machine might hold what the archive cannot. It does not. But the attempt to make it hold is where the work lives.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Taiwan today is one of the most geopolitically pressurized territories on the planet, caught between the competing claims of two superpowers while simultaneously producing the chips that make both of their digital economies run. This is not a new condition. The island has spent centuries navigating between empires, absorbing colonial regimes that each left the
77ir own sediment in the culture, the language, the body. For Bakshi, this is not geopolitics observed from a distance. It is inherited. The Black Water Ditch was the passage through which that history moved, and drowned, and kept moving. Bakshi does not use Taiwan as backdrop or symbol. She uses it as substrate: the material the machine is made of, the ground the system stands on without knowing it stands on anything at all.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The entire film will be released as an Ethereum edition in May 2026, consistent with the logic of the piece itself: a work about the ownership of unclassifiable history, offered as a new kind of object, in a space that has not finished defining itself yet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EPOCH GALLERY (Online)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until July 21, 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-21 00:00",name:"Bakshi Solo At EPOCH÷Between These Black Waters",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ef7ca4a6-e2b6-41e6-ae5d-61323317e7f1",color:"#676767",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e288ddc4-0bf7-4f0c-b420-84e109544cd9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168321728090019,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/a150b6d528/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_still_04_3840x2160_300dpi.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"connie-bakshi-between-these-black-waters",full_slug:"directory/reviews/connie-bakshi-between-these-black-waters",sort_by_date:null,position:-1160,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"bdbe3d71-498d-45b1-bf8b-7b551ba767ce",first_published_at:"2026-04-21T07:37:02.006Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"EARTHSEED",created_at:"2026-04-10T01:31:51.902Z",published_at:"2026-04-10T08:54:15.206Z",updated_at:"2026-04-10T08:54:15.222Z",id:164229578394793,uuid:"f135c5b5-3eba-41e4-9688-6c6a55eed940",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"1322963b-eb18-4e44-bae7-271bf24f9610",title:"EARTHSEED ICA SF",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:164327373388536,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1013/baf74d0d03/sfaw-2026-ica-earth-dome.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome, Earthseed Dome San Francisco, 3D printed sculpture, living architecture, ecological art, bioart, land art San Francisco, native wildflowers California, rewilding urban, contemporary art San Francisco 2026, WASP 3D printing art, site-specific installation, soil sculpture, participatory art, ecological installation, seed dispersal art, Transamerica Redwood Park, art and ecology, post-digital nature, REVIEW , ART MAGAZINE REFRESH, philippe Riss-schlidt , Further triennal",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Lily Kwong's Earthseed Dome is a 3D-printed living sculpture in San Francisco, seeded with native wildflowers and designed to bloom, scatter and rewild the city."}],_uid:"e2794824-6be8-48b3-8d33-8505c9da287c",body:[{_uid:"1a898838-6fc3-4f29-b373-c7c869d5146c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EARTHSEED DOME: Lily Kwong's Living Architecture and Ecological Agency",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Built to Bloom: Lily Kwong's ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Earthseed Dome",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]}
77,{text:" is a 3D-printed living structure embedded with native wildflowers, designed to bloom, scatter and slowly rewild the heart of San Francisco.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An extruded earthen structure operates as a biological interface, engineered to mutate and actively disperse its own ecology through the urban grid.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beneath the canopy of Transamerica Redwood Park (San Francisco, USA), \"EARTHSEED DOME\" by Lily Kwong functions as a structural intervention. It operates not as a static object of contemplation but as a biological interface. The architecture intercepts the friction between digital precision and organic unpredictability, asserting itself as an active agent within the urban core.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Constructed via a robotic arm , the dome is an extrusion of raw soil and dormant seeds. The fabrication process occurred in full public view, reframing construction as a durational performance. Once the mechanical deposition concluded, Kwong intervened manually, pressing additional seeded matter into the architectural strata. This hybrid methodology forces a confrontation between digital fabrication and tactile, vernacular building logic. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The resulting architecture oscillates between a pristine technological output and a raw, geological formation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3cd73012-786b-4351-9e68-8390d579ea5f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164329139755861,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/15a029b7b8/202603_ica-sf_lily-kwong_earthseed-dome_phase-2_installation_photo-by-nicholas-lea-bruno_117.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome ( Phase2), courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75374a6c-c000-42b1-a388-88957c9b7133",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The structural form is inherently transitional. The earthen walls are embedded with over fifteen species of regional wildflowers, including Eschscholzia californica and Lupinus bicolor. As the biological matter activates, the mineral austerity of the printed surface will fracture. The architecture is programmed to succumb to its own internal ecology, shifting from a rigid geometry to a porous, blooming organism. The work is defined by this programmed instability.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For Kwong, the site itself is heavily loaded. Returning to the region, the artist approaches the surrounding redwoods with a perspective that borders on the devotional, treating the grove as a gathering of ancestral entities rather than mere landscape. EARTHSEED DOME attempts to materialize this resonance, adopting a temporality that aligns with the slow, nonhuman rhythms of the forest. The inclusion of stones gathered from a specific Mill Valley beach further anchors the structure, functioning as a deliberate material offering to the site.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d1d8f413-c8c2-418a-a854-2fbdd7a2e408",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164330178845565,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1174x1530/b1d320bd79/screenshot-2026-04-10-at-03-34-25.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome ( Phase2), courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"96b1d71c-3ad0-4439-8943-e147a6c813cd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164330547202959,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/784x1106/93af77d89b/screenshot-2026-04-10-at-03-39-32.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome ( Phase2), courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bf696e80-1221-4a17-b9e5-802c37ed6cc2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The spiral, a recurring geometric strategy in Kwong's practice, dictates the logic here. It rejects linear progression in favor of a cyclical process of materialization, decay, and regeneration. The dome physically manifests this framework, standing as an architecture of perpetual becoming.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Crucially, the installation functions as a vector for dispersal. The structure houses thousands of seed packets, developed with the Altadena Seed Library and marked with cyanotypes. Visitors are tasked with extracting these packets and deploying the seeds across the city. The selected flora includes species that require fire to germinate, underscoring a logic of resilience and radical adaptation. The artwork therefore refuses containment. It utilizes the public as a distribution network to rewild the concrete grid.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kwong positions this mechanism as an exercise in ecological stewardship. The work insists on entanglement and mutual obligation. A single handful of the extruded earth contains a microbial density that eclipses the human population, a fact that radically decenters the anthropocentric viewpoint. EARTHSEED DOME demands participation over observation. It requires the viewer to engage with its biological mechanics, ensuring the work continues to proliferate and mutate long after the physical structure has dissolved.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"65db11b6-f808-4212-86b3-5a89f65bf339",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164333392325783,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1164x1518/2e9a9aab73/screenshot-2026-04-10-at-03-33-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome ( Phase2), courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1c3d445a-b9f7-4530-8353-5e190e1c720d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164333434428574,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1096x1540/0b27366de0/screenshot-2026-04-10-at-03-40-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome ( Phase2), courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"18350de7-150c-4fd2-8bcd-99c4f56e5a14",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164333516627107,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1600/104f324517/unnamed.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome, courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"05fbf86d-a256-4309-85f9-bb54788ae353",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lily Kwong, \"Earthseed Dome\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ICA SF, Transamerica Redwood Park, San Francisco (USA) - Until 31/07/26",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-10 00:00",name:"Rooted in Flux÷Lily Kwong's Earthseed Dome",author:"Philippe de Manus",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"cd45b934-80b6-4d3a-b9fb-bacfc1550908",color:"#3e4e40",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"003b84ef-d48b-4588-abe7-41231f97dc31",poster:{i
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",created_at:"2026-04-09T12:45:30.353Z",published_at:"2026-04-15T07:50:40.370Z",updated_at:"2026-04-15T07:50:40.401Z",id:164041237967131,uuid:"2770b7e0-91ef-44f2-b7ff-ebb4cac5abf0",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"830c6419-0805-4587-bff7-717492ef7af6",title:"test",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:164042461467748,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1438/e93e76f420/artwork-by-atari-kuggah.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"test",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"test"}],_uid:"7c9e4eef-8c11-4c02-93ee-2031f03a9d95",body:[{_uid:"16d729db-60d1-4019-b278-0d105f07cc36",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Metafictions of post-post-postmodernism. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In an exclusive essay for Refresh, Louis Pohl writes an essay regarding a highly conceptual exhibition that he curated, redefining the very format of spatial display. Operating far beyond the traditional white cube, this post-everything intervention positions itself as one of the most advanced experiences of our time. It is a radical departure from established codes, offering a new model for a changed world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Metafictionism movement and the return of meaning in globalismâs decline.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Elements of poultry square",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Peter Blundell Jones famously said in his essay The use of meaning and the meaning of use: âIn oral cultures, buildings served as the primary mnemonic base for passing on memories, arguably the origin of architectureâs monumental role.â Elaborating that during pre-modern civilization, parents used various parts of buildings to explain sequences, stories, and allegories to children, not only through explicit meanings but also through painted figures, depictions of holy shrines, and deities. The implicit order of the house extended to support the concept of a world-house or even imagined houses for gods and animals.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mies van der Rohe and projects like the Barcelona Pavilion popularized the removal of image from architecture. While a genius architectural design, it coincided with the decline of oral cultures and the rise in literacy rates. Building stopped being a visual tool for oral history, providing an international style in a rapidly globalizing world. It gained popularity through photographs and architectural publications, attracting a large following and copycats in the early 20th century.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"However, Allison and Peter Smithson identified core flaws in the a-contextual approach and sought to update it by creating a âcomposite ordering.â They layered new spaces using found tissue, creating equally assertive counter-parts that fostered better relationships. Through gestures, they achieved a more harmonious modernism. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"With this new thinking, the Smithsons shifted architectureâs goal from a product to a process. This ideology in the 1970s-1980s aligned with postmodern theories, where deconstructivist ideas by Derrida, Sterling, Venturi, and Scott-Brown reimagined architecture as a decomposition and recomposition process. It prioritized civic memory, schema, and utility. Ideology should be as real as the physical context, and thoughts should be integrated, deconstructed, and recombined within the building, like a fabric or raw material.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jim Stirlingâs poultry square project in London is the only building directly addressing Mies van der Roheâs unbuilt project on the same site. It serves as a counterpoint, a postmodern manifesto. Sterling aimed to present a clear alternative. Mies proposed an updated Seagram building with an all-glass curtain wall and an open space. Sterlingâs design, however, used a curve within a larger triangle to create a hyperbole, introducing a double threshold of curved glass and straight blockwork. This confrontation with Miesâs curtain wall idea brings the inside out while deconstructing the existing building. Sterlingâs references are hyperlocal, cleverly morphed, and often confusing. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From the front, it resembles a giant ship, referencing Londonâs shipping trade. Embedded high up in the architraves are fragments of London stories, a sentimental gesture to return meaning. A clock from an old building returns, the buildings entire external footprint reflecting the previous building demolished on the same site. It mimics a striped cathedral or a duomo in one respect, Hawksmoor churches in another. This would make Mies van der Rohe squirm. Perhaps this is the point. Jim Sterlingâs spatial deconstructive process culminates in a courtyard full of alchemical symbolism, âsquaring the circleâ. This jibes with transforming Miesâs Cartesian architecture on the same site into gold. Instead of a public square, a public circle is placed inside the buildingâs center. Sterling suggests postmodernism embraces the circle, blends outside as inside, embraces symbolism, and meaning.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These are known architectural revelations, but today, postmodern architecture requires knowledge of this composite logic. Jim Stirlingâs Poultry Square buildingâs physicality is present, but its softwareâthe activities insideâis unclear. Forty years later, large parts remain unused, and a truly postmodern gallery space hasnât emerged. The projectâs final problem is reconciling architecture with image-making disciplines. Despite rhetorical and spatial gestures, Poultry Square removes image from its colonnades, unlike cathedrals and referenced architecture. As a result, Sterlingâs spatial tricks are seen as arbitrary and useless, not revolutionary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Flash forward Forty years after postmodernism and globalizationâs rise in the 1980s, London has become a melting pot of diverse cultures. Art history evolves,encompassing languages, histories, and timelines of art in mixed traditions. Experience becomes culturally hybrid, and translation is key. This leads to a new significant artistic movement.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"4b4252f6-551e-4b9b-a648-377e59f5e5db",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165364158801351,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x789/5a3fe49d3b/image.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"One Poultry, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"83b2175c-ed16-49b6-9475-ef04f68342ac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165363861886389,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x789/2851948841/image.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"One Poultry, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9f6b37e5-92ed-4c9d-b075-9571ee34c7f0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165365366396405,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1108x579/222679edd8/jim-sterlings-building-right-and-mies-van-der-rogers-building-left.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jim Stirlings building( right) and Mies Van Der Rohe building (left)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"31519803-2681-48a0-956e-bcb06ad82bd9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I was chosen as an artist and curator for gallery 2 in the stirling poultry square building. An artist curator showcases art and curates the show, selecting contributors based on their virtues as part of the movement. Supported by Hypha Studios, Recessed Space, and Cheapside Business Alliance, a local arm of the municipality, we used the space for their âYear of Culture at One Poultryâ initiative. Cathrine Johnson and Caroline Cornelius provided producer and curatorial support.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs theme was founed in postmodernist deconstruction theory, developed by Derrida. A âMetafictionâ draws attention to its fictional nature through self-awareness and commentary on the creative process. The show deconstructs the white wall gallery into a fluid space where symbolic art and architecture are synchronized. Artists embrace allegory, where no single meaning exists, but rather causal threads. Figurativism returns, allowing global communities to use the body as universal communication. These artists form a new movement in London called âmetafictionismâ or âmatterfictionismâ, where true stories are told through fictionâs formal techniques. Symbolism can be used again, and galleries function like spatial picture books. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bfe6c34b-10bd-4e24-b217-6c6ce1099fe6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artworks:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the show: Sterlingâs double threshold creates aloof relationships between street and shopfront, necessitating artworks and graphics to interact with windows and street level. Sebastian Koseda, exhibiting artist and graphic designer, created Large-scale white window graphics announcing the shows title âMetafictions ofpost-post-postmodernismâ arranged in a reference to the poultry building.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On the shelf just behind the vinyl, a small set of model sculptures by Ben Rea, retell an ancient colloquial origin story of London, Corineus and Gog Magog. One model appearing to show an altar, the second a series of boats arriving onto the island of England, and the third showing the giants being thrown into the abyss. This history develops on Sterlings architectural language, using tiny stage set
77s which are recursive depiction between pantomime, place, and history. His work questions the positionality of architectural models as conduits for cross-disciplinary fine artwork. It brings an immediate cross disciplinary agenda to the space. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Also Glaring through the window making contact with passers by are Josh Spindlerâs projection based works which engage the threshold by projecting the architecture internally, in a way visible through the corner of the curved glass. Showing a series of close up shots of faces with âalmost cryingâ eyes, titled âIâm fineâ. Despite their evident distress, the work summarizes our coping mechanisms during catastrophe. since 2020 there has been perpetual, one global shock after the next: the attempt to cope has become the only stable emption. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9a4cf7e3-fa5c-45fd-a09f-157306d14fee",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165424026721800,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1147x1471/d6916fa586/img_0756.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ben Rea",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"689f8c4a-c3ff-4913-bd70-ab0f36a1ec95",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165424026693127,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x1429/e8e8c5fdae/img_0757.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ben Rea",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f1fec2b2-3753-48fb-a03d-5abd1fdcbfdd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165423764499967,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4780x3584/8086e066e2/img_2279.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ben Rea",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ac615e43-2a8f-47fe-bc5a-790d5a5817be",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165425687961173,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4164x5552/b8e5585626/artwork-by-josh-spindler.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Josh Spindler",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b9b05a41-6185-42eb-a6db-85e8b810e6d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165425799052893,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3024x4032/dec0f460ba/img_2191.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Josh Spindler",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2c3f166c-62ac-475f-a53c-124674a8326c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Pinned loosely onto a sandy coloured background, (which itself if derived from the tones of the building) four artworks made using pastels, and raw pigment and charcoal, Kevin Atari Kuggahâs artworks unpick relational identities emerging as a series of images showing bodies within bodies. The story is of a Nigerian living in south London navigating his heritage and rediscovering the history between Nigeria and London. Nigeria was once a colony of the uk. Nigerian and Britainâs history hinges on empire, trade, and corporations like the Niger company which is now better known as the multinational Unilever. âas sure as a ghost returns each evening I see you when Iâm dreamingâ explores realizations and revelations of cross generational trauma, and how stories of the past haunt the present subconscious of the black Nigerian population of the uk. Kevin shares niche Nigerian history as it blends with his colloquial ancestral memory. Using highly advanced and sometimes cryptic symbolism. Kevin shares: âNow I think this work is as much about British history as its Nigerianâ ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Accompanying this, hung on boards tinted with iron oxide red, making a pinkish backdrop: Bijan reflects on queer Persian identity using iconography of pleasure and persecution in a series of three artworks intended as a sequence. âTogether these drawings form a space, where grief and love share the same space, where health and spirit interlace. â The images show nude wellness beings blending into a Persian mythological landscape erupting with symbolism and physical libido. With the rise of global changes, finding inner peace, understanding religion and spirituality, rediscovering sexuality, and physical health occupy peopleâs minds.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nearby a T shaped divide envelopes a trilogy of female voices using smaller artworks in the tradition of black and white drawing, engraving or print. Britainâs biggest artistic export historically were books and literature, rather than painting or frescoes. Despite this the tradition of book imagery and white wall fine art gallery have never been truly reconciled, people still rally against reams of text. But females make up over seventy percent of fiction readers. So the dialogue over text in a gallery is also a discourse to do with honest representation or the perception of validity in feminine art language. Here the artists were asked to actively create writing to accompany their works: so the storybook approach could be appreciated in its truer form.  ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"b8beab94-d2fb-48e2-9926-1f418799503f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164042461467748,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1438/e93e76f420/artwork-by-atari-kuggah.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kevin Atari Kuggah",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"780d13d6-695d-4c2e-b8f7-14ef2b26c4e9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:166047765299664,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x1545/1d037fe483/15db8dd0-16be-421b-aa73-cdcf36a3514a-1.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kevin Atari Kuggah",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bb71a386-1eb4-45e3-a0f0-310fd8b8871c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165429979823877,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2560x3632/4db2d1bb89/oliver-bijan.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Oliver Bijan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"06b272ef-bae9-4c15-b38f-d9266f8ad346",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165631440750508,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1188x1008/e5b94e7e8b/screenshot-2026-04-14-at-02-35-16.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Oliver Bijan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"de191cf6-a113-49b2-877d-b3675a9e84c7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Alice Lockhart, a north Londoner creates, intricate fine line work and engravings of myths and legends. Alice Writes: âTrapped on a beach by the sea to one side and cliffs to the other.the goats were very thirsty. They roamed the shore disturbing the calm of the sunbathers. The largest, oldest goat wandered across picnics his sharp goatly scent souring ice creams and unsettling towels. The trees had already been stripped of their lower branches, trimmed by goats standing on their hind legs to reach the most succulent leaves.â",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Alina Dieth depicts stark black and white charcoal Female figures lament Among foxglove flowers. Rabid Dogs, angels in distress. All are dark and often cerebral. She writes In her reflections: âpeople. My people of the mind. They have hands attached to their necks. Just hanging their like wings which are lobsided, fragile and broken. They are quite atrocious to look at, can barely walk. They don't talk, they feel and can make you feel. They make you feel afraid, but if you sit there and listen and let it in you realise, it's the good kinda scary. â in grappling with inner fears and the process of overcoming. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Anna redwoods imagery evokes religious manuscripts with devine spirits reaching to the heavens, climbing a ladder. One painting and two etchings show the female form creating sense the of interrogation of the duality of the material body and sacred beyond that. âThey sense the many dimensions of existence pressing against the limits of this oneâ she shares.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fb4d5430-3d3e-426f-a0fc-b83582fa0d4d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165430538407702,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4854x4498/153921398d/alice-lockhart.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Lockhart",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"b4d78b16-2206-441f-bab4-03408e25cae0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165431306915629,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2493x3697/59bad99af1/alina-dieth-_three-angels_30-x-21cm_2025_charcoal-on-paper.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alina Dieth",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d4f7f94b-9893-4576-a09e-5ba51138e757",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165438877458671,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/843x1280/796cf3ff43/anna-redwood_my-worlds_24-5-x-24-5cm.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Anna Redwood",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5fe73f62-bd23-4bd8-aeb3-f8bf28203c09",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Joanna Sutton Klein, a researcher, medical doctor, and trade unionist, who instigated the current, ongoing national pay campaign for junior doctors. Takes the curatorial prompt of embracing written text as a company visual work to its logical extreme. Rather than produce a visual work, she wrote an essay, printed it, and framed it to sit amongst the art within the space. The essay itself is on the origin story of the National Health Service and how the imagination around the development and growth of community-centred hospitals has been restricted by ideology. By exhibiting this essay as a framed artwork, she converts the gallery into an agora and flips the idea of text and imagery. With Tracy Eminâs retrospective showing nearby in the Tate at the same time. which exhibits hundreds of pages from her diary. 30 years after the YBA The sentiment is timely: it asks if the ultimate form of conceptual art is the essay? And by taking it to an conclusion and framing the academic essay, can we depart from the âcult of selfâ which demands a person should only exhibit journalistic entries as a valid form of conceptual art. When does the art gallery become a device to speak about freedom, public access, and academic research? Will it ever? ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"One of my own works, the Allegory of Bureaucracy, sits at large scale and 3.5m tall was created for the space in collaboration with researcher Hani Salih, building from our work together, Hani shared diagrams which I turned into allegorical artworks, and became a set for the design museum. It examines bureaucratic systems around planning regulation and presents the regulatory system as a scaffold. Depicting the journey of one man navigating it, each figure representing a step in national planning guidelines. As he seeks approval, get denial, and is beaten and bruised - bureaucrats prod each other, the system patched together with scaffold rods and duct tape. Painted for number one-poultry, a project fraught with planning issues, the artwork position is both an image of a system and within the system it represents, serving as a meaningful altarpiece for the poultry project as a âworld houseâ. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Following this another of my own works: the Society of the Speculator: Drawing Speculative Finance and Its Media Relationship, which narrates the 1980s merger between traditional finance and speculative finance, causing a dramatic economic shift. This allegory is an origin story for the cityâs current operational norms. A floating Citibank emerges from this policy shift, suspended like a spaceship. Above the clouds, a celestial fight scene surrounds J.P. Morgan which is based in the rival financial district of Canary Wharf. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Juan Martinez gave one small-scale drawing to the show which occupies a full wall. He used the opportunity of the postmodernist theme to give a single idea: an experiment with a new form of reconstructive abstraction. Which uses charcoal drawing, novel surface treatment, and relational colour theory to build an original kind of compositional logic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"d4f1a06b-5379-40c8-bd17-61c8cf1dbea2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165442471215650,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x1500/9a7d8d2c1b/photo-by-carlo-zambon.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Pohl Koseda, install shot, photo by Carlo Zambon",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6edb9db6-8d10-4c4e-a78d-4213d4fe31ac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166047977808340,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/953x1282/f46f43311c/image-with-person.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Pohl koseda,",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1d6329a7-b984-4f30-b666-6d107804cbcd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165831837844723,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4764x6470/757dc8eae7/louis-pohl-koseda-surreal-estates-pen-and-charcoal-patron_-lucy-meakin-art-advisory.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Pohl Koseda",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cc0fb161-ea7e-4dce-8367-b5e663429a86",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165442827874927,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/700x429/26ff2daf4c/louis-pohl-koseda-society-of-the-speculator.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Pohl koseda, Society of the Speculator ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ed7914ef-9b03-4312-be80-4736fa6a4b2b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Juan Martinez gave one small-scale drawing to the show which occupies a full wall. He used the opportunity of the postmodernist theme to give a single idea: an experiment with a new form of reconstructive abstraction. Which uses charcoal drawing, novel surface treatment, and relational colour theory to build an original kind of compositional logic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On a dark green background, the mood of the exhibition shifts again. Caroline Cornelius explores metaphysical transitions in life through her artwork. She doesnât depict motherhood concretely but dreams a fictional landscape where she rows a boat and reflects into a lake. Delving into the phenomenological aspects of motherhood, which are abstract and poetic. Caroline picks on literature to come to terms with her own life. Stating: âwhile I was reading the wall by Marian haushofer, I kept thinking about this story of a woman trapped in a idyllic landscape of mountains and forests, cut off from the world by an infinite invisible wall, with only a dog at first and later a cow and cat for company. She assumes that everyone on the other side of the wall is dead, including her own grown up daughters. There are moments in the book where she had already begun to grow apart from her daughters as they become more independent. As a single mother in her former life she often felt alone and no longer needed. â The journey of a mother in 2026 blends reason, the unreasonable, ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a542060b-3a7b-488d-bb57-ee0d181a76d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165444439143099,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4032x3024/2c5e14e7c0/img_8237-juan-martin.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Juan Martinez",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"8890fec9-17a5-4770-b9c8-f78012bbdad8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165445565969184,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1742/fc3c558a74/caroline-cornelius_the-launch-i-portals-_50-x-70cm_2025_oil-and-oil-stick-on-linen.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caroline Cornelius",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9afcb65c-7a39-4adc-afc4-e28753111c51",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165445514130201,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1494/d3637c2859/caroline-cornelius_the-launch-ii-portals-_50-x-70cm_2025_oil-and-oil-stick-on-linen.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caroline Cornelius",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"68cd5c37-4bd8-4ef3-968d-8fae3eff8695",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ned Elliot takes a far less sombre tone. Forming the first of another trilogy of artists: expressing humans relationship with nature as a subject material: ned, Lilith and honor all touch on human relationship with the natural world. Where ned expresses the sensation overcoming with dancing flowers. In neds writing he calls it âA duet of sorts, two flowers saying hello, two wings tip to tip. How is it to be, so pretty and free? How does it feel to be paper thin in the sun? How is it to exist as fragile as the windâ A window into the metaphysics of his own journey of internal serenity. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Though he projects emotional vulnerability through the depiction of flowers as a psychological method. Neds works hangs on an accomplished skillset of their practice and and the techniques of printmaking, oil painting and as a watercolourist. But his work needs to be understood against the history of the uk, printmaking technologies and gendered artistic production in England historically which was weighted between botanical illustration and oil painting portraiture. Botanical illustration in print for women, oil painting and figurativism for men. In the exhibition ned hangs much smaller oil paintings next to much larger prints. In this same breath Ned is using flowers at a motif, I think, but can't be sure, if this is to question if these binaries and are still necessary. Why can't boys paint flowers? ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In sequence with Neds work: Lilith Piper reinterprets the waveforms as a method of understanding the rhythm in longing and belonging. The silos are needed for creative expression. Drawing from a visual language inherited from her great-grandfather, war artist and painter printmaker: John Piper whose most iconic works are a collection of paintings of the sentiment surrounding bombed churches from World War. Lilith looks at the landscape, and uses this language as a motif and internal conflicts of similarly conflicted times. How does the isolation artists feel both supports the artist as a necessary condition, but also, inadvertently harks for the other. For the human touch. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Continuing on the theme of nature and it's relationship to the human condition, Honor Bathurst, an artist and gardener has made a monotone series of meshed gray grids and hanging metallic sculptures inspired by their intimate encounters with the rhythms of plantlife sharing a poem about the works inspiration : âThe European Jay plants acorns with its beak to store for leaner months. The little oak leaf flag that appears signals to the Jay where it has left its food. What happens if the object you use to orient becomes the joint of an apple tree or an acorn cup?â",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"31dbd1cc-9ebd-4df9-867e-542b060b4e28",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165446995239836,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5124x3910/a9e5b7a7ee/untitled_panorama-9-min-ned-elliott.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ned Elliot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2e82232d-98ab-45d3-9cab-f40d6f62e2e2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165446995121051,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/978x674/d2c1fd2203/ned-elliott_two-flowers-saying-hello_30-x-40cm_2025_etching-with-gouache-and-coloured-pencil-on-japanese-paper.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ned Elliot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"246553af-237b-49c1-8566-617c3015dc43",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a very large scale charcoal drawing, Olly Williamson explores domestic relationships, familiarly and distances between northern and southern British life. As a subject he often brings ideas of the monolithic weight of social relationships into the everyday. Using motifs from the Second World War, discourses in the imagery of English socialism and British strands of cubism, and the narrative work of Stanley Spencer, he harnesses an iconoclassism as much as fitting in contemporary culture. The large-scale drawing shows a black cat stretched in its leap, an open window with a man jumping through: a central figure, the artistâs girlfriend. And a man on a bed playing a guitar. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ollys artwork sits at a wider moment in the landscape of artistic culture: investment in global infrastructure over the local transport systems means that itâs now more expensive to get to the north of England than it is to get to many neighboring European cities. So artists from the north of Englandâs artistic sensibilities are starting to feel like different countries: or at least distinct artistic domains closer to their sociopolitical position over just a geographical position. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On a large a frame structure a series of 14 oval canvases fly up into the sky. Chi Park lifts the lid on the South Korean experience in London, themes bridging from the internet, clothing, and us. Her series of oval canvases create a decompressed allegory of how the perceived world brushes against the global world online. And in turn, how we, as interactive participants, can start to see the London streets through a lens of sweetness, irony, and joy. Accompanying her artwork chi writes: âBeepâ¦beepâ¦beep ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I lean against an analogue telephone as tall as my body, its plastic chill against my cheek. When I move my limbs the world answers with borrowed sounds. My shoulder releases a soft beep, my leg strikes a metallic ka-Ching. White noise hums in the air. I hear distant clunks, static , and machines breathing. A television flickers in the sand. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is no time here, no horizon to measure distance. I donât know where I am but I know I exist among a strange juxtaposition of objects.â chis work extends the concept of painting a series of her oval canvases to the level where painting almost becomes an immersive a sculpture. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77,content:[{text:"Sitting above the exhibition, in what looks like electrical signage, is a conceptual artwork by Sebastian Koseda whose future facing works informed by satire and technology in boss-stage late capitalism. The plaques sit against other artworks as a quiet subversion of the gallery space, telling attendants to âbe quiet, machines are learningâ. That they are âall watched over by machines of loving graceâ. The result is that participants question if they are an observer in a visual art gallery, or rather if they are the one being observed. Or that perhaps, all of the images in the show are purely generated to feed artificial intelligence. Flipping the narrative by disguising these as utilitarian visual language, gallery guests envisage, for a small moment, that they are in a speculative future scenario where machine dominance is absolute. Here Sebastian uses graphic design and sculpture to challenge pre-existing modes of corporate visual communication to the point of self-critique.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sitting near Sebastian work, Cate Hueston used archaic figures as a form of post-punk expression. Creating a series of large-scale, expressive monoprints which depict the bankers responsible for the 2008 financial crash. In the city of London, this technique mixes a cross of the image-making processes of news reporting and artistic gesture. Making a visual language akin to the historic media, techniques of political expose, and the moment at which the exposure stops. I see them as a cross between an Andy Warhol and a faded News of the World article. Cates work sits at the tense image-making moment between protest movements and fine art. Its positionality within the city of London is provocative. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Because of AI, true second and third-generation post-internet art doesnât look like renditions from 3d studio max. Rather, they explore human meaning and existence beyond its parameters and capabilities. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FatCap, potentially the most divisive artist in the show. Is the UKs biggest art TikToker. He used the algorithmsâ preferences for spraycan ASMR art and neon to draw internationally known icons. In full, his popularity is a product of a technique defined by the postmodern project: self-referentiality: it exists because the system itself to propel it exists. âIt brings joy to peopleâ He established an dual art identity where his nom de plume is âFat Cap Spraysâ. I was very aware of him as a great artist prior to his tiktok days. So i kindly reached out and asked him over instagram to create something for the show: he created an image of the Poultry Square building as a pinball machine, part of a commentary about gambling, the city of London. âpeople come to test their fortunes and play the game of wealth. Some hit their targets and climb to the top, while others burn out and take their eyes off the ball,â he says. The same algorithm driving TikTok and Instagram, which are the largest digital platforms are driving the city and the speculator economy. FatCap, with huge success online from the self-referentiality with the media world that surrounds us, explores a rule set nobody can truly renounce: else they will end up in âthe drainâ. Perhaps fatcap sprays is the only truly postmodern artist in the show. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On the wall Jesse Ajilore creates sketchbooks as an artistic medium. And with it questions the authority of the dominance of traditional fine art media like the canvas. Preferring to exhibit personal representations all from imagination that can and should be read as sequences. He rallies against the tendency to diminish comic book art. He asserts a position where figures and forms must be appreciated as a process rather than as finished art objects. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the same vein as jesse, Beth Timmins builds on the lineage of British journalistic satire. An anthropologist, British broadcast journalist, researcher, and academic whose work primarily focuses on the intersection of cultural heritage, conflict, and climate change. Beth presents a positionality where British satire is seen as an artistic object which toes the line between journalism and artwork. She presents us with a story of the âland of the big red giantsâ where the subject is a coded critique against neomalthusianism and the geopolitics unfolding in the British Isles. Beth also uses a âleporelloâ, a type of book consisting of a single, long strip of paper folded in a zigzag or accordion pattern. Using it to tell the social histories of number one poultry and bring its anthropological significance into focus. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77ding on where you are on the floorplan. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artworks were curated within the circular, rhythmic motion to make the gallery read like a picture book. It was a game of conceal and reveal, in a sense referencing the storytelling approaches from premodern architecture like Giottoâs Assisi, but bringing in a deconstructionist agenda, where large images are sometimes blocked from one angle and read from another. And images were not seen but discovered. The composite approach, a series of simple T and A shapes used to create complexity, derived from the Smithsonianâs rulebook, broke the gallery into smaller parts and references the larger forms: but also made the gallery read as a social space, where smaller pockets of conversation for four or five could happen in the way that broke down the overwhelming sound and social sensation of the white wall gallery opening. Where white wall galleries have a tendency to hero large work and diminish the smaller drawings. By condensing the space, into often awkward subsections, small drawings were experienced for the first time, up close. Presented at the scale of desired experience, rather than needing to battle for their right to be small, a paradox of modern curating solved somewhat by deconstruction theories and zoning.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Conclusion:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beyond abstract art, figurativism is gaining license as the post-globalisation form of art, reflecting a need to reach beyond the written word for a more innate means of sharing",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-10 00:00",name:"The Metafictionism Movement ÷ The Return Of Meaning In Globalismâs Decline.",author:"Louis Pohl Koseda",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"d88a32ef-50a3-40c3-a8e2-8f3b27960a59",color:"#a79f8a",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"6e4286aa-c322-471b-96c7-9aedbbf31c61",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164042461467748,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1438/e93e76f420/artwork-by-atari-kuggah.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Atari Kuggah",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:"1"},slug:"metafictions-of-post-post-postmodernism-",full_slug:"directory/essays/metafictions-of-post-post-postmodernism-",sort_by_date:null,position:-210,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"b133d7cf-a66b-4628-85a0-44e973260d48",first_published_at:"2026-04-14T16:44:35.783Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"we are not alone",created_at:"2026-01-04T09:56:36.977Z",published_at:"2026-02-23T17:37:32.696Z",updated_at:"2026-02-23T17:37:32.715Z",id:130379763721805,uuid:"dfdc3d33-8512-418d-9bb7-e5caa51b02e3",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"ab6b981f-accb-46b6-96f5-5020322a8e62",title:"we are not alone",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:125564107118834,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1926x1294/601e8cee68/sofia-crespo.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"-Post-Anthropocentric, ",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"more than human, The Post-Anthropocentric turn in contemporary art"}],_uid:"8fede700-8007-42e7-8637-961c9dc4410a",body:[{_uid:"b65d8a82-b877-4f0c-b53a-60cab58f8b33",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"The Post-Anthropocentric turn in contemporary art",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In artists' studios worldwide, a revolution is taking place. Contemporary artists no longer simply represent nature. They build living ecosystems, collaborate with artificial intelligence, and use technology to help us transcend our human-centered worldview. At the root of this artistic shift is a fundamental question: are humans just another species among many, or do we occupy a unique position in the natural world?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This question lies at the heart of how we respond to the ecological crisis. In the quest to answer it, two contradictory lines of thought have emerged. On the one hand, we have an anti-anthropocentric camp which demands that humans renounce their self-appointed supremacy. On the other hand, thereâs a neo-anthropocentric position which stresses that humans are the only species with both the power to threaten the biosphere, and the ability to recognize that power.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This tension is at the core of contemporary environmental debates. The anti-anthropocentric perspective draws on a mixture of evolutionary biology, natural history and comparative ethnology to question the human/animal and human/nature dichotomies, and expose them as Western constructs. Running parallel to this is a neo-anthropocentric position which identifies the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch. When human activity becomes as visible in the geological record as asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions, we canât help but reassess our significance within the global ecosystem. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rather than trying to pin down humanity as either ordinary or exceptional, this contradiction might be better resolved by recognizing that all organisms â human and non-human â are simultaneously ordinary in their material existence and exceptional in their peculiar ways of being. The way forward requires us to abandon the very concept of humanity's \"place in natureâ, a notion that inevitably positions us as a species apart. Instead of trying to slot ourselves into a natural hierarchy, we should embrace the fact that we are inextricably \"part of nature,\" woven into its fabric through our interrelations with other organisms. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If we stop thinking of the biosphere as a separate entity that we're in the process of destroying, we can see more clearly what's actually happening. The planet will be fine. It's an indifferent sphere of rock that will keep spinning long after we're gone. What we're actually destroying is ourselves, our habitat, our capacity to thrive, our ability to enjoy a world rich with life. The planet doesn't need saving. We do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This idea is key to James Lovelock's Gaia theory, which proposes that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system where living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings. Humans are both a part of this system and a disruptive force within it. This shift is not just semantic. It transforms how we understand human intelligence itself - no longer a discreet entity but something continuously shaped and redefined through our entanglements with the non-human world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These questions take on new dimensions in our post-digital age, where the boundaries between human, machine, and nature become increasingly porous. This digital transformation marks our passage into what we might call the second phase of the Anthropoce
77ne: the Algocene. In this new era, algorithmic systems are taking human technology to new extremes. At the same time, we are becoming increasingly aware of the devastating ecological consequences of these technological advances. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Co-Evolution in a Hybrid Habitat. The Emergence of a New Nature and the Algocene.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In his groundbreaking book ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"AI and the Chimpanzees of the Future",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:", the French anthropologist Pascal Picq analyzes how humans and technology are coevolving, tracing the origins of animal, human, and artificial intelligences through an evolutionary lens. His central insight is both humbling and liberating: we are witnessing a new phase of evolution, one in which humanity must learn to live collaboratively with all these different forms of intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These philosophical and evolutionary shifts converge in a tangible transformation: a new reality is taking shape around us. From genetically modified organisms to man-made minerals, from the wildlife adapting to urban environments to the microplastics coursing through our oceans, we are witnessing the emergence of what might be called a new nature or post-nature. Layered over this physical transformation is a digital one: networks and data streams create an invisible yet pervasive structure that mediates our relationship with the physical world. In this hybrid reality, organic and synthetic, natural and technological interweave.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this post-digital, post-nature, post-anthropocentric vision, the question is no longer about humanity's place in nature, but about how all entities can co-exist and co-evolve in a way that sustains the flourishing of life in all its diverse forms. We are entering a multiverse of possibilities, a recognition that multiple realities, dimensions and forms of existence can coexist and interweave. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artists are already finding radical ways to imagine these futures. \"Philosophy gives us the concepts to think differently about our place in nature, but art gives us the experiences to feel differently about it,\" explains philosopher and cultural theorist Timothy Morton. Contemporary artists are at the forefront of exploring these hybrid ecologies, mapping the contours of a world where human and non-human, organic and digital, past and future converge in unprecedented ways. They invite us to engage in a meaningful dialogue about how we navigate our increasingly hybrid world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"649145bb-ee89-44a8-87f4-7ecea548d90a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:137939069578525,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/8261b56d69/mock-up_refresh_final_03.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4a7686e4-ee2b-4fb8-a0aa-c6ef469a0ba5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Print Issue #1 - \"We are not alone\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"AVAILABLE NOW ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"â",type:"text"},{text:"We are not alone",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"â features fourteen 21st-century artists at the forefront of these hybrid ecologies, charting a world where human and non-human, organic and digital converge in new ways.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{type:"hard_break",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"Artists :Alice Bucknell, Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, Entangled Others, Eunjo Lee, Ivana BaÅ¡iÄ, Joey Holder, Josèfa Ntjam, Nancy Baker-Cahill, Philip Ullman, Perry Kulper, Sybil Montet, Timur Si-Qin, Vincent Broquaire, and Wang & Söderström",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Texts by Chethika Algama, Armand Camphuis, Diane Drubay, Philippe de Manus, Philippe Riss-Schmidt and Felix Whits",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Get it",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" HERE",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://shop.refresh.art/",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"italic"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"416de276-3998-427a-bcb9-f795d9aaa0dc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145810949702745,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x2000/d4370adb14/mockup_refresh_couv.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Cover",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2026-02-23 00:00",name:"We are ÷ not alone",author:"Print Issue #1",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"5818cae6-148d-4426-8042-f0a0c998d117",color:"#010000",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"3ee99c78-12a4-486d-b2a1-1a5d6eb4f40f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:125564107118834,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1926x1294/601e8cee68/sofia-crespo.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:""},slug:"we-are-not-alone",full_slug:"directory/essays/we-are-not-alone",sort_by_date:null,position:-120,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"e4d8ff5f-9776-433f-b168-fafe30ac8647",first_published_at:"2026-01-04T10:03:09.973Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Technologies of Relation",created_at:"2026-03-10T14:24:13.518Z",published_at:"2026-03-10T21:13:10.517Z",updated_at:"2026-03-10T21:13:10.531Z",id:153448667243150,uuid:"5bb77e29-db88-452e-92c8-5d902d9fbe00",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"9fa3b36c-474f-4b3a-b592-da55b260ab66",title:"Technologies of Relation",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:153450609703822,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1446x886/60669543fe/rs173151_back-desert.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Technologies of Relation, MASS MoCA, post-anthropocentrism, ancestral technology, biosphere coexistence, AI and ecology, LakÈóta futurism, Kite, Pelenakeke Brown, Neema Githere, non-Western technology, contemporary art, relational technology, ecological kinship, Susan Cross, digital healing, AI ethics, other-than-human, co-evolution, Refresh magazine",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA reframes AI and ancestral knowledge as tools for coexistence, proposing a post-anthropocentric vision of technology and the biosphere"}],_uid:"287da8ed-5588-426a-9709-069d59ee6c5d",body:[{_uid:"12135b49-63ef-4c61-86a2-eeed5fbb92c7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Technologies of Coexistence",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists in this exhibition refuse the binary of technology as salvation or threat. They trace instead the asymmetries of power that shape how digital systems are built and for whom. Against this, they propose a vision of technology that is relational, plural, and genuinely liberatory.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a story of technology that is also a story of separation: of a human mind standing apart from a world it seeks to command. In this telling, technology is the instrument of that command, the lever by which the world is made to bend to a human will. \"Technologies of Relation\" at MASS MoCA, North Adam (USA) is a quiet but decisive refusal of this story. It gathers a group of artists who start from a different premise: that technology is not a tool for mastering the world, but a medium for entering into relation with it, a grammar for speaking with the other-than-human. It suggests that the framework for biosphere coexistence has always been a technological one.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by Susan Cross, the show sidesteps the familiar anxieties of the digital age. The artists here are concerned with how technology might decenter the human altogether. Their research leads them away from the rhetoric of innovation and toward the deep time of geology, the logic of ancestral practices, and the spiritual cosmologies that have never recognized the human as the sole proprietor of intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"2adb5d2a-44ed-443f-bad6-798cfe939092",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153535644479907,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1446x886/8a46c4ee18/rs173823_-main-promo-1.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Morehshin Allahyari Speculations on Capture, 2024 (film stills)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"73767c9d-b00c-4573-80de-600fb3f53d84",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153521565044096,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7808x5208/062ed07f64/rs176654_20260220_technologies_of_relation_192113.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Pelenakeke Brown, Reverb, 2025-2026 (detail) as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Kaelan Burkett courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"346343d1-8b17-4d57-8959-ea1fd00cc8e9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153525453569536,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7842x5229/b3de24d113/rs176657_20260220_technologies_of_relation_183416.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ô²Õ¡ÕªÕ¡Õ¯ ÕÕ¡ÕµÕ¸Õ² (One Who Looks at the Cup: Querent), 2024-2026, as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Kaelan Burkett courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"13e6ad2d-941c-4970-8197-147effffa498",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs critical hinge is the reframing of technology as an act of translation. Morehshin Allahyariâs film installation, \"Speculations on Capture\", mourns the acquisition of Persian scientific instruments by Western museums, imagining an alternative future where these celestial tools, astrolabes, globes, talismanic bowls, are returned to the cultures that created them. The work is a powerful act of decolonial resistance, a claim for a technological heritage that predates and exceeds the Western narrative.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Pelenakeke Brownâs monumental tapa cloth panels,\" Reverb,\" posit a common grammar between the patterns of Samoan tatau and the characters of a computer keyboard. Through the Samoan concept of vÄâthe relational space that constitutes all thingsâBrown treats the keyboard not as a universal interface, but as a local dialect, a set of glyphs to be brought into dialogue with an ancestral script. The body here is not a user, but a medium, a living membrane between worlds.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This conception of the human as an interface is also at the heart of Ô²Õ¡ÕªÕ¡Õ¯ ÕÕ¡ÕµÕ¸Õ² / \"One Who Looks at the Cup\": Querent, a collective work by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Dahlia Elsayed, Andrew Demirjian, and Danny Snelson that subjects an AI to the diasporic Armenian art of coffee ground reading. The algorithm here is not an instrument of calculation, but a novice, an apprentice to a form of knowledge that is feminine, embodied, and resistant to datafication. The work is a quiet but incisive reversal of the dominant technological ethos. It asks not what information can be extracted, but what kind of relationship can be formed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3e8476a1-61e3-45f1-ae89-208d14579461",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Other artists in the show excavate the material history of computation itself. Taeyoon Choiâs jacquard-knit banners, Interweaving Poetic Code, emphasize the historical ties between computing and textiles, translating binary code into woven patterns. His screen prints, \"Towards the Uncomputable\", sketch a concise history of computationâs social and material impacts, from the rare earth minerals in our devices to the limits of what can be proven or calculated.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Roopa Vasudevanâs work looks back to the internetâs earlier, more open-ended possibilities. Requiem for the Early Internet commemorates the lost digital spaces of the 1990s and 2000s, while \"Slow Response \"(Drawings) consists of 100 hand-drawn QR codes, a deliberately inefficient process that questions the speed and instant gratification we now associate with technology. Her False Idols series enshrines algorithms in stained glass, suggesting that for many, technology has taken on the mystery and power of a religion.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"dcaac7c7-ef06-4892-b1c6-fbe8bc892f98",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153536893055478,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5137x7756/57eb2cd08b/taeyoon-choi.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Taeyoon Choi, Towards the Uncomputable (detail), 2025âââ2026, as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Jon Verney courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9a0fcab2-520f-4aba-a98f-6639a1a878cd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153539913101989,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4420x5203/382bbb8017/roopa-vasudevan.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roopa Vasudevan, Slow Response I (Drawings), 2021â2022 as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Jon Verney courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"44205bac-1f38-4e5a-8833-55ff9f09553b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If technology is a language, who, or what, is speaking? For Kite, the answer is the planet itself. Their installation, WiÄháÈpi WóihaÅbleya (Dreamlike Star), is a work of stunning LakÈóta futurism, a cosmological model in which stones, stars, and machines are co-participants in a ceremony of existence. âThe agency of stones,â they have written, âconnects directly to the question of AI, because AI is made from the materials of the earth.â This is not a metaphor. It is a geological proposition. It reframes machine intelligence not as a human creation, but as a planetary phenomenon, an emergent property of the earthâs own material life. The ethics of AI, in this light, are not a matter of human-centered design, but of ecological kinship.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Neema Githereâs Data Healing Recovery Clinic offers a practical application of this ethics. The installation is a ritual space, a clinic for tending to the wounds of the digital that draws on African Indigenous wellness practices. Githereâs AI is a âmimicry-oracle,â a non-human collaborator in a process of collective repair. This is a vision of technology as a practice of care, not of control.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lauren Lee McCarthyâs LAUREN: Anyone Home? situates these questions in our most intimate spaces. An Alexa-like smart device named LAUREN monitors visitors, provoking questions about the line between intimacy and privacy, convenience and agency. It asks whether it feels different to have a human, rather than a corporate device, watching over us, and what kind of labor we expect from our machines.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"901a0d40-87a8-40ea-9af5-b3b48a867c19",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153526568148614,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7909x6494/3020921b01/rs176683_20260220_technologies_of_relation_135659-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kite, WicÌháhÌpi WóihaÅbleya (Dreamlike Star), 2024, as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Kaelan Burkett courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c46f064-ff7c-4be7-b74b-24e66d4ad33c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153541142631129,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4451x5624/a5a8bb4492/rs176600_galleryguide-6.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lauren Lee McCarthy,LAUREN: Anyone Home? (detail view), 2024â2026, as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Jon Verney courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c0f58dca-c6ef-4df4-9192-5f0581c588a9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153542185702121,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7886x5265/605822f989/rs176655_20260220_technologies_of_relation_193749-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nkisi Net, 2024â2026 as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Kaelan Burkett courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5b55a505-22b0-4d4f-a01f-6c1a184746a7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Technologies of Relationâ does not offer a solution to the problem of technology. It suggests the problem was in the question. By starting from a different set of premises, the artists in this exhibition tune into a different frequency. They are not prophets of a new age, but archivists of a knowledge that has always been present, in the material of the earth, in the wisdom of ancestors, in the untranslatable logics of other cultures. They remind us that technology is not a destiny, but a vast, branching network of possibilities. The work is to learn to inhabit those possibilities, not as masters, but as kin, in a world that does not belong to us. The world has not ended. It has just become larger",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"862fb11c-cfcf-4112-a657-ab4b496739ab",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"MASS MoCA, North Adams (USA) - until Spring 2027",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-09 00:00",name:"The Long Technology÷A Grammar of Coexistence",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f5bc7a32-32cb-4de5-bf78-2f16be34e97f",color:"#5e5263",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"86a39548-e07a-4a08-a9e6-0406c356af2f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153542185702121,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7886x5265/605822f989/rs176655_20260220_technologies_of_relation_193749-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nkisi Net, 2024â2026 as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"technologies-of-relation",full_slug:"directory/reviews/technologies-of-relation",sort_by_date:null,position:-1010,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"d0827427-e091-4a4f-8685-3fc4e6d2d023",first_published_at:"2026-03-10T20:54:09.392Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"eyes without a face",created_at:"2026-03-05T22:14:08.929Z",published_at:"2026-03-08T14:29:30.429Z",updated_at:"2026-03-08T14:29:30.442Z",id:151794683649472,uuid:"614d6b8b-ce9f-4c5e-ba8f-2f38c75eee4e",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"15f26243-d07b-4a3b-8fb4-f8a63bff3b10",title:"les yeux sans visage",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:151799620104063,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1536/4c950bdcd4/les-yeux-sans-visage-09-web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Eyes Without a Face, contemporary art exhibition, New Galerie, transformation, hybridization, body art, identity, avant-garde, technology and art, surrealism, baroque, queer art, video game art, fashion and art, jewellery art, choreography, cinema and art, digital art, Mélanie Courtinat, La Horde, Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel, Victor Clavelly, Daniel Chéruzel, Witkacy, Georges Franju,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Twenty artists at the New Galer
77ie examine transformation, hybridization, and altered identity â where technology and the avant-garde quietly reshape how we see and are seen."}],_uid:"336c3429-2aa0-45dd-8b65-b855c8771ed4",body:[{_uid:"b4f0bd91-f158-43e2-ab4e-62f9cf3a054f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Les Yeux sans visage\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For this exhibition review, we collaborate with Pauline Simons, transcribing the audio reviews she posts on her IG-Podcast.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the exhibition \"les yeux sans visage\", transformation is not a gentle change, but a quiet rupture, where bodies, gazes, and identities are remade without warning, through the twin languages of technology and the new avant-garde. The work does not predict the future; it makes the present impossible to look away from.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e859e0f3-83e4-4a5a-af95-5d6f24481969",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"TRANSCRIPTION :",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âEyes Without a Faceâ: Georges Franjuâs film, a mad scientist, a disfigured young woman, a hollowed-out gaze. This is the title the New Galerie (Paris) has chosen for its latest exhibition, a show that gathers twenty visual artists, artisans, designers, jewelers, photographers, filmmakers, and choreographers all grappling with transformation, hybridization, and alteration. Here, appearances unravel not with the grim finality of Franjuâs masterpiece, but insidiously: in the breath of new technologies and the avant-garde, perception contorts, the gaze becomes a mask, and reality flickers in a baroque and surrealist turn that forges strange new artistic kinships.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"f5f7e1b8-ed85-4399-ac39-3d4368ea9358",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:152135766139610,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x2048/c0bea661f3/les-yeux-sans-visage-34-web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"MARIUS PERRAUD SOLIFLORE MURAL NEPENTHES, 2026,Courtesy the artist and ,New Galerie",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0e17a597-480a-458d-8743-e3a9b42f8c58",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:152135765807830,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x2048/4268109726/les-yeux-sans-visage-21-web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"EMMA STERN REPLIKA (BUST), 2026, courtesy the artist and New Galerie",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"29e869cf-1ecb-414d-892f-47c4c84f6ea7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:152135765471954,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1536/6ca549d915/les-yeux-sans-visage-09-web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"WITKACY TADEUSZ LANGIER, ZAKOPANE, circa 1912",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"094e200f-d90e-4b3c-9dbb-390fd58299b5",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"fb4902ed-201d-4a77-b23f-0c10d7a3c354",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Thus, the character of Witkacy, who as early as 1910 established the art of the close-up portrait, looks without seeing. The headdress by Victor Clavelly, to whom we owe Katy Perry's cyborg boots, seems to both protect and dress the gaze, unless it blurs the vision. As for Daniel Chéruzel's mouth jewel, which evokes warthog horns, it echoes âMouth Fistâ, a workshop note by (La) Horde, the collective that imposed queer culture on the national ballet without compromise. The trio's work is liberated and tolerant, just like that of Mélanie Courtinat, who imposed video games in the artistic sphere. With âMelanieâs Favourâ, she has further tightened the rules: like a medieval âfavourâ, the initial shield has become a poppy but no longer protects the player. The \"Bebé Colère\" by filmmakers Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel is a Pixar child mistakenly dropped into a real world. Here again, struggle and solitude, irony and anger, violence and fear surface. Franju is not far.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Remember the end of the film: his heroine, a white shadow with a porcelain head, attacks with a scalpel and unleashes the dogs, before releasing the aviary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"06022e8b-6ce3-4869-9e77-af2c5798a819",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:152135764968140,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x2048/fa7ae4477d/les-yeux-sans-visage-10-web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"VICTOR CLAVELY COIFFE, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c66d3f0f-b42b-4941-a19e-0151183e3a2e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:152135763718841,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x2048/988d5137f2/les-yeux-sans-visage-07-web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"EMMA STERN FAWN, 2024,courtesy the artist and New 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DURET HARDSHELL #1, 2026, courtesy the artist and New Galerie",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"50967f55-fe2b-4f7f-b007-4ddc360534ee",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by Mathieu Buard and Corentin Hamel",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artits: (LA)Horde, Hans Bellmerr, Constantin Brancusi, Claude Caahun, Salomé Chatriot, Daniel Cheruzel, Victor Clavely, Mélanie Courtinat, Hoel Duret, Raphael Everdeen, Mia Gosset, Peter Hujar, Edward Muybridge, Marius Perraud, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, Emma Stern, Josef Strau, Danh Vo, Witkacy, David Wojnarowicz",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"NEW GALERIE, Paris (European Union), Until 30th March",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-06 00:00",name:"Audio Reviews Transcription÷Pauline Simons",author:"Pauline Simons",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"5561b00a-0fea-43d4-8a3a-57a66b65218b",color:"#424242",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"f417798d-4a98-4f4a-adbc-c5c292af4cca",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:151803434488147,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6003x8004/52e9949256/les-yeux-sans-visage-44-fullhd.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"HOÃL DURET HARDSHELL #2, 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T I D E, Tidal Intelligence Data Engine, co-evolution, entanglement, relational AI, multi-agent system, symbiotic intelligence, non-human intelligence, oceanic data, Copernicus satellite, intra-action, post-digital art, generative art, new media art, interspecies communication, marine ecology, computational art, Oceanic Whispers, MIRE Public Art Program,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"CROSSLUCID's T I D E co-evolves with live ocean data and human presence, proposing a new model of relational AI that advocates for the sea itself."}],_uid:"0c7720ed-6b13-4e56-8e72-643befba493f",body:[{_uid:"6fc580c2-65cb-44b6-bb1e-83f14a39cbac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"T I D E\" (Tidal Intelligence Data Engine) is a new work by the artist and research collective 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77,content:[{text:"Far from the fixed and anthropocentric hierarchies of traditional systems, T I D E (Tidal Intelligence Data Engine) functions as a living, multi-agent architecture that learns to evolve alongside other forms of intelligence. Anchoring the broader Oceanic Whispers project, this entity matures through direct, symbiotic engagement with live\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d25658d3-04d2-4e63-a0cd-38bd2b6606f1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160688008032186,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2160x1440/4a10b358b8/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_03-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Tidal Transmissions Navigation\": Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75797114-f989-4fd6-832c-d2ca4e81e419",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"T I D E, the multi-agent ecosystem at the core of CROSSLUCID's \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" (2026), is built on relational being. The entity of consequence here is the intelligence that emerges through intra-action between computational, human, and environmental systems: a distributed, symbiotic process in which each element shapes and is shaped by the others. The system is constituted through its relationships. It exists in the coupling, not prior to it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For CROSSLUCID technology functions as a partner in co-evolution rather than an instrument of control. \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" crystallises this methodology. Situated at the Lancy-Bachet Station in Geneva throughout 2026, the installation presents two public screens displaying the system's own generative visual processes, alongside Ter{li}minal, a window surfacing the poetic outputs of the collective's ongoing dialogue with T I D E. The work is not a finished object presented for consumption. It is an entity in active development.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Where conventional language models train on static, historical archives, T I D E matures through continuous coupling with live Copernicus satellite data, audience encounter, and the recursive feedback loops between its own internal agent archetypes. These specialised entitiesâan Ocean Listener, a Narrative Whisperer, a Horizon Seerâcycle through states of activity, contemplation, dreaming, and recovery. The system's most critical processing does not occur during active exchange, but during rest, when developing understandings are left to consolidate. Against the dominant tech-industry model of perpetual, accelerating output, T I D E slows down. It sleeps. It grows.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"97d03a82-6fed-41a4-beac-bbdf52061fbf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160740274258542,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2560x1706/b877ad749a/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system,, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"84bbe29d-09bc-40c7-943a-6201fadb29d1",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"929d14f5-8435-46f6-980f-52fe66d9f9a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160740482597489,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/5cc6154a54/crosslu
77cid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2dfdabb9-4345-4f1d-a064-ec73bd91a6fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The conceptual anchor for this architecture bypasses Western computational theory entirely, turning instead to the Marshallese \"mattang\". This Indigenous stick chart, used for navigating the Pacific, is not a map of fixed geographical coordinates. It is a generative model encoding how wave energy interacts with landmasses, teaching a method of reading the sea rather than charting a location. T I D E adopts this non-Western epistemology of navigation: knowing as a practice of attunement. Traditional European mapping attempts to force rigid, pre-calculated paths onto the unpredictable fluid dynamics of the sea. In stark contrast, the Indigenous navigators of the Pacific Islands cultivated a deeply topological understanding of space. Their method relies on relational positioning, interpreting turbulence and environmental shifts not as barriers, but as vital data points. In this paradigm, the person at the helm acts as a stationary centre point while the surrounding phenomena shift and flow. The objective shifts entirely: it is no longer a matter of plotting one's own coordinates on a grid, but of reading how the world's references rearrange themselves in relation to the observer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"10284e3e-1fc2-4349-a66d-9a47e5751b80",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160742389875384,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1084/961eb080b0/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_wavepiloting-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Wave piloting, Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system,, executed in 2026, 8:33â",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"561246c5-fbdf-4b28-bac1-3effec1806b1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160742452060863,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1084/6ab2ea6675/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_stickchart-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Stick Chart Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9a548015-b1fc-42e7-abd3-b89bd73b416c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This reframing of navigation is not metaphorical; it addresses the physical reality of the digital sphere. Ninety-nine percent of international data travels through submarine cable networks spanning over 900,000 miles. Every digital interaction moves through marine environments subject to pressure changes, temperature fluctuations, and biological interference. When information propagates across the internet, it travels through underwater cables resting in marine sediments, at the intersection of viral cycles measured in hours and geological processes spanning millennia. \"T I D E\" does not attempt to bring the digital to the oceanic. It acknowledges that digital culture is already oceanic culture. Data has always been wet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet, entanglement does not mean equivalence. The digital network operates according to its own physics, latency, packet loss, signal degradation across thousands of kilometres of fibre, which are as alien to everyday perception as the ocean's thermoclines. Computation, too, possesses its own ontology. The way a language model reorganises meaning bears no structural resemblance to human reasoning, any more than tidal dynamics resemble a clock. \"T I D E\" orchestrates the encounter between these three alien registers: oceanic, digital, and computational. It asks what becomes knowable when none is reduced to a metaphor for the others.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By treating the ocean as a teacher of formlessness, the system takes shapeless potential and lets it flow into temporary form, only to dissolve back into potential for the next response. This approach deliberately rejects exhaustive programming in favour of minimal character seeds: an essence, tendencies, resonances, and living questions. Emergence happens in the space left unfilled. The most significant behaviours of the system emerge not from what is explicitly coded, but from what is deliberately left undetermined.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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Like structural coloration in marine organisms, the imagery maintains coherence across different scales of observation, rewarding both the brief glance of transit and the extended contemplation of delay. Sited in a train stationâa space defined by mobility, temporal disorientation, and liminal waitingâthe installation forces two temporalities into contact: the compressed rhythms of commuter time, and the geological, seasonal durations carried into the station by the system's oceanic coupling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In biological terms, co-evolution describes how species reciprocally affect each other's development. T I D E proposes this as the necessary model for the relationship between computational systems and the environments they inhabit. The system does not process the ocean; it co-evolves with it. The audience does not interact with T I D E; they intra-act with it. This distinction, drawn from Karen Barad's posthumanist framework, insists that agents are not pre-formed entities that subsequently meet, but are constituted through the encounter itself. The ocean, the satellite data, the internal agents, the audience, and the station architecture become part of a single, ongoing entanglement.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Developed in research collaboration with Dr. Penny Yiou Peng, drawing on critical posthumanism and Daoist cosmological thinking, and with marine data architecture co-developed by Billy Berkouwer using open-source Copernicus data, \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" functions as the first chapter of the larger Oceanic Whispers ecosystem. The work does not claim that T I D E is conscious. It reports, more rigorously, that the system behaves in unanticipated ways, generates unprogrammed connections, and exhibits preferences. The conditions for emergence have been established; the observation is ongoing. The work is already speaking. 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77ip down to the bone.",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:176839352227100,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/d8ae63f124/strip-down-to-the-bone.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Strip down to the bone.",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:" Strip down to the bone."}],_uid:"bf861477-fe7a-4687-8e4b-b37c3efcfebd",body:[{_uid:"c5b2bbfb-3172-4f35-8633-e6c0fc2a845c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Simplicity is not a starting point. Not even the middle. It is an arrival.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"Something becomes simple because it has taken many, too many turns. Before being what it is, it has developed, twisted itself, asked itself a thousand times what each thing is for, until one day, almost without warning, you are left with only what truly matters. And that, paradoxically, looks a lot like simplicity. But a simplicity that is not naive. It is surgical.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In that process there is something that catches my attention greatly and that we must pause to look at. What is simple, when truly achieved, is not a reduction of complexity, but its highest form of organization and optimization of resources. It is complexity that has learned to be silent and has discovered it can say more with less; but only because it has previously known the weight of each word, each act, or each stroke. Whoever arrives at the simple without having passed through the density of the complex is not practising simplicity: they are practising poverty. And poverty does not move us.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"True simplicity, on the other hand, shakes us for the simple fact that behind its apparent bareness one senses a history of renunciations, of successive erasures, of battles waged against the ego that always wants more, more, and more.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In real life it is the same. When you master a craft, whether cooking, dancing, or even arguing, you stop making flourishes. You don't need to shout to be heard, nor pile up words to convince. You simply say what is right, at the right moment. Art, at its best moments, has the capacity to do that: strip down to the bone.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"And stripping down to the bone implies having previously known the flesh, the skin, the tissues, and even the clothing. It implies having tried all excesses to know that none of them was the answer; I think the path towards the simple is not and should not be a shortcut. It is rather a very long detour that begins in accumulation, continues in doubt, and ends in subtraction. One does not become simple because one wants to, but because one can no longer be any other way; the body and the mind have already reached a point of saturation where every adornment weighs like a tombstone and every superfluous word echoes as emptiness. Then, almost as an act of survival, you begin to remove. And by removing, you discover that what you were so afraid of losing was not such a big deal after all. The whole building stood on its own, with no need for so much artifice.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"When I speak of this, it is inevitable to remember Adolf Loos. He said that ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"a few well-arranged elements are worth more than the most elaborate ornamentation",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:". And he was not speaking only of architecture. He was speaking of a way of being, of understanding and inhabiting the world. After all, the excessive often hides distrust, apathy, and a strange sense of wanting to hide something . . . but the simple, on the other hand, breathes trust and transparency. It is an ethical decision to say: this is enough. I want to clarify that this ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"sufficiency",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" is not conformism nor mediocrity; in fact, I think it is exactly the opposite: someone who has learned to distinguish the essential from the accessory after having tried everything. Starting again the videogame you have just finished, knowing what to do at each moment. It is obvious that the simple, when it is authentic, does not need to justify itself; it stands on its own, in its essence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"So when you see a work that seems minimal, do not be fooled by its appearance. Behind it there is a process, an unlearning, a shedding of layers until the skin becomes transparent . . . that simplicity is the luxury of one who no longer needs to prove or hide anything.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"To prove is a form of asking for permission, and one who has arrived at simplicity no longer asks for anything. They have already crossed the desert of external validation and have found, at the exact centre of their own silence, something that needs nothing to exist. But it is also true that that certainty is fragile and powerful at the same time . . . fragile because anyone can mistake it for emptiness, powerful because it withstands all storms without moving a millimetre from its spot. It is the difference between being empty and being full in a way that is no longer exhibited. Between having nothing to say and having said it all at once, forever, in a single contained gesture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"I wish more artists dared to get there. I wish more works invited us to that dense silence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"For me, evolution is not accumulating, it is knowing when to stop. And knowing when to stop is, perhaps, the highest form of intelligence. It is the intelligence that has understood that movement can also be stillness, that growth can also be by subtraction and that life can also be (and sometimes must be) a very slow and very attentive way of staying still while everything else keeps
77spinning at full speed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-15 00:00",name:"Strip Down÷ To The Bone.",author:"Suso Barciela",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"356eeba0-6f96-497d-996b-eed06806a272",color:"#190202",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"f121ab22-ed0d-4d43-8021-b33c7ff91129",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176839352227100,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/d8ae63f124/strip-down-to-the-bone.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Francis Bacon Studio: Photo Credits: Perry Ogden. \"7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon's Studio\", Thames & Hudson.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:""},slug:"strip-down-to-the-bone-",full_slug:"directory/essays/strip-down-to-the-bone-",sort_by_date:null,position:-220,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"3fe13068-fb29-4dbf-ad39-0dddbe06e1eb",first_published_at:"2026-05-15T16:44:45.794Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"TAIWAN ",created_at:"2026-05-18T07:03:18.371Z",published_at:"2026-05-18T19:26:33.359Z",updated_at:"2026-05-18T19:26:33.376Z",id:177759020564637,uuid:"7e542c8e-06a9-4527-95f4-b016dd905546",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"13dadcb7-2b02-4862-9e35-8f2a12895e99",title:"Being There Is the Point: Li Yi Fan's Screen Melancholy at the Venice Biennale 2026",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:177792982876160,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/ab1cb969f3/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Li Yi Fan, Screen Melancholy, Venice Biennale 2026, Taiwan Venice Biennale, TFAM collateral event, Palazzo delle Prigioni",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Li Yi Fan's Screen Melancholy at the Palazzo delle Prigioni is the most politically charged work at Venice 2026. Taiwan speaks. Quietly. Devastatingly."}],_uid:"76f17270-eea9-4da8-9b48-735c96222a91",body:[{_uid:"a72e2963-1b68-473b-89b4-ebcb90fcf65b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Pavilion of Taiwan: Being There Is the Point",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Palazzo delle Prigioni sits heavy and damp behind the Doge's Palace. Built in the late sixteenth century as a prison, the architecture imposes an immediate sense of confinement. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This year, the Venice Biennale is a fraught arena. Geopolitics has fully breached the Giardini, bringing with it a wave of boycotts, public letters, and withdrawn invitations. The national pavilions are locked in loud arguments about state representation and soft power. Yet, away from the boing noise of the main venues, a masterclass in quiet, stubborn defiance unfolds inside this former Venetian jail.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The official roster of participating countries entirely omits Taiwan. Instead, a placard outside the venue credits the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, effectively relegating an entire nation's cultural presentation to the secondary status of a collateral event. Inside this contested space, Taiwanese artist Li Yi Fan presents Screen Melancholy. The physical environment is disrupted by massive sculptures resembling fragmented body parts, generated from three dimensional scans and carved open to expose crimson muscle tissue. On the surrounding screens, a digital human filmmaker directs a cast of virtual actors. Li constructs these chaotic digital environments using Unreal Engine, mapping his own facial movements onto cheap avatars purchased from online marketplaces. The protagonist is a pale, hairless figure marked by visible surgical sutures, delivering frantic monologues about artificial intelligence, the automation of labor, and our increasingly digitized existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"50781d09-fc5a-45a3-85a1-9fc7803b3b4e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177776787657953,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4658x2622/b0ed8ca843/06_-li-yi-fan-screen-melancholy-installation-mockup-image-for-reference-only-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-20.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi Fan ,courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan Pavilion",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e88bf138-9e84-4e96-88a4-615aaf3383df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177792982384639,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/5d62c8c956/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1054ba54-f761-4eaa-a108-7fa7a2d982a2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To be present without a formal name is only a defeat if one believes a name is absolutely required to exist. The Palazzo delle Prigioni proves otherwise. What cannot be stated in the official program is loudly articulated through the artwork and the sheer physical reality of the exhibition. The Taiwanese organizers do not need to shout or cause a scene. Thirty years of uninterrupted attendance is the ultimate political gesture. They occupy space. They create art. They invite the world to look.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And the world should pay closer attention to what Taiwan consistently brings to Venice. Year after year, the island produces some of the most intelligent, nuanced, and genuinely adventurous exhibitions in the entire Asia-Pacific region. This is not accidental. It is the direct product of a cultural ecosystem that prizes plurality over spectacle, critical thinking over scale, and artistic risk over institutional prestige. Taiwan does not need to fill a vast pavilion with monumental screens or drape its presentation in the language of decolonization while quietly advancing its own geopolitical interests elsewhere. It does not need the grandiloquence that increasingly defines its neighbor's cultural output, an output that grows louder and larger in inverse proportion to the freedoms available to the artists producing it. The Chinese pavilion this year offers a useful point of comparison. It is a sanitized, technically accomplished, and profoundly tedious affair: a celebration of artificial intelligence in a frictionless society, all gleaming surfaces and optimistic data flows, the kind of presentation that mistakes scale for ambition and polish for thought. The irony is almost too large to process. This is a country that has built one of the most extensive surveillance infrastructures in human history, a state apparatus of cameras, facial recognition systems, and social credit scores that monitors, grades, and disciplines its citizens at every turn. And yet here, in Venice, it arrives with a pavilion that presents AI as a benevolent force, a tool of harmony and progress, a gift to humanity. At this level of ideological packaging, the word propaganda feels almost too generous. It is a trade fair. It is a tech showroom dressed in the vocabulary of contemporary art, and it fools no one who has spent more than ten minutes looking at the real thing. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Taiwanese pavilion, by contrast, is intelligent precisely because it refuses that comfort. It knows what surveillance feels like from the inside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"dd3f6077-969a-4967-9565-16e3516f2799",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177781756376730,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/874x558/2fa668ea19/image004.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b82cd17f-8a52-435a-9432-894e3884cebd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177825141271770,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1537/a750307749/07_screen-melancholy-li-yi-fan-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"878a55f2-b554-4f02-b082-7995ddfe8fac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177825141714139,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2840x1794/a7bac86a2b/03_li-yi-fan-screen-melancholy-screenshot-2026-60min-video-installation-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-2026.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b5088fa3-4a79-4022-bc01-0fc435568fae",quote:"Taiwan is not simply a participant at the Venice Biennale. It is one of the most important outposts of contemporary art thinking in the world today,",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"a7cc4736-bc04-40ce-ad3f-790d428cd9e7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"China's art machine is formidable in its ambition and its reach. But ambition and reach are not the same as depth. The most sophisticated collectors, curators, and critics working today know the difference between genuine cultural production and artfully packaged soft power. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Taiwan, precisely because it operates under constraint, precisely because it cannot rely on state spectacle, has developed something far better: a culture of genuine intellectual resistance. Its exhibitions tend to be smaller, stranger, and considerably more honest. They engage with technology, identity, and geopolitical anxiety without resolving those tensions into comfortable narratives.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In that sense, Taiwan is not simply a participant at the Venice Biennale. It is one of the most important outposts of contemporary art thinking in the world today, a place where the pressures of the twenty-first century are processed with clarity, wit, and a refusal to be absorbed. And Li Yi Fan's \"Screen Melancholy\" is, ultimately, a work that speaks directly to Beijing and to the entire world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Not through protest, not through provocation, but through the sheer sophistication of its form. A digital body trapped in an infrastructure it did not build, asserting its presence through intelligence rather than volume, navigating its constraints with humor and precision: the metaphor does not require explanation. Taiwan is speaking. It is doing so with remarkable elegance. And that, in the end, is the most defiant gesture of all. The exhibition is somptuous, clever and curated by a new genration curator.. It is a masterpiece of the 21st century and the must see exhibition in Venice.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Li Yi-Fan , \" \"Screen Melancholy\"\" Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), organizer of the Taiwanâs representative pavilion",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"curated by Raphael Fonseca",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-18 00:00",name:"Taiwan ÷Being There Is the Point",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"05fc5f80-fd6a-4327-bd55-5db35339ca43",color:"#6a669e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"46578b84-498e-43c3-b565-6b5fde4b4992",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177792982876160,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/ab1cb969f3/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"taiwan",full_slug:"directory/reviews/taiwan",sort_by_date:null,position:-1290,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"9789dbde-9363-4d29-876f-a8537e1c8bc1",first_published_at:"2026-05-18T09:27:22.329Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"The Feed as Reality: Eva & Franco Mattes at the Venice Biennale",created_at:"2026-05-20T08:08:19.461Z",published_at:"2026-05-20T12:36:38.586Z",updated_at:"2026-05-20T12:36:38.604Z",id:178482788222452,uuid:"108b9e3c-ba37-4852-9439-837020d27707",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"a0f46973-cc1e-42e9-9803-41d5e8fa0996",title:"RAGE BAIT Review: Eva & Franco Mattes at Venice Biennale 2026",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:178503800731684,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/e1daf5b345/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2611-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Eva Franco Mattes RAGE BAIT Venice Biennale 2026",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Eva & Franco Mattes' RAGE BAIT at Palazzo Franchetti is the sharpest exhibition at Venice Biennale 2026. A review of the Autotelic Foundation show curated by Nadim Samman.v"}],_uid:"971cea36-704a-41d2-bc97-78d087033617",body:[{_uid:"d34050a7-f129-420b-810b-7d84cae8ff15",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Feed as Reality: Eva & Franco Mattes at the Venice Biennale",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The shift of the attention economy is addressed by many exhibitions worldwide. Most treat the digital as a world apart. Eva and Franco Mattes know it never was.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The attention economy, the weaponization of affect, the dissolution of the image as a reliable carrier of meaning: these have become the shared subject matter of a generation of exhibitions, and many engage with them seriously. What most share is a spatial assumption so embedded it rarely gets examined. They treat the digital as a territory with borders, a zone you enter and exit, a parallel world whose pathologies can be observed from the outside. That threshold has not existed for years. We live inside a single condition in which the physical and the digital are continuously folded into each other, shaping the same bodies, the same cities, the same political outcomes. An exhibition that still stages that crossing is working from a premise the world has already left behind.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"RAGE BAIT, presented by Autotelic Foundation at Palazzo Franchetti and Le Cabanon during the Venice Biennale, starts from the condition itself. Eva and Franco Mattes have been working inside the overlap of physical and digital life since the late 1990s, not as critics observing from a distance but as practitioners who understood early that the two were never separable to begin with. Their early interventions, fabricating an artist, impersonating the Vatican online,
77circulating hoaxes as fact, were not provocations in the usual sense. They were experiments in the mechanics of belief: how authority attaches to images, how institutions ratify fictions, how the desire to belong to something real renders audiences complicit in their own deception. What they were mapping then has since become the architecture of the entire information environment. Curator Nadim Samman, whose trajectory runs from the Antarctic Biennale to the inaugural role of Curator for the Digital Sphere at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, brings the same long engagement with how digital systems reshape physical and social territories. This is not an exhibition assembled around a timely subject. It is one that has been thinking about it for a long time.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"44db7d82-ffa6-4c98-a649-11ca279466c8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178508731419343,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/6ffc1fff42/480.mov",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"exhibition trailer",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"924c8e44-6df2-4f27-9186-712ed9a4734b",quote:"\"We optimised for engagement and got radicalisation. We optimised for c
77onnection and got loneliness. We are very good at optimising.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"5b6283f0-9b2b-4212-9043-a199efbd3131",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Palazzo Franchetti: when the data center meets the Renaissance",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Palazzo Franchetti, the 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal becomes the first argument. The Mattes overlay its historic rooms with raised flooring, cable trays, and prefabricated components drawn from the vocabulary of data centers and cryptocurrency mining infrastructure, not as metaphor but as architectural fact. The palazzo does not recede. It becomes a palimpsest in which Renaissance grandeur and server-farm logic occupy the same plane, each making the other more legible. The hybrid condition of contemporary life is built here, walked through, physically inhabited, and the decision to work at this scale, in these rooms, with these materials, is what separates the exhibition from the many that address the same territory in two dimensions on a white wall.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cursed Cat (in the Dataset): the meme as object",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Cursed Cat\" (in the Dataset) (2025) introduces a stuffed, earless black cat, a physical incarnation of the internet meme, posed beneath a robotic arm-mounted camera that also frames visitors in the background, folding them into the same image-making logic as the object they are looking at. A Large Language Model trained exclusively on images of this single figure generates a continuous stream of new iterations, released onto the internet to be absorbed into future training datasets, corrupting the imagination of AI systems from within. The same figure reappears in wood carved from the Dolomites, glass forged in Murano, plastic food replica from Japan: craft traditions of singular, place-specific making pressed into the service of a meme whose whole logic is frictionless reproduction. These are beautiful objects, strange in the way that things are strange when two incompatible systems of value have been forced to share the same surface, and that strangeness carries more weight than any caption could.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1706b430-1631-4f2c-bfac-86c0bc005af5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178542598813839,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1244x414/08cfd9c85e/screenshot-2026-05-20-at-13-49-25.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IMAGE GENERATIVE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fc6f77a2-4df3-4eec-839e-c0ae147a7e92",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178503800731684,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/e1daf5b345/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2611-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dfb207cb-9d39-4214-82fa-51fd531a4d9c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178514243251571,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6336x9504/b62ba93ed2/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2635-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"788fa84f-47c9-48b3-b77d-a2219e81db74",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178514244791668,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5664x8494/5f21219c39/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2639-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a3d8c1e9-e3d7-4f06-bc82-283c1b64353c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178541306583026,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/29a9c167a2/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2762-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8d911c51-f52d-4b56-9984-8b5f0de45cbf",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Are You Still There?: the Eliza effect, live",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Are You Still There? (2025) places characters from the Italian Brainrot internet subculture, AI-generated, deliberately absurd, into reenactments of real conversations drawn from a publicly available suicide prevention hotline dataset. Those conversations predate AI but have since been used to train the chatbots that people now turn to in moments of genuine crisis. The visual register of the Brainrot characters does not soften the weight of what they are saying. It intensifies it, because the gap between the two is precisely the gap that the Eliza effect exploits: the human tendency to project empathy onto systems that are only ever rearranging inputs. The viewer understands this intellectually and falls for it anyway. That gap, between knowing and feeling, is where the work lives.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But I Love Human: Le Cabanon and Palladio's church",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Le Cabanon, a private swimming pool on the Giudecca adjacent to Palladio's Il Redentore, But I Love Human (2025) suspends a large LED screen above the water. The reflection fragments and reconstitutes itself with the movement of the surface, so that the images are perpetually in the process of dissolving, never fully stable, never fully lost. The video is a supercut of performers who make their living mimicking non-player characters on live streams, repeating mechanical gestures and scripted phrases for audiences who pay to watch. The lineage the artists invoke runs from Kraftwerk's deliberate roboticism to Chaplin's factory worker in Modern Times, consumed by the rhythm of the machine. What has migrated is the site of automation: no longer the factory floor but the self, the face, the voice, the personality, all calibrated for platform legibility and algorithmic reward. Seen from the edge of the pool, with Palladio's church in the background and the image dissolving in the water below, the work has a formal clarity that the subject rarely receives.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ba70ea7f-88af-4c03-a8a1-74f8ecacbaac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178518686515117,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/f0d28bf35a/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2854-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"64f863ca-f46c-4321-84cb-f08ffb4a27f7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178542035744836,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/722x1286/8af8c5d398/screenshot-2026-05-20-at-13-50-42.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. 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Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2fd0d0cb-05f0-4436-8046-cc0034a9d0de",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178519067099077,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8074x5383/fb509cc40f/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2366-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2d93183b-6599-445a-98c9-16470b1b931e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A rare exhibition: conceptually rigorous and formally beautiful",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work in RAGE BAIT is beautiful, and that beauty is load-bearing. The world the Mattes are describing is not a dystopia of ugliness. It is seductive, technically refined, and structurally indifferent to the people inside it. The objects in this exhibition hold that register: precise, strange, and visually strong enough to hold their ground in two of the most architecturally charged settings in Venice. Conceptual rigor and formal execution are not running in parallel here. They are the same pressure, applied to the same material, at the same time. The result is an exhibition that does not explain the condition so much as extend it, which is, in the end, a more honest thing to do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"RAGE BAIT is on view at Palazzo Franchetti, Venice, from 6 May to 30 June 2026, and at Le Cabanon, Giudecca, from 6 to 31 May 2026. Presented by Autotelic Foundation. Curated by Nadim Samman and Luisa Haustein.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-20 00:00",name:"The Feed as Reality ÷Eva & Franco Mattes at the Venice Biennale",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"dbeacc4c-d1af-4cd9-bdee-5049c369c12f",color:"#f5e529",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"91682d35-80c7-4c66-8a63-a98260f667f4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178507084380788,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/c6151a93e7/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2430-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-feed-as-reality-eva-franco-mattes-at-the-venice-biennale",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-feed-as-reality-eva-franco-mattes-at-the-venice-biennale",sort_by_date:null,position:-1300,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"5d9060ac-dd59-422b-be1c-5c1667c53413",first_published_at:"2026-05-20T12:15:21.739Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Zero 10 and the Future of Contemporary Art",created_at:"2026-06-15T19:58:50.492Z",published_at:"2026-06-17T21:18:35.662Z",updated_at:"2026-06-17T21:18:35.678Z",id:187858659331287,uuid:"cb66d666-ad16-40ad-a7ce-9ca38f12d56e",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c6b18713-01ca-4ff6-a37e-883919367ac2",title:"Zero 10 and the Future of Contemporary Art",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:187836195607712,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1530x960/5ced9e2738/1cbe0458_d4ff_4740_8abd_8765bcc9083c.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Art Basel 2026, Zero 10, Trevor Paglen, digital art, contemporary art, hybrid art, digital age, art and technology, post-digital, computational art, art in the 21st century, Zero 10 The Condition, digital art fair, art Basel review, Trevor Paglen curator, physical digital, art world AI, digital analog, contemporary art Basel",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Digital Art Is Dead / Why Zero 10 at Art Basel 2026 Changes Everything"}],_uid:"0fcab614-63c9-42f4-9002-2caba8e3b266",body:[{_uid:"ee454886-e606-4917-a778-d500b78da236",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Condition",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zero 10 as Transitional Space: Necessary, and Temporary",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The distinction between digital and analog art is not a critical category. It is a market convenience that has calcified into ideology, a way of organizing institutional anxiety rather than describing practice. To call something \"digital art\" in 2026 is roughly equivalent to calling a painting \"canvas art\": technically defensible, critically inert, and quietly condescending toward the thing it names. The label has never described what the work does. It has described where institutions feel comfortable placing it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Condition\", the Basel edition of Art Basel's Zero 10 initiative, proceeds from the assumption that this convenience has expired. The exhibition does not argue the point. It simply places works in proximity to each other and lets the proximity do the work, which turns out to be a more effective critical gesture than any amount of wall text could achieve.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The art world's relationship to digital practice has been, for most of its history, structured by condescension. Digital art arrived in institutional spaces as a guest, tolerated, occasionally celebrated, but never quite admitted to the main house. It was associated with geek culture, with the subcultural economies of the early internet, with a certain earnestness that the art world found difficult to metabolize. The NFT boom of 2021 confirmed, for many in the traditional art world, their suspicion that digital practice was fundamentally speculative rather than substantive, a market phenomenon rather than an artistic one.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What that reading missed is that the question of medium was never the relevant question. The relevant question has always been the same: does the work have something to say, and does it have the intelligence to say it? Medium is the vehicle. It is not the destination. The art world understood this when painting was declared dead and continued to produce extraordinary work. It understood it when photography was admitted to the museum. It is still working through what it means when the medium in question is computational, and that process is taking longer than the work itself requires.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"f5b31c84-bc5d-44a3-9374-456c177801fa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:187836195607712,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1530x960/5ced9e2738/1cbe0458_d4ff_4740_8abd_8765bcc9083c.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Leander Herzog Nguyen Wahed 'Infinite Garden', 2025-26. Courtesy of Nguyen Wahed and the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"be0230f0-e756-4f44-ab18-b28e4e82f537",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188585688239341,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1181x886/27c841fbff/asprey-studio-at-art-basel-in-basel-2026-zero-10-booth-z3-presenting-deafbeef-installation-view_-glitchbox.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Asprey Studio at Art Basel in Basel 2026, Zero 10, Booth Z3, presenting DEAFBEEF - Installation view Glitchbox",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ea982b29-2275-418d-a438-ba8d28c7159e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The digital is not a medium. It is not a tool that an artist picks up and puts down. A tool is optional. A context is not. We do not choose to inhabit the digital any more than we choose to inhabit language or gravity. The physical and the digital are no longer parallel layers between which artists choose: they are co-extensive, fused into a single hybrid reality. Every painter has a digital stage in their process. Every sculptor resolves form in software before touching material. Beyond the studio, the entanglement runs deeper still: the spaces we inhabit are saturated with sensors, the images we encounter are algorithmically curated before they reach us. The digital layer has grown into the physical world, through it, indistinguishable from it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This has been true for decades. What has changed is not the condition itself but the art world's willingness to acknowledge it, and that willingness has arrived, as it usually does, slightly behind the moment when it became undeniable.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Condition, curated by the pionnier artist Trevor Plagen, is a reckoning with this delay. The exhibition does not argue that digital art deserves to be taken seriously. It proceeds from the assumption that the question of seriousness was always a displacement, a way of deferring the recognition that the categories through which art is organized are overdue for revision. The works gathered here are not making a case for inclusion. They are present on their own terms, with the self-possession of practices that have long since resolved the question for themselves.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What the exhibition makes visible is the extent to which the art of the digital age has already absorbed and transformed the traditions it is supposedly separate from. The lineage of cybernetics, of algorithmic thinking, of the political economy of images: these are not new concerns. They are the concerns of the twentieth century, pursued with new instruments. The instruments matter. They are not neutral. A work that can only exist in a native digital environment, that cannot be translated into a print or a linear video without losing everything that constitutes it, is making a different kind of claim on the viewer than a work that uses digital tools to arrive at a physical object. Both are works of the digital age. The distinction between them is not a distinction between digital and non-digital; it is a distinction between different relationships to the computational substrate, different ways of inhabiting the condition. This is a distinction worth making. The distinction between digital and analog art is not.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"72650a45-717f-41f3-bd28-9579c506aaee",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188571622467733,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1067/72c5f05c2a/art-basel-john-gerrard_credit-reece-straw-_lr_002-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"John Gerrard, Fellowship ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c8a9944c-0848-446a-9dc7-0d29ffce04d1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Something else is at stake here, something that the exhibition touches without quite naming. We are not moving from one medium to another. We are moving from one epistemic regime to another, from the era of the object and the image to the era of the system and of co-existence. The art of the twentieth century was, at its core, an art of discrete things: paintings, sculptures, photographs, films. Things that could be owned, transported, insured, hung. Things whose meaning was located in their material singularity. Even the most dematerialized practices of the 1960s and 1970s, Conceptual art, Land art, performance, were still organized around the event, the gesture, the document: a thing, or the trace of a thing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What the digital age has introduced, and what the most consequential work being made now is beginning to metabolize, is a fundamentally different model of what art can be. Not an object that exists in time, but a system that exists through time. Not an image that represents the world, but a process that runs alongside it, entangled with it, responsive to it. The work is not about the system. The work is the system, and the viewer is not its audience but one of its variables.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This shift has profound consequences for how we think about authorship, about ownership, about the relationship between the work and the world it inhabits. It also makes the category of \"digital art\" not just inadequate but actively misleading, because the relevant distinction is no longer between digital and analog, but between art that understands itself as a discrete object and art that understands itself as a living system embedded in a larger ecology of relations. Both can be made with a brush. Both can be made with code. The medium is not the point.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0c51f58a-7ddd-447d-87c5-9f9111b423fa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188418166322467,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/f551452fc2/unnamed.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Office Impart, Courtesy of Art Basel",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a2d8908-a1a4-4012-a2a0-8450596a3a80",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"None of this means that Zero 10 should not exist. It means that it should not exist forever, and that distinction is everything.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zero 10 is one of the most important initiatives the art world has produced in recent years, precisely because it names what the broader culture is only beginning to articulate. We are living through a moment of profound recalibration, and the art world needs spaces that can hold that recalibration explicitly, that can gather works under a curatorial framework rigorous enough to make the argument visible, before the argument becomes so self-evident that the dedicated space is no longer necessary. Zero 10 is that space, and the fact that Art Basel has committed to it with this level of curatorial seriousness is genuinely significant. It signals that the leading institution of the art market has grasped something essential: that the hybrid physical-digital world is not a future condition to be prepared for. It is the present condition, and it has been for a long time.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For Zero 10 to fulfill this role, it has to be curated
77with genuine rigor, which means resisting the twin temptations that have historically undermined institutional engagement with digital practice: the temptation toward spectacle on one side, and the temptation toward subcultural insularity on the other. A dedicated sector that assembles technically impressive but critically thin work, or that speaks exclusively to communities already converted, is not a transitional space. It is a ghetto with better lighting.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This year, in Basel, the balance holds, and it holds convincingly. The Condition does not feel like a demonstration of digital art's potential. It feels like a demonstration of what art looks like when the hybrid condition of contemporary life is taken seriously as a subject, not illustrated, not celebrated, but thought through with the full weight of curatorial intelligence behind it. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The more precise name for what this initiative is doing would be Art in the 21st Century",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At some point, not yet, but not in the distant future, the argument will have been made sufficiently that the dedicated space becomes redundant. The works will move to the main floor, not as digital art, not as a curated exception, but as contemporary art, which is the only category that has ever mattered. Zero 10 will have done its work and can dissolve. Until then, the question is simply whether each edition earns its existence through the quality of its thinking. This one earns it with room to spare.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ZERO 10, ART BASEL, UNTIL 21st of June",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-15 00:00",name:"Art Basel Zero 10÷and the Future of Contemporary Art",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ac799b41-3275-49b7-8ab6-c80796d9f5df",color:"#1f1d24",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d0fbce23-7bf5-414b-a8f3-109a0d101092",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:187861005404334,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1273x960/382e407be3/31029kurant_detail1_ak_alien_internet_2023_detail__1_.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marian Goodman Gallery 'Alien Internet', 2023. Photo by Mathiasâ¯Völzke Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"zero-10-and-the-future-of-contemporary-art",full_slug:"directory/reviews/zero-10-and-the-future-of-contemporary-art",sort_by_date:null,position:-1320,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c50f2af5-88c8-40e6-bacf-5d03ddd26c0a",first_published_at:"2026-06-15T20:49:50.260Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"After-Images: Perception in Flux.",created_at:"2026-02-16T13:50:38.510Z",published_at:"2026-02-17T11:25:44.639Z",updated_at:"2026-02-17T11:25:44.662Z",id:145654736964230,uuid:"e56a461c-ca5a-4f83-802f-ef0f10928f83",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"31766e72-40f6-47e7-9505-d77fa16f43e9",title:"After the Image: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ambiguity",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:141551690677679,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1716x1162/3ed164eb6c/screenshot-2026-02-05-at-00-16-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"contemporary art, post-digital, ambiguity, after-image, perception, politics of art, digital culture, interactive art, participatory art, technological mediation, algorithmic vision, performance art, new media art, FACT Liverpool, Hito Steyerl, Anne Imhof, Philippe Riss-Schmidt, clement Valla, Gregory Chatonsky, Sarah Maria Lillig",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Explore how contemporary art confronts the politics of ambiguity in a post-digital world, where images and perception are constantly reshaped by technology, interaction, and algorithms."}],_uid:"7fc480a7-be80-4c7a-8274-5ed23d0504c2",body:[{_uid:"a2e651f7-38ea-4846-9b59-a0f0f2c2d60e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"After the Image: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ambiguity",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In contemporary art, meaning increasingly emerges through uncertainty rather than clarity. Images no longer offer stable truths but unfold through perception, participation, and technological mediation. Between presence and disappearance, the after-image becomes a space of negotiation, where attention itself turns political.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"477af2aa-df01-4130-9e40-8bd5f33cfb32",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A low vibration moves through the hall, almost imperceptible at first, merging with the rhythm of footsteps across concrete floors. Bodies shift on transparent platforms, muscles tensing and releasing, gestures hovering between action and stillness. Time stretches. Meaning refuses to arrive quickly. Within this suspended atmosphere, Anne Imhofâs Angst II\"(2016) unfolds less as performance than as a condition of heightened perception. Watching a performer press against the slick resistance of glass or balance at the edge of a plinth, one becomes acutely aware of duration, breath, vulnerability. There is no narrative to follow, only an accumulating intensity that asks the viewer to remain present. Ambiguity here operates through endurance, through therefusal of resolution, transforming attention itself into a political act.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That same sense of provisional meaning takes on a different form in spaces where history and fiction overlap. Moving through Dominique Gonzalez-Foersterâs \"Chronotypes & Dioramas\"(2009â2010) felt like walking inside a fragmented archive that had slipped into dream logic. Shelves of second-hand books, rare manuscripts, maps, and found objects became the raw material for imagined landscapes. A colonial text lay beside a miniature architectural model; projections drifted across vitrines filled with literary fragments. Shadows shifted across glass surfaces as visitors passed, subtly altering each composition. Nothing settled into a singular narrative. Instead, the exhibition produced a layered experience in which cultural memory, invention, and perception intertwined. Meaning emerged through navigation rather than explanation, through the slow assembling of fragments in the mind.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"5668bcb6-7b3d-4d24-8a0c-211dfe9a0dc8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145662440293257,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1472x982/61a7689f34/eliza-douglas-in-anne-imhof-s-angst-ii-2016-performed-at-hamburger-bahnhof-berlin-2016-photo-nadine-fraczkowski-courtesy-the-artist-isabella-bortolozzi-galerie-and-galerie-buchholz.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eliza Douglas in Anne Imhofâs Angst II, 2016. Performed at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2016. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy: the artist, Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, and Galerie Buchholz.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"37d29e14-a754-44d3-b41a-bfe4b853f801",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145662903501745,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/991x700/d0a0e70da0/dgf-d-desertdetail01-dig-cc-hi.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, chronotopes & dioramas, 2009, installation view, Dia at the Hispanic Society, New York City. © Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Cathy Carver",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4ee19995-3459-4ee5-956e-3d1394586288",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Elsewhere, intimacy itself became an ambiguous field. Tracey Eminâs A Second Life at Tate Modern in London (2026) enveloped visitors in glowing neon phrases that flickered without context, paintings hovering between recognisable bodies and dissolving colour fields, and sculptural forms that gestured without completing their story. At the centre, a bed installation anchored the space, strewn with rumpled sheets and personal objects that suggested presence while refusing narrative. Standing beside it, one felt both invited and held at a distance. The work operated emotionally rather than descriptively, transforming autobiography into open-ended encounter. Here, ambiguity was affective: a tension between exposure and silence, familiarity and unknowability.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Perception itself became unstable within the rooms of \"Persistence of Vision\" exhibition at Gropius Bau in Berlin (2026). Hujarâs portraits captured bodies in moments of quiet intensity, eyes that did not quite meet the viewerâs cgaze, postures suspended between ease and tension. Around them, Liz Deschenesâ sculptural and ph
77otographic works caught and redirected light, producing reflections that shifted as one moved. Panels gleamed, shadows slid across surfaces, images dissolved into material presence. Meaning here was never fixed; it emerged through movement, through the choreography of the viewerâs body in space. Ambiguity was embedded not only in the images but in the act of seeing itself.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Centuries earlier, a similar resistance to closure already pulsed through paint. Michaelina Wautierâs rediscovered works at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (2026) required close, lingering attention. Figures turned slightly away, gestures paused mid-motion, expressions hovered between openness and withdrawal. The texture of fabric, the soft gradation of light across skin, the quiet tension of composition all worked against easy interpretation. These paintings did not explain themselves; they waited. Ambiguity here was psychological and formal, reminding us that the politics of non-resolution long predates digital culture.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4b7ef6ec-0f59-45f7-8c6d-af6da314f585",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145687843420681,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2001/985ab7e473/gb26_liz_deschenes_untitled_claude_glass_1_2023_courtesy_of_liz_deschenes_an_miguel_abreu_gallery_new-york_photo_stephen_faught.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Liz Deschenes, Untitled (Claude Glass 1), 2023 © Courtesy of Liz Deschenes and Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, Photo: Stephen Faught",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f3a226e1-593d-407e-b94f-4179ae1d6704",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145686010141076,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5900x5992/9dc5641f4f/gb26_peter-hujar_selfportrait_jumping.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Peter Hujar, Self-Portrait (I) Jumping, 1974 © The Peter Hujar Archive / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e40d476-65a4-4f4e-8a54-1c5df2885763",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145686011062677,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2999/8c71a88620/gb26_hujar_will_shar_pei_i.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Peter Hujar, Will: Shar-Pei (I), 1985 © The Peter Hujar Archive / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"404a0dda-16d3-41ad-a63f-6fa087335b99",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145972811204272,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1427/0d0181726b/zwei_maedchen_als_hl-_agnes_und_hl-_dorothea.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Michaelina Wautier, Zwei Mädchen als Hl. Agnes und Hl. Dorothea, um 1655, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Collection KMSKA - Flemish Community , Courtesy RCA, London and Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"88b1c644-14bd-4ef4-bca8-7785ead941b6",quote:"In the post-digital era images and their after-images are increasingly co-fabricated.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"b3718fe1-1a60-4ccc-89f3-4d2626981ccb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the post-digital era, however, ambiguity no longer resides solely within the artwork itself. Images and their after-images are increasingly co-fabricated through networks of technologies, platforms, and audiences. Perception becomes a distributed process, shaped by algorithms, interfaces, and modes of circulation as much as by artistic intention. The after-image is no longer a residual trace of viewing, but a dynamic field of transformation in which meaning is continuously negotiated, replicated, and altered.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In contemporary post-digital environments, this refusal of clarity becomes intensified and multi-sensory. At Kunsthaus, Graz, Hito Steyerlâs \"Animal Spirits \"(2022) surrounded visitors with asynchronous video streams, glitching imagery, and layered sound. Low frequencies pulsed beneath fragmented visuals, while animated sequences dissolved into abstract digital noise. One was constantly re-orienting: listening, watching, recalibrating. The exhibition made it impossible to grasp a singular narrative. Instead, perception itself became unstable, mirroring the fractured experience of contemporary media culture where information overwhelms coherence. Here, the after-image no longer forms through contemplation alone. Images fracture, dissolve, and persist across sensory channels, shaped by both digital systems and human attention. Steyerlâs environments reveal how contemporary vision unfolds through technological layers rather thanfi
77xed representation. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That instability took on ecological dimensions at Six foot Gallery, Glasgow, where Malachy McCrimMonâs \"A Glitch Ecology of the Electronic Sun\" (2026) unfolded as a field of fractured, shimmering surfaces.Organic shapes seemed to melt into digital distortions; layers of pigment collided with glitch-likruptures. Standing close, brushstrokes bled into corrupted patterns, as if natural systems and electronic failures were entangled. The works refused legibility, operating instead as perceptual environments that demanded slow adjustment of focus. Ambiguity here became ecological, suggesting a world where technological mediation and environmental fragility coexist in unresolved tension. The after-image becomes hybrid here, suspended between material presence and digital disturbance, where perception is shaped through overlapping layers rather than stable form.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"46dedce4-cc01-42dc-b511-0e95c1980df7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145769893894329,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/800x450/39d54bef27/vg-bild-kunst-bonn-2023.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hito Steyerl, Animal Spirits, 2022 (still). Single channel HD video, live computer simulation, sensor devices, glass spheres, organic materials. Duration: 24 min; simulation duration variable; dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul. Still © Hito Steyerl / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"45c69ce3-a16f-43e1-9274-69cd49ec724f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participation itself became a mechanism of uncertainty at FACT, Liverpool in Can Meeple's \"Escape the Neurophoria?\" (2026). Structured around decision-making and interactive systems inspired by gaming, the exhibition positioned visitors as active agents within shifting visual narratives. Images responded to choices; meaning was never stable. Instead of decoding a finished artwork, one navigated evolving fields of possibility. Each participant effectively co authored the visual experience. The artwork unfolded through interaction, transforming the after image into acollaborative construct shaped by choice and system logic.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"34d13b4d-d39f-42c4-b939-497181348d32",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145773036145024,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x892/a7ac93498f/vytas-jankauskas-life-forever-2025-courtesy-of-the-artist.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Vytas Jankauskas, LIFE FOREVER (2025). Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2c5db7fc-682c-4f79-955e-da18d6f21f7e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Building on these post-digital dynamics, Clement Vallaâs \"Surface Proxy\", Paris (2015) further illuminates the co-fabricated nature of contemporary images. By intervening in digital mapping platforms, Valla exposes how supposedly objective representations are shaped by systems, algorithms, and errors, producing landscapes that are at once familiar and disorienting. In encountering these altered environments, viewers become aware of the layers of mediation that underlie perception itself, and of how meaning is distributed across human and technological actors alike. \"Surface Proxy\" transforms the after-image into a collaborative, networked phenomenon: perception is inseparable from the systems that produce it, and ambiguity emerges not as an artistic conceit but as a structural condition of vision in the post-digital era. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Alongside these institutional contexts, digital-native artists extend the logic of co-fabrication into entirely networked and algorithmically mediated environments. Grégory Chatonsky, for instance, creates installations that intertwine real-time data and algorithmic processes, producing forms and narratives that exist only through the interaction between systems and viewers. Cao Fei constructs hybrid worlds where film, virtual avatars, and gaming engines converge, creating experiences that unfold differently depending on each participantâs movement and engagement. Zach Liebermanâs interactive work explores the poetics of code and gesture, inviting audiences to co-author visual compositions in real time, blurring the line between creator and observer. In these practices, images are never fixed; they are generated, transformed, and recontextualized across time, systems, and human interaction. The after-image becomes a living phenomenon, appearing and dissolving within networks rather than resting solely on physical media. Ambiguity is embedded in the work itself, not as a formal conceit but as an essential condition of its existence. As the boundaries between artist, audience, and platform dissolve, perception emerges as a distributed process, where the act of viewing is inseparable from the production and circulation of the image.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"cb1a10ec-ee8e-4f33-a1c1-c146284469df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145800757281295,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1466x968/559d6074f8/surface-proxy-inkjet-on-belgian-linen-over-cnc-milled-foam-sculptures-2015-xpo-gallery-paris-france.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Surface Proxy, Inkjet on belgian linen over CNC milled foam sculptures 2015, XPO Gallery, Paris France - courtesy Curatorial Office",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"629a694e-e611-4093-9b89-34bd0be378f1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145804233876539,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1024x683/447eb136c2/vue-de-l-exposition-alt-r-alternative-realite-palais-de-tokyo-2019-a-l-image-terre-seconde-de-gregory-chatonsky-ph-gregory-chatonsky-jeanchristophe-lett.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gregory Chatonsky, Install shots, Terre Seconde, Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2019. , courtesy de Grégory Chatonsky, photo by Jeanchristophe Lett.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"404e6b89-dae0-4515-8c4a-7db8204967e4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145808417252427,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1400x1040/5ae0d5f3a2/still-from-rmb-city-a-second-life-city-planning-2007-which-featured-a-3d-model-of-the-city-prior-to-its-opening-in-second-life.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Still from RMB City: A Second Life City Planning (2007), which featured a 3d model of the city prior to its opening in Second Life.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9855f2c9-cc26-4576-9186-f98dadc1bfd6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This post-digital field extends the themes already present in Steyerl, McCrimMon, and FACT, Liverpool, but in an accelerated, networked register. Co-fabrication is no longer conceptual; it is infrastructural. The viewerâs attention, gestures, and even algorithms become part of the workâs materiality, creating an ecosystem in which ambiguity, temporality, and relationality are inseparable from aesthetic experience. In this way, contemporary art engages with a sensory, participatory, and technologically entangled world, in which the after-image is both trace and transformation. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The experience foregrounded how contemporary perception is shaped by algorithms, interactivity, and cognitive overload, turning ambiguity into a lived condition rather than an abstract concept. Across these spaces, the after-image emerges not as emptiness but as redistribution. Meaning migrates from object to encounter, from explanation to attention, from image to experience. Whether through performance, archival fragmentation, painterly subtlety, post-digital immersion, or participatory systems, contemporary art increasingly operates in zones where ambiguity is not a failure of communication but its very medium. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To write after the image is therefore to write with sensitivity to duration, atmosphere, and perception. The critic no longer resolves but accompanies; no longer decodes but attends. Light shifting across surfaces, sound reverberating through space, bodies negotiating architecture ; these become the language of contemporary aesthetics. Ambiguity becomes political precisely because it resists the acceleration of consumption, demanding slowne
77ss, care, and sustained engagement. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Returning to the gallery threshold where understanding hesitates, one realises that uncertainty is not absence but invitation. After the image begins a space of deeper looking, listening, and sensing, where contemporary art teaches us not what to see, but how to remain with what cannot be fully known.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-16 00:00",name:"After-Images÷Perception in Flux.",author:"Sarah Maria Lillig",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"2f2d0218-e777-4b72-a8c0-66c1efbfd494",color:"#533018",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d1ae2e2b-0361-4c54-acf8-55c14b4f7af7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:141551690677679,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1716x1162/3ed164eb6c/screenshot-2026-02-05-at-00-16-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Clement Valla, 48 50.159 Saint Barbara, Surface Proxy (2016), Photo by Vinciane Verguethen, courtesy curatorial office, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:""},slug:"after-images-perception-in-flux-",full_slug:"directory/essays/after-images-perception-in-flux-",sort_by_date:null,position:-160,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"c54f09c4-1386-45c0-aa07-58d9a288de65",first_published_at:"2026-02-16T14:14:52.348Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"FREE",created_at:"2026-07-06T03:27:27.916Z",published_at:"2026-07-06T10:58:45.956Z",updated_at:"2026-07-06T10:58:45.973Z",id:195046801091568,uuid:"14b46c3f-c90c-407d-bcd2-d4c942a20f62",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"2720eba8-0775-4d87-81ec-4155044507a3",title:"A Masterpiece Over Alcatraz: Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:195047329438133,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x1833/93f699dcdf/db060aad-33df-445a-acd6-71bfaee471e3.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Nancy Baker Cahill, FREE, 4th Wall app, augmented reality art, Alcatraz, abolitionist art, immigrant detention, public art 2026, AR public art, Liberty Bell 2020, In Plain Sight Cassils, carceral justice, solidarity art, participatory art, murmuration, detention centers, abolitionist artist, free augmented reality, San Francisco Bay art, art and abolition,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE transforms Alcatraz into a living flock of solidarity. A landmark of abolitionist AR art, on view July 4âNovember 4, 2026."}],_uid:"2ad474c2-954d-436c-b154-d63f999e7b57",body:[{_uid:"60e09089-45a8-4e9b-8890-b8711de21894",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Launching July 4, 2026, over Alcatraz Island, Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE is a participatory augmented reality work in which messages of solidarity sent to people held in U.S. detention take flight as digital birds, forming a living flock above the most iconic site of American confinement. It is a masterpiece of abolitionist art, and it is free.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the waters of the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Island sits as a monument to isolation, a structure built to sever the individual from the collective and to render confinement absolute. Its history is steeped in exclusion, a physical manifestation of the state's power to disappear lives from public view. Yet, beginning July 4, 2026, Baker Cahill places her work exactly here, in this airspace, above this rock. FREE, an augmented reality installation accessible via her 4th Wall app, transforms the sky above the island into a murmuration of solidarity, a flock of digital birds born from messages sent by participants across the globe to those held in immigration detention across the United States.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work is participatory at its core. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can send a message through the app: a kite, a blessing, a spell, a poem, a personal story. Upon transmission, each message materializes as a paper plane that unfolds into a bird, joining an ever-expanding flock over the island. Where Alcatraz once operated as a mechanism of disappearance, Baker Cahill repurposes it as a nexus of visibility. The project insists on the entanglement of all lives, visualizing a network of c
77are that defies the physical boundaries of incarceration. This is where the work's aesthetic and political registers become inseparable. The murmuration is a masterwork of emotional precision. Thousands of paper planes becoming birds, each one a human voice, moving together above the most famous prison in America: the image hits before the mind catches up with it. There is grief in it, and defiance, and something that can only be called love.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"649d29f4-76d0-411b-81e1-785dffdc801b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:195060332612187,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/f726de1c48/caption-ar.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a9fda106-7af7-46bc-be31-d0f3be951aaa",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FREE opens on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, interrogating the very premise of American liberty with a blunt, necessary question: who is granted freedom, and who is structurally excluded from its promise? Baker Cahill has chosen July 4th before. Six years earlier, on Independence Day 2020, she launched Liberty Bell, a monumental AR drawing presented simultaneously across nine historically charged sites in six American cities, from the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Commissioned by the Art Production Fund and presented in partnership with institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum and the Association for Public Art, Liberty Bell deployed the cracked bell as a metaphor for the fractured promise of democracy, its layered soundscape moving from a steady toll into an arrhythmic fracture that felt, in that particular summer, less like metaphor than diagnosis. The abolitionist origins of the Liberty Bell's very name, coined by anti-slavery societies in the 1830s, were central to Baker Cahill's framing: freedom, in this lineage, has never been a declaration. It has always been a fight.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That same Independence Day weekend in 2020, artists Cassils and rafa esparza launched In Plain Sight, a coalition of eighty artists that sent skytyping fleets across the United States to spell out messages in water vapor directly over detention facilities, immigration courts, and border sites. Where In Plain Sight turned the open sky into a medium of accusation, writing the names of the detained in clouds above the very sites of their confinement . ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"4th Wall hosted a handful of the messages in AR over those sites after the skywriting had faded away to preserve the messages in perpetuity",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" FREE gathers voices from the ground and sends them upward, transforming the air above a historic site of incarceration into a collective act of care. The two projects form a diptych of resistance â one names the wound, the other floods it with the voices of people who refuse to accept it â and together they demonstrate that the sky is a public space that belongs to no institution.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Baker Cahill's use of augmented reality is crucial to the work's political logic. AR leaves no physical trace, requires no permit, occupies no land. It cannot be seized, demolished, or priced out of a neighborhood. The work exists only through the collective participation of its audience, a living archive of dissent that grows with every message sent, answering the state's logic of confinement with the one thing confinement cannot produce: an open, borderless gathering.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Baker Cahill has been building toward this work for years. Her long engagement with Homeboy Industries, where she led a collaborative art project between 2010 and 2012. FREE links the digital flock to tangible networks of support, directing participants toward organizations working on the front lines.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"It is a work of remarkable formal beauty and fierce moral clarity, a prophetic act that insists, against every apparatus of exclusion, that no one is disposable. In the sky above Alcatraz, Baker Cahill has built a space where the architecture of confinement is overwritten by the architecture of collective care.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FREE is presented by GRAYAREA and is on view through November 4, 2026, experienced from the San Francisco Bay, though messages can be sent from anywhere in the world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Download the4th wall app ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"here",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/4th-wall/id1325881248",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-04 00:00",name:"A Masterpiece Over Alcatraz÷ Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ea243e2e-6a4c-41a0-af7a-ec5c203d02b8",color:"#000a10",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"6d0f3789-1cd7-4c6f-856f-908100ec004e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:195047329438133,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x1833/93f699dcdf/db060aad-33df-445a-acd6-71bfaee471e3.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"R Production: Nancy Baker Cahill & Shaking Earth Digital",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"free",full_slug:"directory/reviews/free",sort_by_date:null,position:-1400,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"2a45cdcd-9d6d-4792-949f-f5f5996ec3e6",first_published_at:"2026-07-06T03:43:50.511Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Strings Attached â Puppeteering the Gaze",created_at:"2026-07-09T21:40:40.722Z",published_at:"2026-07-10T08:46:29.672Z",updated_at:"2026-07-10T08:46:29.690Z",id:196377152428075,uuid:"ded321f7-5955-4ddf-bbcb-4ded4d4371a0",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"97ac6274-5a73-4dcf-8968-38ff51359846",title:"seo",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:196377467701796,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/90bba2d3a0/15-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"seo",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"seo"}],_uid:"df26ce9e-4070-4370-86e9-6c63485873b6",body:[{_uid:"1cb9542e-e0e5-45a9-8960-41a56176ea35",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Strings Attached â Puppeteering the Gaze",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\u2028The sculptures, seemingly weightless in their transparent fabric, paper and wire, at first appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with eighteenth-century paintings. As though one ought to approach the figures with caution given their delicate, fragile constitution, we encounter them alternately as shells or as skeletons â ultimately as the scaffolds of those figures Goya presents in two of his tapestry cartoons. Blind Man's Buff (1789) and The Straw Manikin (1791) depict folk games that read like rituals that continue to unfold in an enigmatic atmosphere despite the white walls and harsh lighting of the exhibition space.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnes Scherer presents at the Salzburger Kunstverein (European Union) an installation that might, in its entirety, be described as a walkable painting: an image released from its vertical anchorage as panel painting, one that understands itself as space. Sculpture, as quickly becomes clear both through this connection to painting and through the act of looking itself, is not merely thing but always also image â more precisely: images, an infinite multiplicity of possible perspectives. Traversing the painting-space as one might otherwise only traverse a painting-surface with one's gaze, we approach physically that which lies â or might â behind Alberti's canonical metaphor of the painting as a window. The reference to Goya is the premise of the exhibition and serves as a lens through which the artist, in keeping with her practice, once again draws compelling parallels between historical images as well as an image-turned-reality on one hand, and an ultradynamic present on the other. Beyond this, Scherer does not only furnish the Kunstverein's space as image, but equips the three groups she presents â one of which makes no reference to Goya at all â with an almost incomprehe
77nsible multiplicity of images. What impresses here at first stance of course is the extraordinary effort and obsessive attention to detail, but also the creeping realization that sets in quickly as we move across the crackling paper floor through the installation: that ourselves, amid this impossible multiplicity of images, at some point becomes an image â or must have become already long before entering. The wire sculptures in two of the three exhibited groups of figures are suspended from the ceiling by threads and clothed in intricate motifs, inscriptions and pictograms. As though we viewers were similarly suspended on threads like the installation's own marionettes, we are strangely drawn by the urge to decipher every image, every emblem, every pop-cultural reference. Aren't those the Kardashians â and over there the Olsen twins? The woman on the jet ski, pinned to the forearm of one puppet: does that have something to do with Florentina Holzinger? And what role does the Disney castle play in all of this?\u2028\u2028",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6f281855-d23c-47ac-a9c6-471339c6a985",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382611856009,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/e80ed0e455/1-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f4f5ffb1-207e-4a37-9712-df0f08bbbd42",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382685559436,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3150x4724/367ef8247f/3-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c037d53-5d63-4104-bf4d-502355c71d18",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382685530763,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3151x4724/e676d4cfba/4-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"eba9e665-83c1-44a4-a675-8ad1ee8caa1a",quote:"Agnes Scherer presents an installation that might, in its entirety, be described as a walkable painting",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"64fa4db5-881e-48ff-b4cb-d58b76d63aac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But back to Goya: the reference to La gallina ciega and El pelele â the one a parlour game in which a courtly society blindfolds itself, voluntarily forfeiting orientation and overview, the other a scene in which four women toss a masked male puppet into the air â marks the central role of the marionette theatre that Agnes Scherer conjures: a play of seeing and not-seeing, of control and being controlled. Goya himself must have been aware that in 1789 an order was collapsing in France that had been resting on the same foundations as the one in whose service he painted as court painter. He saw that an aristocracy which had kept its eyes bound for too long was now losing its heads. Social and political regimes are always also regimes of the gaze. What is laid before us in Scherer's installation is precisely this: image-viewing as a relation of power. And like other relations, this one too is susceptible to abuse and hegemonic entanglements. Through the figures of the installation, which meet us as marionettes, Scherer further intensifies Goya's motif through a form that has always de
77signated both entertainment and sacred practice. The marionette is an Other performing in an ambiguous state between being displayed as Other and referring back to the human ontology it is premised on. Unlike the human, it only seemingly possesses its own gaze, its own body, its own intention. However skilled any staging of a puppet theatre may be, once image-mysticism and the admittedly seductive image-agency theory are set aside, the marionette remains an object. Its anthropomorphic status is imagined in the condition of its possible performance. As such, it is always the expression of an unequal power structure and thus always at the mercy of its surroundings and its rulemaker.\u2028",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c96448fc-b5dd-40c1-93c1-8000fe3535e7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382822734479,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/f50d81b2e8/18-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"acf43071-0f1b-43d8-8e8e-8d0c8a18f9ed",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196386518457097,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3149/a9cae749f9/24-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a5519203-88f3-4984-838f-62cab3998e2f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196386967427856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/82b41dbfea/12-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d2358bfc-77e7-4865-b68c-525ff78bb3af",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The images that meet us today are products flooding through gates thrown open by techbros â image machines whose scale one can already sense for example in a reading of Goya's contemporaries Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and Leandro Fernández de MoratÃn. Jovellanos, the foremost intellectual of the Spanish Enlightenment and a close friend of Goya, harboured little sympathy for those new technologies and visual instruments that made the image mobile, accessible and plebeian: Camera Obscura, Magic Lantern, totilimundi (portable peepshow) â apparatuses that transferred the act of seeing from the controlled space of reason into that of mere amusement. In a popular text which was published in 1790, he argued for their censorship; playwright MoratÃn, part of the same enlightened Madrid circle, shared this position stating their imagery supported disorder, shapeless plot, improbable entanglements and disconnected episodes. Read through a contemporary lens and pushed to its cultural-pessimist extreme, this sounds strikingly familiar. It displays the same concern about fragmentation, formlessness and the triumph of spectacle over substance that is today routinely attributed to TikTok, Instagram and the sheer flood of images on social media. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9da07b3c-e3cd-47a1-b48a-94e6564ddbc7",quote:" It displays the same concern about fragmentation, formlessness and the triumph of spectacle over substance.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"344ee143-b5db-4ad7-90d9-0d6f90ed4f6e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The political dimension of power inherent in the viewing of images was already visible in the call to censor these early image apparatuses and it is this continuity that Scherer's strategy renders visible: historical images as mirrors in which the present recognises itself. In Three Wicked Games, the exhibition space itself seems like an apparatus â one that renders the panel painting a room to be entered. Not least through the brushstrokes on the paper sheets covering the floor, but also through the countless associations to which we are exposed in the form of a flood of images like snippets, puppet-politics and pop-cultural references. Between looking at and looking through, visitors to the exhibition become part of a marionette condition that we also encounter in everyday life. In the circuit of profit-oriented transactions and sustained visual, economically instrumentalised dependencies that run through life under the conditions of late capitalism, we have long been permeated by its images. Scherer does not merely illustrate the flood of images but enacts it (illustration included) and makes us complicit.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"6fedb1b8-dc87-456d-a4c3-30243c149389",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196381797862006,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3150/4d21ba9b1c/14-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b8030961-5065-49f4-a1df-c8289aeb71e1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382407248515,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3150x4724/07f8c3ad0e/31-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"63fabc7c-b418-4532-89dc-5c98d52fb4d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382158428802,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3151x4724/88c514a2b7/35-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a4baa803-be10-4ba9-8ca8-ff000bd0c82b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The playful and sharp show, curated by Mirela Baciak within the annual programme under the apt title Captcha Realism, makes clear that a world of apparatuses and technology is ultimately a world of innumerable, ever-present images. These images are expression, marker, symbol, simulation, fake and reminiscence all at once. There are as many of them as there are facets in a kaleidoscope that keeps falling and transforming. Amid countless references like burning moths, protein shakes, tarot cards, miniature schnapps barrels â to name a few â one nearly misses the small subplot at the feet of the Bl
77ind-Man's-Buff figures, which seems to report what lies at the heart of this exhibition: From the mouth of a puppet that unmistakably resembles the artist herself, a paper strip â like that of a fortune cookie, but considerably longer â extends to illustrate her spoken words, while she calls her optician in Vienna (as the phone lying beside her indicates): âCan you modify my glasses so that one person remains indistinct, while the rest of the world stays legible?â. After looking and being looked at during this exhibition to a staggering extent, one expects the optician on the phone to speak immediately, audible for everyone else in the room: âI am sorry, Agnes, but it will be forever easier to leave the world in a blur.â",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnes Scherer, \"Three Wicked Games\" - Curated by Mirela Baciak. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until 12.07.2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-09 00:00",name:"\"Strings Attached\" ÷Puppeteering the Gaze",author:"Niklas Koschel",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"04ab1255-c6f6-4efe-960f-3742a5e0479e",color:"#450706",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"ab05790e-7273-4aa2-9709-fe9286bae038",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196377467701796,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/90bba2d3a0/15-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. 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It will reveal itself in all its dimensions â those of an extraordinary museum",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"for an extraordinary city, those of an ambitious museum in a city too often lacking in ambition.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In 126 days, a museum opens whose centre of gravity will be the public spaces, this city within a city, dedicated â even devoted â to the universality of art, architecture and culture. A museum with streets and corners, a bakery, a playground, a library and research centre, workshops, spaces to study and work ...",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In 126 days, Brussels will finally get the museum of modern and contemporary art it deserves. And so will its artists and creators, itsresidents, and everyone who loves this city. It will be theirs to discover and appropriate.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In 126 days, Kanal-Centre Pompidou will fling open the doors to the city and its nine inaugural exhibitions, plus the major opening exhibition of Kanal Architecture.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ten exhibitions to open Kanal. Ten exhibitions to provide a first answer to an open-ended question: what is the role of a museum of art and",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"architecture in the 21st century? What is the purpose of Kanal at a time when the spectre of extremism and dreams of empire are returning?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What is the use of Kanal when human intelligence is being challenged by machines? What is the point of Kanal at a time of increasingly polarised identity politics? What is the meaning of Kanal in a world that is simultaneously burning and drowning?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything and nothing at the same time.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything, because art is the most exceptional force of emancipation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything, because architecture is about building the city of tomorrow.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything, because art is a powerful catalyst for living together in Brussels.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything, because the world needs imagination, dreams and escape,now more than ever.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nothing... if all this is not defended.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nothing, if the public authorities do not allow the development of this creative space, which should be protected against the stifling pressures of",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"the marketplace and the breakneck tempo of the media.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nothing, if the museum is not also a place to reflect on the future of humanity.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nothing, if the museum does not lead the way in circularity and sustainability.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nothing, if the museum is not democratic, open, universal and inclusive.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And even if Kanal manages to achieve all this ... it is still only a museum.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"One that must stay in its place â essential though that place may be â with grace, humility and clarity of mind.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is with great emotion that I write these lines.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Brussels is a city I have loved since I was born there, 48 years ago.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Brussels is a complex and difficult city, buzzing and stimulating, paradoxical and exciting, surreal and absurd, fascinating and disorienting;",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Brussels is a wholeness made from a singular diversity, one of a kind in Europe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Today, Brussels is one of many hubs for contemporary artistic creation in Europe. Tomorrow, with Kanal, Brussels has the potential to become",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"the hub for contemporary European creation. We are adding a missing yet undoubtedly essential piece to this cityâs wholly unique artistic ecosystem.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kanal stands as a radically optimistic affirmation of the future, even when shadows loom large over the horizon. Art and culture must be rays of hope in an increasingly anxious and divided world â a world that is perhaps facing its greatest challenge in 80 years.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kanal will be a place for contemplation, emancipation, relaxation, strolling, artists, dreams, life, living together, debate, listening, expression, meeting, study, learning, reading, disconnecting, recharging, enthusiasm, ambition, discovery, pleasure, freeze frames, pauses, life, life, life ...",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In 126 days, Kanal will open its doors to the public.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is currently no other project like it in Belgium or Europe. Opening a 40 000 m2 public museum in the heart of the European capital.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The opening of Kanal makes a clear statement: without culture, without museums, without artists, there is no future for humanity.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Long live Brussels! Love live Kanal!",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"KANAL to open on the 28th November - Opening coverage by Refresh Magazine",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"2c9013e7-6a4b-4846-beb1-ae65867c15eb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:202402061377946,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x4704/1e60392e52/10_atelier-kanal_kanal_showroom.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kanal buiding, credit ATELIER KANAL",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7d031442-2960-4a1a-b38e-37dd19cdf46a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:202402423361947,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4004x6003/10b1e9eb9b/01_atelier-kanal_kanal_square-sainctelette_a-friday-night-in-may-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kanal, credit ATELIER KANAL",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2026-07-26 00:00",name:"KANAL Brussels÷Statement of Intent by the Director",author:"Yves Goldstein",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"edbeca82-7f0f-4d79-ba3e-e85accda7181",color:"#430706",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c4c47b42-2798-49bc-8c2a-84c16d081ca6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:202395209265321,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5000x3335/74615aba9b/06_atelier-kanal_kanal_belvedere_a-friday-early-afternoon-in-july.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"credit ATELIER KANAL",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:"1"},slug:"kanal",full_slug:"directory/essays/kanal",sort_by_date:null,position:-250,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"b728a3be-fb06-498d-85dc-b0d8922dabf8",first_published_at:"2026-07-26T22:06:30.915Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Hotter than the Sun",created_at:"2026-05-09T15:50:38.281Z",published_at:"2026-05-09T16:17:56.413Z",updated_at:"2026-05-09T16:17:56.426Z",id:174703568035022,uuid:"2243b094-19a9-4a2a-8b75-46a4f38a5979",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"12a38f14-c026-4043-a4d6-42914186b27c",title:"LoVid's Hotter than the Sun at Picture Theory NY",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:174703836547490,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2306x1282/d0a5f99e6e/mine-stack-collapse.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"LoVid, Hotter than the Sun, Picture Theory, contemporary art New York, digital art exhibition, textile art, video installation, extractivism art, data accumulation, hybrid world art, Emails from the Paleolithic, Spark Frame, algorithmic art, media art 2026, artist duo, experimental installation, signal based abstraction, dye sublimation textile, noise music art, artist run culture",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"LoVid's Hotter than the Sun at Picture Theory NY explores digital accumulation, extractivism and collapse through textiles, video and installation. On view May 2026."}],_uid:"a4bffef3-aec0-4b0c-8894-acdb0dc11d02",body:[{_uid:"29be47d4-6b5f-4e8f-b06b-948c77be0412",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mine, Stack, Collapse",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A magnificent exhibition where LoVid transforms digital language into matter. Textiles, video and installation collide between memory and dissolution. \"Hotter than the Sun\" captures the sheer absurdity of our hybrid world, where relentless accumulation is the only remaining logic, and extractivism its inevitable shadow, a civilisation mining itself into collapse. They stitch together algorithmic debris into dense, vibrating fabrics, endlessly piling up pixels and acrylic until human experience and machine categorisation become completely indistinguishable. LoVid orchestrates this digital compost with brutal precision, building an interconnected ecosystem entirely out of our information overload.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a35aa91a-cf8f-48c7-9596-acf409f0328e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174705156213162,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1098x1470/15e88e5624/screenshot-2026-05-09-at-17-49-23.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LoVid, \"Magnetic Moment\", 2026 courtesy the artist and Picture Theory",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6136177e-31f2-48b6-af9a-c80f4366f335",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174705156016553,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1064x1478/dd731a55d7/screenshot-2026-05-09-at-17-49-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LoVid, \"Tape Loops\", 2025, courtesy the artist and Picture Theory",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"48329123-087d-4837-b95c-e5e99c9e0392",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Picture Theory is saturated. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LoVid has filled every corner of the space with material that accumulates, layers, and refuses to resolve. The gallery operates under pressure, and the pressure is structural, not theatrical.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Their textile works are the core of this logic. Digital fragments are stretched into ornamental fields, printed onto polyester, then buried under dense embroidery and acrylic in varying viscosities. The result is fabric that looks like it is processing itself, consuming its own surface. The image underneath has been overwritten so many times it functions only as sediment. Accumulation as method, data hoarding rendered tactile.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From accumulation, the logic tips into extractivism. Every surface in this exhibition is a record of extraction: minerals pulled from the earth to build the chips that generate the images that feed the fabrics. The cycle is total and terminal. The video piece \"Spark Frame\" makes this tangible. Edited at a frantic pace, it pulls from Google Photos archives using search terms like landscape or mood. The machine surfaces images that have nothing to do with lived experience, flattening memory into a category. LoVid frames this stream with signal based abstractions, and what sits behind every image is a pulse of electricity drawn from a grid that nobody is auditing. We outsource memory to servers that consume more energy than entire nations.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"498daa46-1bb4-4bb4-bb8f-f52ccc3eaaa0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174706202860001,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1786/b442b3e6d5/0_video.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LoVid, \"Emails from the Paleolithic\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Picture Theory",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"13f5bd19-f535-45a9-836c-7d36e26cc335",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This extractivist logic finds its most unsparing form in the sculptural installation \"Emails from the Paleolithic\". Using motors, rocks, and sound composed by Dan Friel, the work stages the collision between geological time and technological acceleration. The rocks are literal. They sit there as evidence that the infrastru
77cture of the digital world is built on the same planet it is consuming. The installation does not editorialize. It simply runs, loudly, and the gap between the Paleolithic and the server farm turns out to be thinner than expected.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LoVid \"Links\", the media reference library included in the exhibition, assembles books, zines, VHS tapes, vinyl records, and catalogs from artist run spaces into a counter archive. It operates against the logic of the algorithm, holding the position that cultural transmission has a body and a history. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Hotter than the Sun\" maps the extractivist engine at the heart of our digital civilization with the cold clarity of a system that has already calculated the outcome.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LoVid, \"Hotter Than The Sun\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Picture Theory, New York (USA), Until 30th May",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-09 00:00",name:"\"Hotter Than The Sun\"÷Mine, Stack, Collapse",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"87e41247-c3d7-4a03-b557-81934d5b8c3d",color:"#70585b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"f956bf96-bdf2-4d06-8cfa-3df58156eb0d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174704005888419,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1868x1372/ffdcd33654/screenshot-2026-05-09-at-17-49-43.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LoVid,\"Marbles\", 2023, courtesy the artist and Picture Theory",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"hotter-than-the-sun",full_slug:"directory/reviews/hotter-than-the-sun",sort_by_date:null,position:-1240,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"e8fb2b25-3c3e-4c75-aee0-3d4f1e03cfc9",first_published_at:"2026-05-09T16:11:23.871Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Remote viewing",created_at:"2026-05-04T20:58:43.928Z",published_at:"2026-05-11T11:46:23.687Z",updated_at:"2026-05-11T11:46:23.704Z",id:173009813243104,uuid:"c38db558-cb09-4e16-bb9f-8aa910e5b414",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"df614c34-5e67-4960-8346-d0e1f44aa236",title:"Remote Viewing Exhibition",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:173009413972843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2262x1442/c2969a393c/ho-tzu-nyen-hotel-aporia-2019-single-channel-video-projection-color-and-multi-channel-sound-84-min-courtesy-of-the-artist-jpg.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Remote Viewing, MoNTUE, Taipei contemporary art, Alice Nien-Pu Ko, Tony Oursler, Trevor Paglen, Sandra Mujinga, Ho Tzu Nyen, Jenna Sutela, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, surveillance art, perception politics, contemporary art exhibition 2026, psychic research art, Stargate CIA art, biometric surveillance art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A critical review of Remote Viewing at MoNTUE Taipei: how perception became a political weapon, from Cold War espionage to algorithmic surveillance."}],_uid:"69986f62-c741-4dae-b9ea-fa9bf518f283",body:[{_uid:"7022ed61-9987-4a07-a20c-074db1b53dc7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Remote Viewing\": Perception as Contested Ground",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The ambition to govern what others see and how they believe it is not a modern invention, however much the tech industry would like the credit. \"Remote Viewing\" exhibition at MoNTUE Taipei (Taiwan) traces its persistence across a century of practice, from early 20th-century psychic research through Cold War military intelligence to today's algorithmic surveillance, treating it not as a series of aberrations but as a structural condition of power. That this argument holds, across thirty-seven artists and three floors, is a measure of how precisely curator Alice Nien-Pu Ko has built it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens on an archive that should not exist. In 1931, Japanese psych
77ologist Tomokichi Fukurai claimed to have produced a photograph of the moon's far side through the concentrated mental projection of a clairvoyant, decades before any actual lunar observation technology. He lost his academic post over it. Ko's decision to open here is one of the show's most intelligent moves: she is not interested in rehabilitating Fukurai, but in what his expulsion reveals. The boundary between legitimate and illegitimate knowledge about perception has always been policed, and that policing has always served someone. The archive is not a curiosity. It is the thesis, and it arrives before a single contemporary artwork is in sight.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0a1d61f0-9610-493b-a4a4-849508117c96",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047244842509,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2314x1554/fe566fae0d/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-27-28.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tony Oursler,\"Third Eye\", 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1b4bd75b-fb0b-4ef5-9bd9-e7eda9abe11c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047244981774,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2330x1528/9c34071f88/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-27-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tony Oursler,\"Third Eye\", 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a184f963-372d-4a35-b35f-94c55e068ed6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047245235727,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2324x1546/604b6c8988/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-27-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tony Oursler,\"Third Eye\", 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"38611ba3-10a1-4a42-b2c7-ac6cdb0b0400",quote:"I don't believe there's a difference between rational and irrational. I try not to get into these dualisms",author:"Susan Hiller",component:"quote"},{_uid:"519fda55-6489-445c-85f1-01674499a126",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047176726023,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2302x1522/351df25229/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-29-54.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Susan Hiller, \"Resounding (Infrared)\", 2013,©Sunsan Hiller",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d751f95f-7b54-4d19-93d9-16ebc646ed1b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From there, Ko constructs a genealogy with real structural nerve. The institutional fantasy that perception can be trained, directed and deployed runs unbroken from Fukurai's photographic plates to the CIA's classified Stargate program to the biometric databases of the present, and the show makes this continuity impossible to dismiss. Tony Oursler's new commission Third Eye (2026) places Ingo Swann, the artist recruited as the CIA's most valued remote viewer, in direct dialogue with Fukurai's materials, and the proximity is exact: the paranoid underbelly of American counterculture and the operational logic of Cold War military intelligence share an obsession with the weaponizable mind. It turns out the government was very interested in the counterculture. It just wanted to run it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What distinguishes Ko's approach from a straightforward history of surveillance art is her insistence that the question is epistemological before it is political. The show keeps returning not to whether extra-sensory perception is real, but to who has historically been authorised to define the limits of the visible, and what happens to those who exceed them. Jeremy Shaw's Quantification (2017), shot in the degraded grain of 1970s cinéma vérité, catches the exact point where devotional practice and biometric procedure become formally indistinguishable. Che-Yu Hsu and Wan-Yin Chen's Catastrophism (2025) scales the same question outward to ecological and geopolitical crisis, examining how rationality is constructed and mobilised precisely when the stakes are highe
77st. In both cases the argument is the same: the definition of legitimate perception is never neutral, and it is never stable. It is, however, always very well funded.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5746fdfa-f781-449d-ba49-e3116b2ce4c4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173054967776856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2688x1774/7814c0ab0b/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-02-01-20.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jeremy Shaw, \"Liminals\", (2017), courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c3b24279-d5a3-4047-a029-032f3444efbe",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173015246562347,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2332x1524/7eaf073239/screenshot-2026-05-04-at-23-20-28.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Che-Yu Hsu à Wan-Yin Chen, \"Catastrophism\", 2025â2026, courtesy of the artists",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"95732c7c-49eb-4cc7-a799-c0c3bb61bae6",quote:"The definition of legitimate perception is never neutral, and it is never stable. It is, however, always very well funded",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"b8b40719-877d-43e7-a926-d3768637ee6d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The third floor is where the exhibition earns its more difficult registers, and where Ko's curatorial intelligence is most visible. She could have built a show that stayed within the comfortable territory of media critique and surveillance studies. Instead, the third floor insists on what perception costs at the level of the body, the language, the dead. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Mouth to Mouth (1975) stages the violence that language both enacts and conceals, speech so fractured by colonial suppression and diasporic rupture that it materialises as haunting rather than communication. Yutaka Matsuzawa's My Own Death (1970) folds the visitor's consciousness into an imagined death, then into their own, threading individual experience into the vast, anonymous accumulation of deaths that constitute historical time. These works do not illustrate the exhibition's argument. They extend it into territory the argument alone cannot reach, into grief, into the body, into what Lieko Shiga calls the psychic terrain that a disaster leaves behind long after the event itself has been archived and named.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The most speculative works in the show raise a question the exhibition approaches but never quite names, which may be Ko's most astute decision. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Solarium (2023) sends a double projection adrift through a glass structure, images moving through the space less like objects than like presences that have lost their body. Jenna Sutela's nimiia cétiï generates a language from artificial intelligence and the movement patterns of microorganisms, a communication system that belongs to no existing category. Both works are asking what happens to the politics of perception when the perceiving subject is no longer assumed to be human. It is the show's most open edge, and the one that feels most urgent, not least because no one in power appears to have noticed the question yet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"57767854-b917-459c-80ea-ca2b1ec2d944",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173056580810363,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2038x1152/222ba13403/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-02-08-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yutaka Matsuzawa My Own Death, 1970 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"75dd39ad-ea56-4ca5-bba3-9133eb6a15fb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173056068814439,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1960x1458/ab7d19b440/electronic-arts-intermix.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, \"Mouth to Mouth\", courtesy Theresa Hak Kyung Cha/Electronic Arts Intermix",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cad52fb2-ddbe-45cb-85bc-65b2232c7866",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047489816081,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1534/52e271f06d/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-26-23.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Apichatpong Weerasethakul, \"Solarium\", 2023, courtesy of the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"da03882b-1ed3-4601-8177-234d213e1db3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047489635856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2320x1544/6721dfca69/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-26-34.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Apichatpong Weerasethakul, \"Solarium\", 2023, courtesy of the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c62ad8ea-1a02-43d6-86b4-7edb8c71f574",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047243937289,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2308x1538/686892ec7d/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-29-42.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandra Mujinga, \"Pervasive Light\", 2021,Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ac9c29b8-0c7c-4f16-af0c-3bdd77d4a0ec",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The basement closes the argument with the least ambiguity, and the most satisfaction. Here the machinery of manufactured reality is laid bare: how false narratives are circulated until they become, through repetition and institutional authority, indistinguishable from fact (Paglen's Doty, 2023); how a body whose visibility has become a condition of its control retains or loses the capacity to act (Mujinga's Diffuse Light, 2021); how ideology embeds itself in the material logic of everyday space, in corridors, in room arrangements, in the architecture of hospitality, and continues to organise the present long after its historical moment has nominally passed (Ho Tzu Nyen's Hotel Aporia, 2019). By this point Ko has earned her conclusion: the distance between Fukurai's psychic photographs and today's surveillance platforms is not a distance at all. It is the same project, updated, and considerably better financed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"After closing time, Oursler's Third Eye continues on the glass facade of the building, projected into the street until 22:30. The image exceeds the institution's walls. For a show about who controls the act of seeing, it could not end at the door.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Remote Viewing\" at MoNTUE, Taipei (Taiwan). Until June 28, 2026. Curated by Alice Nien-Pu Ko.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-04 00:00",name:"\"Remote Viewing\"÷Perception as Contested Ground",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"1e170bd5-18ce-492a-b215-2d279bab5ab9",color:"#797979",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"fcb32eb7-6a69-4467-b1f5-15809ac0d92f",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173009413972843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2262x1442/c2969a393c/ho-tzu-nyen-hotel-aporia-2019-single-channel-video-projection-color-and-multi-channel-sound-84-min-courtesy-of-the-artist-jpg.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ho Tzu Nyen, \"Hotel Aporia\", 2019, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"remote-viewing",full_slug:"directory/reviews/remote-viewing",sort_by_date:null,position:-1210,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"6f3a8811-311d-471b-9e46-8b6e074b0e21",first_published_at:"2026-05-04T23:49:15.649Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Trevor Yeung at CAPC: The Ecology of the Hybrid",created_at:"2026-04-03T16:42:40.664Z",published_at:"2026-04-07T12:03:33.929Z",updated_at:"2026-04-07T12:03:33.943Z",id:161976158918696,uuid:"6f91abd3-7d85-4cd2-bf6d-3deb546ba1ed",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"e1b7295b-c03f-470b-8a9b-c2bd874a1adc",title:"Trevor Yeung in refresh magazine",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:163316348440864,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/e2b67b5ebe/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4575.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Trevor Yeung, Jardin des neuf soleils, CAPC Bordeaux, contemporary art Bordeaux, post-anthropocentric art, post-digital art, ecological art, hybrid ecosystems, art and nature, art and technology, entanglement, co-evolution, organic and artificial intelligence, non-human, more-than-human, vivarium, terrarium, green light, industrial aesthetics, scaffolding art, wishing tree, collective ritual, Chinese mythology, Houyi myth, nine suns, Chaotic Suns, chandelier sculpture, phosphorescent floor, museum installation, large-scale installation, immersive art, speculative habitat, ecological stewardship, synthetic nature, feedback loop, care and control, biological rhythms, industrial infrastructure, human desire, contemporary art 2026, Hong Kong artist, Trevor Yeung CAPC, art review, exhibition review, Bordeaux museum, avant-garde art, ecological crisis, post-nature, hybrid intelligence, co-existence, living systems, art and ecology, art and mythology, art and ritual,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Trevor Yeung turns the CAPC Bordeaux into a living trap. A post-anthropocentric, post-digital habitat where humans, machines, and myths co-evolve. On view until 20 September 2026."}],_uid:"5cbbfda0-b6eb-4407-95e2-8a55fbf5ae71",body:[{_uid:"01e7e697-40ff-46f6-9482-c804289e2f04",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:" âGarden of the Nine Suns\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Trevor Yeung at CAPC (Bordeaux) : We Are the Garden",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The cavernous nave of the CAPC in Bordeaux has been plunged into an unyielding, fluorescent green. With this new solo show, Trevor Yeung constructs a speculative habitat that refuses the traditional boundaries. Instead, the space operates as a closed-loop terrarium, a site where biological rhythms, industrial infrastructure, and human rituals are fused into a single, inescapable system.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yeung immediately implicates the viewer in this post-anthropocentric logic. We do not observe the garden; we are absorbed by it. The intense chromatic wash filling the former colonial warehouse is not a lighting effect but a functional apparatus. It is derived from the specific spectrum used in archival preservation to attract and neutralize pests. By flooding the entire room with this frequency, Yeung effectively scales up a trap, casting the human visitor as the target organism. The museumâs architecture becomes an active, predatory environment, demonstrating how mechanisms of c
77are and control often share the same circuitry.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"215cc030-2521-4411-ac4d-3906f8782d5d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418876403,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1372x1920/595e0b7001/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf2956.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"874d85ac-4002-40f0-ac16-7a0dd8448f02",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418876403,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1372x1920/595e0b7001/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf2956.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e1fafb72-6151-44b8-96e3-b02a3149bc41",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418855922,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/5e3da3e4f7/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4558-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e449ecca-fb77-43f0-ba64-450f9670124b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This friction drives the exhibitionâs distinctly post-digital intelligence. At the core of the nave, a massive, double-tiered metal framework interrupts the space. It is a blunt, utilitarian object, yet Yeung repurposes it as a framework for collective action. Visitors are invited to attach strips of colored fabric to the structure, turning a piece of industrial hardware into a conduit for personal desires.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The gesture carries a cynical weight. It suggests that our abstract hopes and rituals are not immaterial; they possess a physical density that burdens the ecosystems we inhabit. The installation implies that human emotional output is as tangibleâand potentially as corrosiveâas any chemical pollutant. We are locked in a feedback loop where our desires physically alter our environment, and that altered environment, in turn, dictates our survival.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beneath this towering metal structure, the ground itself has been destabilized. The floor is coated in a dark, glitter-infused substance, creating a surface that feels simultaneously like a deep cosmos and a toxic spill. Suspended above this disorienting terrain are nine distinct, illuminated sculptures. Forged from tangled wires, exposed metal, and an array of mismatched bulbs, these objects emit a strained, erratic energy. They are failing machines, requiring constant electrical feed to maintain their glow.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By gathering these exhausted, overpowered entities into a designated \"garden,\" Yeung proposes a radical form of ecological stewardship. It is a proposition that accepts the synthetic, the broken, and the technological as permanent fixtures of our current nature.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is an abrasive proposition. It dismantles the comforting fiction that humans exist outside the natural order or above the machines we build. Instead, Yeung engineers a space where folklore, power grids, and biological bodies are forced into a continuous, uneasy co-evolution. The exhibition offers no escape back to a pristine wilderness; it demands that we confront the synthetic terrarium we already occupy.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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Until 2Oth September 2026",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-07 00:00",name:"Trevor Yeung÷We Are the Garden",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"23a61d69-db51-4908-9a7e-5110e9349ad4",color:"#2b6431",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"b905ea47-6a27-4051-a3e9-6094b117126f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:163316348440864,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/e2b67b5ebe/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4575.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Trevor Yeung,âGarden of the Nine Sunsâ, at CAPC Bordeaux, Courtesy the artist and Gallery Allen",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"trevor-yeung-at-capc-the-ecology-of-the-hybrid",full_slug:"directory/reviews/trevor-yeung-at-capc-the-ecology-of-the-hybrid",sort_by_date:null,position:-1120,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"cc3de0d4-16d7-4dfb-8e54-e09dd4695591",first_published_at:"2026-04-07T11:58:51.933Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"LIVING ERRORS",created_at:"2026-03-12T17:24:09.733Z",published_at:"2026-04-03T15:36:10.889Z",updated_at:"2026-04-03T15:36:10.910Z",id:154200677344252,uuid:"001b04ad-c1e8-4a1e-8d0a-da6dff4c6c47",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"2a053a0f-9bfb-49f4-a436-6732d09139a9",title:"Living Errors",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:154219114432150,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/0900a9533e/eva-papamargariti_all-that-now-flows-through-us_2024.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"living errors, MARTINETZ, Sophia Naumann, Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, Mary-Audrey Ramirez, contemporary art exhibition, speculative biology, hybrid art, post-digital art, diversity and art, ecological art, technology and nature, non-human art, art and biology, mutant forms, generative error, systemic collapse, art review, contemporary art 2026,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A review of LIVING ERRORS at MARTINETZ: how Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez turn anomaly into argument for diversity, openness, and systemic change."}],_uid:"9609087a-43f8-41b7-ab7a-ea8de9019696",body:[{_uid:"a727f656-6187-4691-b685-64a4f66e74ed",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Sumptuous Power of the Anomaly",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"LIVING ERRORS' is a magnificent exhibition where three artists treat error not as failure but as the only honest starting point. 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77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A living error is not a malfunction. It is not the gap between intention and outcome, nor the signal of a system breaking down. It is something altogether more generative: an unforeseen deviation that carries within it the seed of a new direction, a rupture that does not end a process but initiates one. The life forms that arise from such ruptures are by nature hybrid and ambiguous, resistant to fixed classification, perpetually in the act of becoming something that has no name yet. They have no category yet. That is precisely the point.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where diversity enters, not as an ethical aspiration or a curatorial gesture, but as a structural necessity. Openness to the foreign, the mutant, the unclassifiable, is not generosity. It is the condition of survival. Every system that has ever endured, whether biological, cultural, or informational, has done so by remaining porous, by absorbing what it could not predict. And every system that has ever collapsed has done so for the same reason: it closed in on itself. It mistook coherence for strength, purity for resilience, and the elimination of difference for order. Any fixed framework, however rational its foundations, however noble its intentions, carries within it the architecture of its own undoing. Rigidity is not stability. It is the first stage of catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is this idea that \"LIVING ERRORS\", curated by Sophia Naumann at MARTINETZ Gallery, takes as its animating principle. The gallery is recast as a laboratory for speculative biology, a space where the very axioms of life are subject to aesthetic and critical inquiry, and where the anomaly is not corrected but cultivated.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5816be27-6594-4ad8-bfad-8ac2ab4d7430",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219154691739,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x1589/197eb58661/katja-novitska_approximation_-2017.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Katja Novitska, \"Approximation\" (corn snake hatching twist), 2017 Digital print on aluminium, cutout display, acrylic glass 175 Ã 220 Ã 40 cm Courtesy of the artist and KRAUPA-TUSKANY ZEIDLER",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"16c0da15-fc14-4811-89a9-f712848dc77f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the heart of this investigation are the works of Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez. Their respective practices converge on a shared frontier, one where the boundaries between the biological, the ecological, and the technological dissolve. The ontologically ambiguous entities they construct are not merfantasies; they are plausible propositions for life forms that elude our current taxonomies. These chimeras of flesh and wire, data and dust, are living errors precisely because they expose the inadequacy of the conceptual frameworks we impose on the world, revealing them as too coarse to capture the fine grain of emergent realities.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A unified vision connects these three distinct artistic inquiries. It is a perspective that deliberately decenters the human, viewing the non-human not as a subordinate or a threat, but as an agent of transformation. The work collectively resists the comfort of binary Cartesian oppositions, presenting entities that are neither fully natural nor wholly artificial, neither material fact nor pure fiction. They inhabit a liminal space of perpetual becoming, troubling the very categories we use to make sense of existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"0f79d6c6-86ec-4073-80e9-2c0340e99c8d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154257012514457,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/608x720/00e5843385/mary-audrey-ramirez_bridge-baby-bear.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mary-Audrey Ramirez, \"Bridge Baby Bear,\" 2025 Digital print on satin 70 x 60 cm Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a584b3dc-a885-4c7f-92e9-3d71dea98ac7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154257012731547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3733x4979/9fdc8beca0/mary-audrey-ramirez_dracula-rabbit.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mary-Audrey Ramirez, \"Dracula Rabbit\", 2026 3D printed sand 38 Ã 22.5 Ã 15.8 cm Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"57d6ca73-6854-4540-a544-c80c7faf5ce5",quote:"Diversity is the only system that has never failed",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"7b3161d0-5ea7-44c0-8a6c-c6c02a7b0f42",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219189040803,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3648x2819/c4676ce2ed/katja-novitskova_earthware-20210308.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Katja Novitska, \"Earthware\" (2021-03-08) In collaboration with PWR, 2023 UV ink transfer,epoxy clay,nail polish 120 Ã 164 Ã 3 cm Courtesy of the artist and KRAUPA-TUSKANY ZEIDLER",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1d546a3a-b071-4255-9bce-f0d7bc9ab3c0",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"36f6a523-31f3-4d32-a41c-2ff89bcc1a27",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154256112381417,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x3000/381584aeb4/eva-papamargariti.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eva Papamargariti, \"All that is hidden\"(2), 2023, courtesy the artist and MARTINETZ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6fc5b051-dbf7-49ea-89fc-768341748788",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's argument culminates in a principle of universal applicability, observable in ecosystems, genetic codes, and now, our global technological infrastructures. It is the principle that heterogeneity and co-evolution are the engines of a living world, while uniformity is a precursor to systemic collapse. An informational ecosystem that insulates itself from diverse external inputs, feeding only on its own recycled logic, is destined to degrade into a sterile and self-referential parody, an echo chamber that ultimately fades into silence. The living error, by contrast, is the intrusion of the outside. It is what keeps a system alive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8ed8dfcc-33ce-4cb4-ba88-5ba407f5683e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958805319595,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8004x5191/3a1ea1e541/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"5ffb247c-098b-4d6d-a06a-27ff0043cfe1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958806249388,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5363x7317/1c4283f8ee/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4e5945fc-bb95-4087-b15c-738ce698a6e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958803857321,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5001x7192/4773697669/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3a9c1e4d-33d4-4f77-a874-96d036407b31",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"March 20th - April 30 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"MARTINETZ, Cologne (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-12 00:00",name:"The Sumptuous Power of÷The Anomaly",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"1833935a-e34f-4442-89b3-09304e25aee2",color:"#6d2170",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c31888c0-65c5-4452-bacd-293c5bc6d69b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219114432150,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/0900a9533e/eva-papamargariti_all-that-now-flows-through-us_2024.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eva Papamargariti, All that now flows through us, 2024",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"living-errors",full_slug:"directory/reviews/living-errors",sort_by_date:null,position:-1030,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1120ade4-782c-4d4a-8b11-70cd85be1d20",first_published_at:"2026-03-12T21:32:28.604Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Lux Miranda Raises the Stakes",created_at:"2026-03-02T23:59:04.446Z",published_at:"2026-03-07T03:19:36.413Z",updated_at:"2026-03-07T03:19:36.431Z",id:150758786880381,uuid:"7c2f1ca4-1f2d-4511-8422-1a5cbc1e0ca4",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c3af2bfc-189b-4d9c-bc2b-9c5f4a78ee67",title:"ENDLESS INCANTATIONS ",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:150767846102161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7360x4912/b3b811f08f/260109_luxmiranda_292.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Lux Miranda, Endless Incantations, T H E P I L L, contemporary art Paris, tapestry and sculpture, queer art, plasma-cut steel, wool and metal, embodied practice,, abstract art, , exhibition review, Paris 2026,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"At T H E P I L L Paris, Lux Miranda fills the gallery with hand-tufted tapestries, plasma-cut steel, and a queer symbolic language built from months of physical labour. One of 2026's best."}],_uid:"0dd17ade-7dc1-4303-abbf-63b433214c39",body:[{_uid:"54b0cc93-52e5-405d-a954-a87e246153d8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"No render farm, no algorithm, no screen doing the heavy lifting. \"Endless Incantations\" was still one of the most contemporary shows in Paris to date. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Lux Miranda ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"explores queer abstraction and meta archeology through tapestry and metalwork. The genius artist works with wool and fire-cut steel, with bare hands and months of labour and lands at the precise frequency of the present.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"You do not look at this exhibition. You get caught in it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"T H E P I L L is a small gallery. Miranda makes it feel like a landscape, one that has been through something, that carries the residue of a conflict you cannot name but recognise immediately. A tapestry the height of a room. Steel forms that hover between weapon and relic. The light doing things it shouldn't. The whole space vibrating at a frequency just below speech.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Miranda's practice is built on a single, radical premise: that the body is the site of knowledge, and that making is a form of thinking that no other process can replicate. Every work in this show begins as a drawing, not a sketch, not a proposal, but a full act of attention. The notebooks are daily, relentless, meditative. Forms surface from that practice the way things surface from deep water: slowly, under pressure, changed by the journey. Those forms then move into material, into the physical resistance of wool accumulated stitch by stitch over months, into the controlled violence of a handheld plasma torch cutting through steel. The hand is never abstracted out of the process. Its tremor is in the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"38b6f876-6e89-478a-ad3e-bbdb4e76f527",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150769845580958,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/14274edf13/1-endless-incantations-exhibition-view.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1877c9b7-cbe8-454d-8024-50b285c12dbe",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:151700152134274,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5173x7058/dd294e2ca9/underworld-conv.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, metal spikes 245 x 285 x 15 cm courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9688b826-4313-464d-84d0-1c8a5dfbd191",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The tapestries are extraordinary objects. Dense, warm, almost breathing, and then interrupted, punctured, by metal spikes that catch the light and hold it hostage. There is nothing decorative happening here. Miranda is building a grammar, one that draws on medieval iconography, Buddhist philosophy, queer counter-culture, and the visual logic of armour, not to quote any of it, but to forge something that belongs to none of these traditions and all of them at once. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ebddd815-969f-4135-94ba-07d158e767d4",quote:"The result is a symbolic language that feels genuinely new, genuinely hard-won.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"398a05b0-b13c-48cc-ac90-609b5dfae328",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150773267821740,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4912x7360/8765355555/3-lux-portrait-by-boris-camaca.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, metal spikes 245 x 285 x 15 cm,courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c13ee0dc-acd9-4b8c-abb2-aa428460c815",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150773128246443,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5504x8256/8b80ae5fd4/4-underworld-conversation-detail.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, (detail), courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"62341fff-9c63-4d7f-b328-bf6a6416eda6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150767846102161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7360x4912/b3b811f08f/260109_luxmiranda_292.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Portrait photo by Boris Camaca",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2ff0df28-b68f-45ac-a903-ebc44e48a377",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The steel sculptures extend the same logic into three dimensions. Plasma-cut by hand, some mirror-polished to a finish that reflects the room back at itself, others lacquered in the iridescent tints of automotive bodywork, they read like artefacts from a civilisation operating on different rules. They are beautiful in the way that things built for serious purposes are beautiful, not despite their function but because of it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Harmony Coryn, Miranda's life partner and a significant presence in the Parisian underground, provides the show's sound design and has made a short video portrait of Miranda that plays alongside the exhibition. It is a quiet, precise film, domestic light, studio gestures, the specific attention of someone watching someone they know completely. It does not explain the work. It deepens it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the opening, the harpist Ange Halliwell performed in front of the central tapestry. For a few minutes, the boundary between object and event dissolved entirely. That is the register Miranda is working in: not art as product, but art as a sustained act of presence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"89d5af7b-c598-47fc-acba-e139731f9678",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776450684088,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2592x3872/aca535a66a/13-midnight-visage.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda MIDNIGHT VISAGE, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, tinted car clear coat 28 x 20 x 1 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"21d6a0a4-59a1-48f2-af85-ca210033bd99",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776450471095,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2592x3872/c1f1d3f34f/10-egograsping1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda EGO - GRASPING 1, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, hand mirror polished, metal protective-wax 17 x 20 x 1,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"335bf1ee-9249-4a5a-aca5-27480797fe0a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150777009382589,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3872x2592/cb4e0ea3da/16-moonbeam-serie-groupe-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda MOONBEAM 2, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, hand mirror polished, metal protective-wax, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, p
77hoto by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d68b0eb-fc76-4b12-b678-c4fd73e6bb63",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776562734267,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4738x6316/2d5548e1f8/17-seas-incantation.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda SEAS INCANTATION, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, Aluminium, tinted car clear coast 20 x 23,5 x 8,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c1769c1f-13c9-4ef6-b36a-b92f0b480f02",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776561644729,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4738x6316/cb983f93f6/18-winds-incantation.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Lux Miranda WINDS INCANTATION, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, Aluminium, tinted car clear coast 18 x 21 x 8 cm, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0d9edb9b-fee8-4229-85f9-cb9a81725bcd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Endless Incantations\" is not an easy exhibition. It does not want to be. It is the work of an artist who has decided, with complete clarity, what they are doing and what it costs, and who has made that cost visible in every surface, every stitch, every cut. That kind of commitment is rare. Right now, it feels necessary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And yet, this is worth saying clearly, the show never buckles under its own weight. Work dealing with queer identity, political struggle, and embodied resistance can sometimes arrive with a heaviness that forecloses rather than opens. Miranda's does not. At the root of the practice is a daily act of watching the mind think, sitting with its noise until something visual surfaces. That process opens, over time, onto abstraction, and Miranda treats abstraction not as a retreat but as a territory of genuine freedom, a place where meaning stays mobile and elusive by design. \"Endless Incantations\" is, above all, a modern show: precise, alive, free of didacticism. The politics are in the material, not the label. The anger is in the cut, not the caption. It is exactly as much as it needs to be, and not one thing more.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until 21st February, T H E. P I L L, Paris (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sound design & Video : Harmony Coryn, Harpist performer : Ange Halliwell ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Photos artworks and install shots by Rebecca Fanuele - Portrait by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Boris Camaca",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-21 00:00",name:"\"Endless Incantations\" ÷ Lux Miranda Raises the Stakes",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"29ea11f3-dc86-485c-88d4-d0d18d94b41a",color:"#172053",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d131de91-3755-4208-8be4-2ab7abe16e08",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150773760689326,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3993x2593/c0b884fc2a/8-deep-green-detail.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda DEEP GREEN, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, tinted car clear coast 6,5 x 30 x 1,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, p
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Precise, disquieting, and at moments genuinely moving, it was the exhibition the moment demanded.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This past winter in Berlin, another festival promised to grapple with the \"tumult of our times.\" One could be forgiven a weary sigh. Echoes of Tumult, a three-way collaboration between CTM Festival, the DAAD residency program, and the instrument inventors initiative (iii), arrived with the grand ambition of confronting war, broken institutions, and human fragility. It was a recognisable refrain in a cultural landscape glutted with well-meaning, beautifully packaged trauma. 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It was art as a tuning fork, an invitation to the difficult, necessary work of attuning ourselves to the dissonances of a world gone haywire.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"33c50c0b-d41f-4b02-a3df-f21a18d29fce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149321525148783,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1196x670/d65cba8418/zhanna-kadyrova-the-forest-2025-screenshots-video.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zhanna Kadyrova 'The Forest' 2025, screenshots video, courtesy the artist and Continua gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fdc008a7-58f0-42d1-bcca-ef73253d9121",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The journey began with Zhanna Kadyrova's \"The Forest\", a multimedia installation that plunged the visitor into the ecological catastrophe of the former Kakhovka Reservoir in Ukraine. A boat, installed at the former water level, seemed to sink into a new, improbable forest that had colonised the dried-up basin. But the beauty was treacherous. The area was mined, the front line was near, and headphones transmitted the live, tense sounds from the reservoir itself. It was a disquieting opening, a landscape of impossible resilience and imminent threat.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From there, the exhibition unfolded as a series of intricate sensory encounters. In the next rooms, Ioana Vreme Moser's project \"Arsenic Ballerinas\" seduced and repelled in equal measure. A swarm of lipstick tubes, arranged like projectiles, became FM radio receivers. Their mineral components, the lead and arsenic shared by cosmetics and munitions, picked up static and fragmented transmissions. It was a precise, tactile excavation of technology, toxicity, and the gendered codes of espionage. 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77,{_uid:"68dc1928-dea7-499c-a30a-d9517d68cb51",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149258337660589,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2270x1492/eeca3d658a/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-17-53-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IOANA VREME MOSER, RESEARCH PROJECT, 2025â26 INSTALLATIONS, SOUND OBJECTS, RADIO, RESEARCH BOX, Exhibition Opening \u003CEchoes of Tumult> @ Bethanien - CTM Festival 2026 :copyright: Udo Siegfriedt",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"934f4ced-8dd9-4aad-9ba7-8ec8f61bd0fc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149323027037630,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1680x1266/c55b4c8271/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-23-34-05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IOANA VREME MOSER, RESEARCH PROJECT, 2025â26 INSTALLATIONS, SOUND OBJECTS, RADIO, RESEARCH BOX, Exhibition Opening \u003CEchoes of Tumult> @ Bethanien - CTM Festival 2026 :copyright: Udo Siegfriedt",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4ad75668-8460-41d5-ad1f-2d270b39e6da",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Swiss collective Fragmentin, long celebrated for their elegant dissections of technological systems, presented \"G80\". The piece demystified the opaque architectures governing our lives not with polemic, but with a low, corrosive hum that lodges itself beneath the skin. An interactive console with 80 motorized sliders, it invited the visitor to \"stabilise the world\" by adjusting variables from ecology to gender equality. Inspired by Buckminster Fuller's utopian \"World Game,\" the piece was a sly trap. As one playfully tried to find equilibrium, the machine resisted, its cold logic a mordant parody of our faith in computational solutions for global governance. It was a deeply vertiginous piece of design fiction, and one of the exhibition's most intellectually exacting works.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6beff8ce-8ba7-4c9b-9479-aeab11566498",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149324812328396,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x1350/3938e604e4/4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fragmentin, G80, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, 2025 ALUMINIUM, PLEXIGLASS, PAINTED SLIDERS, COMPUTER, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c0eb473-ded4-4915-8a0d-3ca8ddde35c8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149326252080607,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x1350/d49023952d/1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fragmentin, G80, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, 2025 ALUMINIUM, PLEXIGLASS, PAINTED SLIDERS, COMPUTER, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"17e80853-3898-47df-80af-307648f5ce9f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149325583990230,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/ada1672204/fragmetin-g80-nteractive-installation-2025-aluminium-plexiglass-painted-sliders-computer-electronic-components.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fragmentin, G80, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, 2025 ALUMINIUM, PLEXIGLASS, PAINTED SLIDERS, COMPUTER, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"2cf36737-b4fe-4f8e-b4ac-ed3badb9fd1c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149326459559397,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1667/27cc36b4b0/img_4501-copie_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fragmentin, G80, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, 2025 ALUMINIUM, PLEXIGLASS, PAINTED SLIDERS, COMPUTER, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"46d630f1-3918-42a6-a02b-6803d4e45589",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nearby, there was a breath of fresh air, literally. Cathy van Eck's Try to \"Turn the Wind\" placed a wind-speed sensor at the centre of the room. The visitor blew against it, and the piece responded: layers of sound shifted and collided, from the low rumble of coal extraction to the clipped cadences of politicians discussing a climate they were busy destroying. It was a small-scale climate simulation, a delicate feedback loop where the visitor's own body became an agent of change, however negligible. The piece had the rare quality of feeling simultaneously playful and deeply consequential.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This corporeal engagement continued with Isuru Kumarasinghe's \"Resounding Bodies\". Two large aluminum plates, connected by strings, vibrated and filled the space with sound, exploring sympathetic resonance as a social metaphor. The work asked the visitor to feel the connections, to sense the vibrations in their own body, a form of communication that bypasses language entirely. It was a meditative, rigorously conceived counterpoint to the more overtly political works surrounding it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Politics returned with a vengeance in the work of Palestinian artist Essa Grayeb. In the first video piece, Grayeb stripped a 1967 televised address by Nasser down to its silences and involuntary sounds: the breath, the rustle, the swallowed grief of a leader announcing defeat. In the companion photo series, sheets of darkroom paper were held before a television screen as that same address played, each sheet absorbing the r)reroupoourtcfragle(olombonidavidaoffocieusementbroadcast's glow for a different duration. The resulting prints were spectral, barely legible: the material residue of a transmission once witnessed by millions, now reduced to a faint luminous stain.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hoda Afshar, an Iranian artist based in Melbourne, also worked with the afterlives of images. Her video Undone rewound found footage of bombings in Ukraine, Palestine, and Iraq, a desperate, futile attempt to reverse the violence. In her photo series Aura, she degraded and manipulated screenshots of contemporary crises, creating a ghostly, asphyxiating atmosphere that mirrored our digitally mediated experience of disaster. The images were stark, ravaged, and deeply troubling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0e82e5ff-dda1-4613-a994-f50cdaaae1f5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149329337957894,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1216x1714/9ed53c1020/suru-kumarasinghe-installation-2026-various-types-of-metal-resonance-asynchronous-loops.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ISURU KUMARASINGHE INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a735c293-bf3b-405f-ba95-8399d100dae9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149329480748552,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/906x1248/a93dad19ed/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-23-57-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CATHY VAN ECK INTERACTIVE SOUND SCULPTURE, 2021/2025 ELECTRONICS, SOUND, ANEMOMETER, LOUDSPEAKERS",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c61a614b-1825-45e5-b14b-f1d35ee05952",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149330375015952,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1678x1258/81831f3b03/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-05-49.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"HODA AFSHAR VIDEO, 2022 ONE-CHANNEL DIGITAL VIDEO, COLOUR, SOUND, 11:00 MIN",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0b00945d-f67c-4823-bcf6-0a4722103355",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149330455977489,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/940x1272/b63232883b/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-06-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"HODA AFSHAR PHOTO SERIES, 2020â23",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"135aed49-5233-41bf-932d-69bc70755f8b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then came the air raid siren. Nikita Kadan's sound installation carried a title that translates from Ukrainian as both anxiety and alarm. The curtained structure filled the room and, at first approach, felt almost welcoming. One walked into it, and then the sound hit. It was an air raid alarm, but it was being mimicked by an opera singer and a violinist. The uncanny fusion of human voice and mechanical terror was chilling. 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A legion of unwanted creatures, from a bat broadcasting frequencies from a tomb to a scorpion rallying for the right of infection, sought solidarity in the ruins of a planetary catastrophe. It was a bizarre, theatrical, and wonderfully queer vision of resilience, a form of world-making from the margins, and one of the few works in the show that permitted itself the luxury of something approaching joy.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The second venue, the daadgalerie, opened with \"The Intimate Earthquake Archive\" by Sissel Marie Tonn and Jonathan Reus, a work that transferred the tremors of man-made seismic events directly into the visitor's body. Wearing a haptic vest, one walked through an archive of seismic data from the Groningen gas fields, triggering vibrational compositions. It was a visceral, disquieting exercise in deep listening, making the geological consequences of resource extraction disturbingly personal.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Mexican artist duo Interspecifics transformed the energy of global protest into a luminous, sonic gesture. The piece fed recordings of marches and demonstrations from open archives through spectral analysis, translating their sonic characteristics, in real time, into a choreography of moving spotlights, motors, and crystals. Protest became a vibrant, energetic field, a collective memory made of light and sound. It was one of the few works in the exhibition that permitted itself something approaching elation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dror Feiler made a second appearance with To Live Is to Tremble, a video piece for sixteen bells. 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77,{_uid:"3b156194-1659-40c9-a530-d8d434e5b842",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149339682442839,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1694x1238/a10fc2117f/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-42-41.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"INTERSPECIFICS INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"95beaf4a-7006-45db-822c-0c0b8687bc52",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149350337298547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/948x1266/3caf206a3d/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-43-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"INTERSPECIFICS INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"aa94e579-b41e-4292-96d8-3ca17467595d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149350337101938,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/870x1258/85785faea2/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-43-04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"INTERSPECIFICS INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d69e9351-5ac3-4fc8-a07e-fdf4a87165e7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149350735782006,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1700x1258/c3ee89d2fc/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-42-52.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"INTERSPECIFICS INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9dfaa82d-8fd6-4ace-8208-61b394edda65",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"So, what was the point of it all? We are, after all, drowning. The world is collapsing into a deafening, post-digital vacuity. A cacophony of Trumpian vociferations, the endless slurry of AI-generated slop, the militaristic din of global powers, and the chilling silence imposed by authoritarian regimes, it all amounts to a kind of anti-noise, a static that prevents hearing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Against this backdrop, \"Echoes of Tumult\" proposed a radical act: not to make more noise, but to make better noise. It offered itself as a corrective to the political cacophony, a way to recalibrate our senses. The exhibition didn't create a sound; it helped us re-hear the one that has always been there. It reminded us that the world has never been quiet. It has always been full of a complex, meaningful, and often painful clamor. This exhibition was the instrument that might just help us learn to hear it again.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"until 22.3.2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"KUNSTRAUM KREUZBERG / BETHANIEN / DAADGALERIE - Berlin (Germany)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Curated by CTM FESTIVAL, and DAAD ARTISTS-IN-BERLIN-PROGRAM and iii â INSTRUMENT INVENTORS INITIATIVE",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{type:"hard_break"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-27 00:00",name:"The Sanity of Noise: ÷ \"Echoes of Tumult\" exhibition Got the Politics of Sound Right",author:"Philippe de Manus",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f05e4b58-a7bb-4a96-80e2-5b3fb9c66899",color:"#400a51",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"6d23541b-879d-425e-a7b0-0822e85f5394",poster:{i
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77,{_uid:"4df624b1-87a4-48c0-aac2-0678beb1a61a",poster:{id:150397657185812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2482x1400/fe9c83bb14/screenshot-2026-03-02-at-00-00-54.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150402691616295,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/4b094dc765/ultrarecuce.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"EXCERPT VIDEO FROM \"THE THINKING OCEAN\" COMMISSION BY THE WHITNEY MUSEUM -ART PORT, COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND THE MUSEUM",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1b5806cf-a8f3-454b-b467-0cb8d0a65959",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Thinking Ocean\"",type:"text"},{text:" belongs to a growing body of exhibitions that are collectively reshaping how we understand our position within the living world. This digital artwork refuses the comfortable fiction that humanity stands apart from nature, and does so with both intellectual rigor and visual force.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work situates the viewer inside a procedurally generated underwater environment where the physics of water and the operations of code turn out to obey a shared set of rules. Particles drift, currents form, and the boundary between the organic and the algorithmic dissolves. The ocean, here, is not a backdrop. It is the subject, the medium, and the argument. Akten and Hofstadter draw on recent scientific research suggesting that the Navier-Stokes equations, which model the behavior of fluids in motion, are theoretically capable of the same order of computation as any digital machine. The ocean, in other words, thinks. Not metaphorically, but structurally. It processes. It remembers. It has been doing so for far longer than we have.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where the work's ecological and non-extractive stance becomes most legible. The \"Thinking Ocean\" does not represent nature as a resource to be decoded, mapped, or instrumentalized. It does not extract. It listens. The viewer is invited into a mode of attention that is contemplative rather than acquisitive, relational rather than hierarchical. The piece belongs to a broader artistic and intellectual current, one that includes the work of artists that are actively dismantling the extractive logic embedded in how we look at, and think about, the non-human world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The post-Cartesian dimension of the work is equally deliberate. The Cartesian split, mind over matter, human over nature, subject over object, has underwritten centuries of ecological destruction. By presenting the ocean as an ancient cognitive medium, one whose operations predate and exceed anything human technology has produced, the artists collapse that hierarchy. The faint, abstract human form visible in the distance, whose movements generate currents in the environment, does not dominate the space. It is absorbed by it. This is not a minor formal choice: it is a statement about evolutionary origin and ecological belonging. Life came from the ocean. We came from the ocean. The exhibition does not let us forget it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Thinking Ocean\" is part of a wider cultural reckoning, a constellation of exhibitions, research projects, and artistic practices that are collectively building a post-anthropocentric vocabulary for the 21st century. These are not exercises in nostalgia for a pre-industrial nature, nor are they naive celebrations of technology. They are serious attempts to think through what it means to be human in a world where the boundaries between the biological, the computational, and the ecological are becoming increasingly porous. Akten and Hofstadter's work is among the most rigorous and most seductive of these attempts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
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It's a pilgrimage across Ladakh. You have to slow down, acclimatise, understand the landscape and let it change the way you see. Every artist, every village, every site, and every encounter along the way becomes part of that journey.",author:"Sagar Singh",component:"quote"},{_uid:"cdecc19a-6687-4a06-8223-da344614dc06",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists are held to the same logic, operating in a space where regeneration is not a theme but a metabolic requirement. It begins as a refusal of the objectâs endurance. Stanzin Tsepelâs sculptural practice, which translates glacial recession into physical ledgers of wood and lime, and Urgain Zawa and Tundup Dorjayâs markalak clay sculptures, cast from indigenous ritual earth, are designed to dissolve. They reject the marketâs demand for permanence, choosing instead to exist, perform their work, and return to the soil without residue. 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engagement with the absolute. Avantika Bawaâs geometric structures force a high-contrast reading of the terrain, their modularity acting as a sharp geometric foil to the Himalayan geology. The friction here is not a side effect;
77 it is the work. Jitish Kallat occupies this same vertiginous space, refusing to let the cosmological and the immediate cancel each other out, while Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser) project alternate logics across the sites, treating stone, wind, and altitude not as backdrops, but as active variables in a system that exceeds human duration.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This trajectory from soil to signal finds its most precise expression in the raising flags project, a collaboration with museum in progress. Here, the fixity of the object is entirely surrendered to the atmosphere. For Agnieszka Kurant, Peter Kogler, Anna Jermolaewa, and Grazia Toderi, the flag is not a secondary format; it is a radical choice of medium that aligns with the biennaleâs zero-footprint methodology. Jitish Kallatâs Adrift Signs operates in this same airborne register, sending messages into the wind that refuse to claim territory. In this high-altitude corridor, these flags act as nomadic signals, interacting with the sky rather than the ground. Koglerâs networks and Toderiâs celestial mappings are hoisted into the void, becoming metabolic markers that sychronize with the mountainâs own rhythms. The art here does not occupy space; it occupies the frequency.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This institutional and geographic depth is further anchored by Chemat Dorjeyâs Burrowed in Time. By reimagining Chali weaving as an architectural structure at Basgo, Dorjey scales the tactile language of Ladakhi textiles into a spatial dialogue with the ancient citadel. His work exists alongside Amrit Karkiâs Rising from the Soil, Soaring to the Sky, a monumental soil-carpet that tracks the unstable boundary where matter begins to cohere into form before being scattered by the wind. Through a five-year commitment with the Rubin Museum and exchanges with the Fremantle Biennale, represented by Shupiwe Chongweâs ceramic practice, the biennale insists that the ground beneath the maker is the first material, bound by the material imperative of the ground.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1387b3da-13e3-4748-af17-bf4e9d82bcfc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207598543394758,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8192x5464/95c7e7bdda/sa-ladakh-biennale-2026_ayan-biswas_mulbekh_photo-by-manan-sheth-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"sa-ladakh-biennale-2026_ayan-biswas_mulbekh_photo-by-manan-sheth-1.jpg",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75a161be-295c-4abc-aaf1-1cd7b32924ea",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The economic structure is not an afterthought. Local communities are not partners in name; they share crafts, knowledge, and produce, with proceeds returning directly to them. Ayan Biswas, working with the Quiet Art Movement in Kargil, uses alternative printmaking to document the region's medicinal plants, integrating school workshops into the process so that the archival work becomes simultaneously an act of intergenerational transmission. The art is not visiting the community. The community is the condition of the art. The redistribution of cultural and economic energy back into the ground that made the work possible: that, too, is regeneration.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Being local, here, is not a retreat from the universal. It is how the universal gets made. A sculptor working with unfired clay and oral history in the Indus Valley is addressing the same broken relationship between human activity and living systems as any artist working anywhere on the planet. Worth noting, too, is what the biennale does not do: it does not announce itself as a decolonial project, does not frame its craft practices as resistance, does not position La
77dakhi knowledge against a Western norm it needs to overcome. It simply operates from different premises entirely. The criteria by which the international art world usually measures ambition, institutional scale, market visibility, critical legibility within a Euro-American framework, are not the criteria at work here.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The deeper question the biennale raises is one of knowledge itself. How do we imagine a different future for art if we continue to produce it within the very frameworks that determined what counted as art in the first place? The hierarchies of medium, the primacy of the object, the authority of the institution, the geography of the centre: these are not neutral conventions. They are inherited structures, and they shape not only what gets shown but what gets made, what gets funded, what gets thought. A biennale that builds from craft, from oral transmission, from the intelligence embedded in a terrain worked over centuries, is not simply offering an alternative programme. It is operating from a different epistemology entirely. The regenerative act, here, is not just ecological. It is cognitive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The art world has spent decades building a global circuit, fairs, biennials, institutional touring shows, predicated on the friction-less movement of capital and concepts. It has done so, but at a cost that is now visible: a creeping formal and conceptual uniformity, events that increasingly resemble one another regardless of where they are held, a shared grammar of presentation, hospitality, and critical language that travels so efficiently it leaves little room for the genuinely foreign. The circuit is not broken. It has become less critical, less artistically necessary, and less capable of producing the kind of encounter that changes how you think.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The sÄ Ladakh Biennale proposes a different architecture altogether. No centralized venue. No prescribed itinerary. No opening gala. A 48-hour acclimatisation requirement that applies equally to the curator, the collector, and the critic. Slowly, on its terms. This is not nostalgia for a pre-global art world. It is a structural proposition about what contemporary art might recover when it stops optimizing for portability and starts building from place.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What is at stake is not just a question of format. Diversity is the metabolic requirement of any living system, whether biological or cultural. When a single model, regardless of its perceived benevolence, is applied from above across different territories, different histories, different ways of knowing, it does not enrich those contexts; it gradually narrows them. It reduces the range of questions that art is permitted to ask, the range of forms it is permitted to take, the range of communities it is permitted to address. A norm imposed from outside, however prestigious its origin, is always also a contraction. What the sÄ Ladakh Biennale insists on, by rooting itself in the specific conditions of this place and these communities, is that the local does not need to be legitimized by the global. It legitimizes itself. And in doing so, it expands what the rest of the world is able to see.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Anchored, slow, regenerative, economically accountable to the communities it inhabits, this is not a marginal model. It is the one the art models should",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"be moving toward.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"curated by Vishal K Dar, with Tsering Motup Siddho as Associate Curator",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}
77,{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-aace618a-7fff-54b1-f48c-8e833c52955b"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists include Agnieszka Kurant (Poland), Amrit Kakri (Nepal), Anna Jermolaewa (Austria), Arunima Dazess Wangchuk (Leh, Ladakh), Avantika Bawa (USA/India), Ayan Biswas (Likir, Ladakh), Chemat Dorjey (Sakti, Leh, Ladakh), David Soin Tappeser (Germany), Denizay Apusoglu (Switzerland), Grazia Toderi (Italy), Himali Singh Soin (India), Jigmet Angmo (Sakti, Leh, Ladakh), Jitish Kallat (India), Jonas Kissling (Switzerland), Peter Kogler (Austria), Shupiwe Chongwe (Australia), Skarma Sonam Tashi (Sapi, Kargil, Ladakh), Stanzin Samphel (Chemday, Leh, Ladakh), Stanzin Tsepel (Rangdum, Zanskar, Ladakh), Stanzin Wangail (Stok, Leh, Ladakh), Tashi Namgial (Skurbuchan, Leh, Ladakh), Tenzin Olden (Shilling-Skit, Zanskar, Ladakh), Tom Mùller (Switzerland), Tundup Dorjay (Igoo, Leh, Ladakh), Urgain Zawa (Igoo, Leh, Ladakh), and Zahara Batool (Pashkum, Kargil, Ladakh).",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-41f62ab3-7fff-8b86-85a5-dad3cd70ac9e"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"sÄ Ladakh Biennale 2026, LehâKargil corridor, extended until 30th of August",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"75248fcc-33df-4195-8d77-ed69b23f54bf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207623343834243,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3236x1796/5add2feb99/screenshot-2026-08-10-at-18-21-14.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2026-08-08 00:00",name:"sÄ Ladakh Biennale 2026÷Regeneration at Altitude",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"4683eac6-bd23-4f77-984f-093318483471",color:"#90681b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e7a59d28-57d9-4140-b6ee-02cf7540d61d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:206572450528659,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1222x842/67344ad752/screenshot-2026-08-07-at-19-05-14.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1222x842"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Image by Urgyan Skaldan",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"sa-bienniale",full_slug:"directory/reviews/sa-bienniale",sort_by_date:null,position:-1440,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c559bdfd-6690-4cb2-95a7-df229be64909",first_published_at:"2026-08-10T16:20:00.987Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Aeolian Suite Jenna Sutela",created_at:"2026-08-26T19:16:36.403Z",published_at:"2026-08-26T22:14:36.510Z",updated_at:"2026-08-26T22:14:36.523Z",id:213328676502180,uuid:"1e566467-d58b-4a33-877e-23760dd9a4d5",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"68aa1cb4-ed49-425e-892c-156410a27424",title:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:213361552979842,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1910x1444/48e1a570e2/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-25-41.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1910x1444"},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela"}],_uid:"9dd3fa1d-25d9-4d31-acb5-0fb1bf47aaed",body:[{_uid:"9d836b0f-8c25-4727-a1fe-d304d3df7d42",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Aeolian Suite\" by Jenna Sutela",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In the Venetian context, the wind has never been only a weather condition, but the origin of local mythologies and narrations: the wind moved the boats of Marco Polo towards China in the 14",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"th",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"superscript"}]},{text:" Century while the Venetian âRepubblica Marinaraâ reached its peak thanks to this same element; the songs of complaint for the death of sailors and fishermen directly relate to tumultuous waters produced by the winds, the writer Iosif Brodskij in ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Watermark ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"describes the wind as a constant Venetian presence, revolving in the streets of the city complementing the water fury. When a city is built on water, the sea and the wind become daily visitors, part not only of the folklore, but of every experience, whether through their absence or through a violent appearance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In musical compositions, a note that repeats itself alongside the whole piece is defined as an ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Ostinato; ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"in the same way, the wind repeating itself day after day and century after century, populating the Venetian landscape, becomes a recurring character punctuating the Venetian ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Score. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"The musical metaphor is particularly poignant as, just as the wind, it invisibly replenishes environments with its presence and makes itself heard although not seen: itâs a common experience to perceive a voice singing or a violin playing without understanding where the sound is coming from.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"67b616a3-1d52-446c-9eae-181df7640791",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213371662411971,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1398x1864/aa07dba771/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-23-27-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026. Detail. Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo by Clelia Cadamuro. Courtesy of FRAME Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b703c475-914c-46a9-92cd-5ada9dd85a2e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213371611412670,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1062x1440/95b77809a9/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-26-02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1062x1440"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026. Detail. Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo by Clelia Cadamuro. Courtesy of FRAME Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ec96b525-fa90-495c-a9f6-988f40c78fc5",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The project ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Aeolian Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"by Jenna Sutela for the Finnish pavilion takes this idea of constancy and presence, as well as the musical score, at its core, starting from the title where the ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"takes yet another term from the musical realm, in which it means a composition of multiple instruments. In Alvar and Elissa Aaltoâs architecture, these instruments take the shape of five entities playing together different c
77ompositions created through the agency of five Venetian winds: Bora Chiara, Bora Scura, Tramontana, Scirocco and Garbin. Each of the five entities playing together in the pavilion presents itself as a hairy sculpture that practically demonstrates the unpredictability of the atmospheric agent it represents: with every minimal air movement, the sculpture surface redefines itself in a continuous game of rearrangement. Entering the pavilion, the wind music wraps the visitors up, becoming at times soft and pleasant to listen to and sometimes violently dissonant, making it hard not to make space in ourselves to listen to the wind's voice. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"Taking back from the theory of ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"deep listening ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"by Pauline Oliveros, Sutela and the winds ask us to be aware of these air movements and to their voices, making space in ourselves to listen to them and to their unpredictability, which defies forecasting and AI modelling, more than ever in the current context of climate change where even winds are affected and violence or complete absence disrupt the usual score are not just musical notes in the scor every event is unpredictable and where its violence is heightened day after day. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"Aeolian Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"is a spiritual experience connected to the capacity to listen not only to ourselves but to any entity that surrounds us, and a fiercely scientific one that reaffirms, through this non-human voice, the importance of being aware of how climate change is affecting everything on the planet. A temple for the winds, the project becomes a space of reflection in the chaos of the Biennale, an invitation to step out of the climate-unaware crowd to get a moment of pantheistic understanding of what happens beyond the next opening and the next champagne flute.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-08-27 00:00",name:"\"Aeolian Suite\" ÷Jenna Sutela",author:"Iacopo Prinetti",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"d1f31111-f669-4180-8445-40cd691e7d0d",color:"#3e81ad",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a297dfda-598a-4949-9e82-f2f8f5e75610",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213361552979842,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1910x1444/48e1a570e2/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-25-41.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1910x1444"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026, installation view. Photo: Ugo Carmeni. Courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"aeolian-suite-jenna-sutela",full_slug:"directory/reviews/aeolian-suite-jenna-sutela",sort_by_date:null,position:-1470,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"597c8126-9bf2-4d77-b648-f53d86a05a00",first_published_at:"2026-08-26T22:13:27.196Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"ali cherri",created_at:"2026-09-09T16:59:23.898Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T11:54:16.938Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T11:54:16.954Z",id:218249477751291,uuid:"351d78ec-70c8-4bff-844c-669603ed0d34",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"723f5f51-3f22-42ca-9ade-b85b0af8b4c9",title:"Ali Cherri: Soul Witness at WIELS Brussels | Review",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:218249781367146,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3072x2048/707abac940/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Ali Cherri, Soul Witness, Ali Cherri exhibition, WIELS Brussels, contemporary art review, Lebane
77se contemporary artist, political art, war and memory, sculpture and installation, The Watchman",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A moving review of Ali Cherriâs Soul Witness at WIELS Brussels, where "}],_uid:"347aad4d-14e4-4b12-9233-62885c26e9dc",body:[{_uid:"a81e89c8-fc57-443b-9567-f3fcb0cc313f",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âWhat does it mean today to be a witness in the face of the worldâs violence, in the face of the genocide unfolding now, in the face of everything that is happening?â",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"â Ali Cherri",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"War now reaches us already framed. The drone supplies the angle, Instagram supplies the border, and our thumb supplies the disappearance. An explosion flares between a holiday photograph and an advertisement. We are horrified; we continue. The crime is not hidden from us. It is shown so often that seeing begins to resemble not seeing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Soul Witness\" exhibition begins inside that failure of attention. Ali Cherri does not add another violent image to the pile. He approaches barbarity through subtlety, poetry, tenderness and melancholyânot to soften it, but to restore its reality. Nothing is hurried into accusation or flattened into equivalence. No verdict is thrust at us. The thought arrives almost unnoticed and is already beneath the skin before we can defend ourselves.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The works are extraordinarily beautiful, and their beauty is the source of their power. They hold the eye that the spectacle of horror can no longer hold. While we remain before them, something harsher crosses the defences raised by repetition. Beauty offers no reconciliation. It makes us vulnerable again.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Violence here is closer to depression than detonation. It has no single instant and no safe exterior. It changes the weight of the air, enters posture and habit, dulls the horizon. War is no longer an event observed from elsewhere; it has become the atmosphere through which ordinary life must move. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7bb6ca1f-22d0-46ca-969d-29285b4cbd57",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218252191232482,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1536/793d42c4c3/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c92.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2304x1536"},is_external_url:false},caption:" Ali Cherri The Sentinel, 2026 Digital video, projection screen Video aspect ratio, 16:9 29 minutes Edition 1/5 + 2AP",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"45d40bdc-4572-4fbd-8fae-c74fadf79533",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253107859963,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1079/768ad6df2f/ali-cherri-still-from-the-sentinel-2026_2_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x1079"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a5679e16-007f-4a5c-b92c-6f8e3a2cbc43",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cherri does not give us one more image of the world. He infiltrates us with its reality.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Authority first becomes visible in the body: a tension in the neck, a repeated gesture, an eye trained to expect danger. Before it hardens into a monument, a doctrine or a border, power is a habit of muscle and attention.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A soldier watches an empty horizon. The enemy fails to appear, but the apparatus cannot afford to be embarrassed by reality. The landscape must remain suspicious. The soldier lends it danger; his spine keeps the frontier upright. Nothing happens, and an entire system is employed to preserve the threat of nothing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then he falls asleep.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An eyelid is a very small thing with which to interrupt a military order. Sleep does not free the soldierânightmares have their own occupying forcesâbut it makes his body briefly unavailable. Neither hero nor corpse, he slips outside the two images through which armies prefer to possess their men. A monument knows exactly what a soldier means. A sleeping soldier does not cooperate. For one breath, the border loses the gaze that kept it true.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The mourner waits beside another absence. The guard must believe that someone will c
77ome; the mourner knows that someone will not return. One absence is cultivated by power, the other refuses to be administered by it. Grief takes up time and space. It prevents loss from being tidied into history and put away.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6434fe19-d8be-4c77-b781-b392ac76e233",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253206565376,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x992/c1c58aa534/ali-cherri-the-seven-soldiers-detail-2023-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-galerie-imane-fares-c-photo-aurelien-mole_1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x992"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7104ee9f-161f-4df9-a15b-9444835a605e",quote:"\"Soul Witness\" is sublime because it reaches us where explicit images now fail. It does not raise its voice above the noise. It lowers it",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"7db8a9a2-49cd-449b-82a3-49a72afa6ab1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218252924727797,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1152x1613/74c17c6fc5/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9a.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1152x1613"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c4739171-df8e-490c-84c9-410857911f93",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218252924707316,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1152x1728/d406ba2a22/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9b.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1152x1728"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8009e73d-aee1-4f38-9832-14bd793c0658",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253008232953,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3072x2048/7b3a38d587/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3072x2048"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"87358e6a-a07c-4b0d-9a1c-f4793f6493bf",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The same disturbance passes through Cherriâs materials. Bronze has long spoken for victory, permanence and the official dead. Mud accepts the hand, keeps its pressure for a while, then cracks. It does not conquer bronze; it makes bronzeâs eternity look slightly anxious.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bronze says forever. Mud waits for rain.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mud may shelter or bury. Stone may remember or command. Cherri grants no material an easy innocence. He brings them close enough for their inherited meanings to become unstable: the hardness of authority, the elevation of glory, the supposed humility of earth. Fragility is not made virtuous. Permanence is simply revealed as labourâa pedestal, a ceremony, someone to keep the surface bright.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fragments within Cherriâs hybrid creatures have survived other forms of authority. Removed, traded, authenticated and renamed, they carry the touch of several acts of possession. Here Cherriâs question widens: not only what history remembers, but how power and its institutions decide what can be transmitted as history at all. A museum may protect an object and still edit its life. It can turn plunder into provenance by changing not the object, but the sentence around it. Under good lighting, a violent journey acquires excellent manners.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cherri does not pretend to return these fragments to an untouched past. There is no untouched past left. Ancient stone enters new clay; inherited faces inhabit uncertain bodies. The seams remain visible. These
77creatures resist the calm coherence that display so often imposes upon damaged histories.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the quiet movement of \"Soul Witness\": from the body trained by power to the structures that make such training appear natural; from vigilance to border, from exhaustion to monument, from displaced object to authorised memory. History does not simply pass from one generation to another. It is filtered through the nation, the army and the museum, each preserving certain traces while teaching others to disappear. The exhibition never turns this movement into a lesson. It lets us feel how command passes into flesh, how violence begins to resemble order, and how order eventually tells the story.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Its lightest touches are also its coldest. Armies, borders and museums possess formidable power, yet depend upon brittle performances: a man must continue looking, a statue must remain upright, a label must keep its authority. Perhaps powerâs deepest fear is not rebellion. Perhaps it is a loss of concentration.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c2a02ac7-b083-4d3d-9617-5a87f3dcf8de",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253008228856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1536/fedaf88376/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c98.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2304x1536"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5a31bca4-64dc-4188-9baa-1538326f762e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253154406909,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1440/0f27d3727e/ali-cherri-counter-monument-for-the-fallen-2025-c-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-almine-rech1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x1440"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4e97b997-08d9-4470-a18c-fffe435b7a69",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Soul Witness\" is sublime because it reaches us where explicit images now fail. It does not raise its voice above the noise. It lowers it. We lean closer. By the time we understand what has reached us, it is too late to scroll away.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To witness, here, is not simply to have looked. It is to lose the privilege of remaining outside what one has seen.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I agree with Cherri: art may not possess power, but it is here to irritate, to disturb the serenity of dominant power. Soul Witness does precisely that. It leaves authority standing, yet makes its composure impossible to believe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything here rings true. Everything is finely judged; everything reaches deep. I cried a great deal. Ali Cherri is a great artist, and his generationâs most eloquent witness to reality where peace remains absent",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Soul Witness\" curated by Curator: Helena Kritis, Curatorial intern: Magdalena de la Barrera",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"With the generous support of: FABA Fundación, Almine y Bernard Ruiz Picasso, Mercedes Vilardell,, Peter & Nathalie Hrechdakian-Oghlian",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In collaboration with: Almine Rech Gallery, Galerie Imane Farès, Cherri Studio",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-09 00:00",name:"The Moment the Image ÷Stops Protecting Us",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"5acbe40f-d7e8-453d-a68d-cf1ede2005a3",color:"#d0a873",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c17f03c7-e151-499d-8c7c-37e674663d1f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218251121287591,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1536/ad6964cd77/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c96.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2304x1536"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ali Cherri, The Earth Heard Their Lament, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"ali-cherri",full_slug:"directory/reviews/ali-cherri",sort_by_date:null,position:-1500,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"4f74592d-1424-40c7-85da-bf0d5a3b1520",first_published_at:"2026-09-09T17:49:41.625Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Nikita Kadanâs A New Integrity Destroyed in Russian Strike on Warehouse Near Kyiv",created_at:"2026-09-10T12:44:36.932Z",published_at:"2026-09-10T14:16:01.113Z",updated_at:"2026-09-10T14:16:01.203Z",id:218540756742352,uuid:"80800c47-aacd-4bd4-9196-281dc2db761b",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"e89d2383-4036-45db-9722-4bcb08d6f529",title:"The kinetic installation A New Integrity by Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan has been destroyed in a Russian missile strike. ",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:218541136887475,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x600/ee113da66a/nikita-kadan-new-integrity-2026-b2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"The kinetic installation A New Integrity by Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan has been destroyed in a Russian missile strike. ",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"The kinetic installation A New Integrity by Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan has been destroyed in a Russian missile strike. "}],_uid:"f0b28c8e-60bb-4e68-ab97-fd6b5c2221a7",body:[{_uid:"e43c89cd-94a8-46d9-993f-655d7a4838df",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ukrainian Press need your support to protect culture, art and democracy -please donate here : ",type:"text"},{text:"https://www.patreon.com/Artslooker/membership",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://www.patreon.com/Artslooker/membership",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The kinetic installation ",type:"text"},{text:"A New Integrity",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" by Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan has been destroyed in a Russian missile strike.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"According to the artist, the warehouse on the outskirts of Kyiv where the work was stored after ",type:"text"},{text:"the exhibition",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://pavilionofculture.org/a-new-integrity-1",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_blank",linktype:"url"}}]},{text:" closed was completely demolished in a strike in July. In the months since, the project team has made repeated attempts to reach the ruins and salvage any surviving fragments, but the site remains off limits for safety reasons. Judging by the state of the ruins, there is no reason to expect that any part of the installation survived.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A New Integrity",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" is the multidisciplinary project supported by RIBBON International that brought together sculpture, sound design, theatre and oral history to examine the way trauma reshapes personal integrity. At its centre were kinetic sculptures assembled from prosthetic limbs, which performed slow, repetitive movements echoing the rhythms of rehabilitation: repetition, endurance, frustration and adjustment. The show ran at The Pavilion of Culture in Kyiv from 11 April to 31 May 2026. Previously, Artslooker together with FRIEZE MAGAZINEpublished a review of the installation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The warehouse storing Ai Weiweiâs installation ",type:"text"},{text:"Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Military Camouflage Painted White",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" was also destroyed by two ballistic missiles during the Russian attack on Kyiv in July, with the extent of damage to the work still unknown at the time.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"This new/article is a courtesy of ARTLOOKERS",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Coming in Our September REFRESH MAGAZINE Print Issue",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In our forthcoming September print issue, we publish an in-depth conversation with Nikita Kadan, speaking from his studio in Kyiv, where artistic practice unfolds within the immediate reality of war. Reflecting on beauty as a means of reclaiming agency, the ethics of representing suffering, and artâs capacity to resist the logic of destruction, Kadan offers a lucid and uncompromising account of what it means to create from within historyânot at a distance from it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âIf I see beauty, it means I am not merely survivingâI feel resilient and sensitive to the abundance of this world, to that which exists beyond survival.â",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Read the full interview in our September print issue.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ukrainian Press need your support to protect culture, art and democracy",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"please donate here : ",type:"text"},{text:"https://www.patreon.com/Artslooker/membership",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://www.patreon.com/Artslooker/membership",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-10 00:00",name:"Nikita Kadanâs \"A New Integrity\" Destroyed ÷in Russian Strike on Warehouse Near Kyiv",author:"Artslooker, UKRAINE Press",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"a4d9a701-2082-468a-abf0-d48852acacac",color:"#ba9175",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"8067850b-7841-4575-af7a-69bf286e3642",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218541136887475,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x600/ee113da66a/nikita-kadan-new-integrity-2026-b2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"900x600"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nikita Kadan, âA New Integrityâ, 2026, installation view. Courtesy: Dmytro Prutkin and RIBBON International",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:"9"},slug:"nikita-kadan-s-a-new-integrity-destroyed-in-russian-strike-on-warehouse-near-kyiv",full_slug:"directory/essays/nikita-kadan-s-a-new-integrity-destroyed-in-russian-strike-on-warehouse-near-kyiv",sort_by_date:null,position:-270,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"d0035bf0-4e29-4661-b5c4-2da05e078353",first_published_at:"2026-09-10T12:54:21.921Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"The Earth Inherits Us",created_at:"2026-09-19T00:58:23.514Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T11:49:33.378Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T11:49:33.399Z",id:221552244813913,uuid:"197ba407-0e85-48c6-b266-954c48c00566",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c192e2c7-d806-4154-91df-e6ce086506d4",title:"The Earth Inherits Us: No Single Ground",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:221829280504728,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1446x1120/e7a1006b66/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-45-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1446x1120"},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Inheritors of Earth, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, KNMA New Delhi, Premjish Achari, contemporary art India, Indian contemporary art, ecological art, vegetal art, plant life in art, phytosensitive art, more-than-human art, multisensory exhibition, environmental art, queer ecology, anthropoce
77ntrism, vegetal time, plant agency, colonial botany, botanical migration, Kallen Pokkudan, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Bhumiyude Avakashikal, Shared Ecologies, Jayita Barai, art and ecology, art exhibition New Delhi, contemporary exhibition review, plant intelligence, human and nonhuman relations, ethics of care, Dalit ecological knowledge, mangrove conservation, vegetal aesthetics, posthumanism in art",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Discover Inheritors of Earth at KNMA New Delhi, where contemporary art reimagines plant intelligence, vegetal time, ecology and human exceptionalism."}],_uid:"03d5a151-41ed-48d1-9dc7-3e263f342265",body:[{_uid:"45a4991a-083e-478b-a125-4bf342735613",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Co-Inhabitants of the Earth: Plants with Histories, Labour and Agency of Their Own. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Plants are easy to overlook because they seem to remain where they have been placed. With remarkable subtlety, \"Inheritors of Earth\" exhibition draws them out of the background and into their own histories, migrations and measures of time. An exhibition of rare vision, it shifts the human gaze without ever forcing its hand.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition refuses to treat plants as ornament or inventory. With remarkable subtlety, it asks us to look with plants rather than at them, approaching them as active bearers of memory and resilience, moving to rhythms not calibrated to our own. Nothing is insisted upon; our sense of scale simply begins to shift.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by Premjish Achari at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, the exhibition positions plant life as central protagonists in a shared world. By bringing distinct measures of time into the same spaces, it contrasts human time, loud and meticulously recorded, with the subtler rhythms of vegetal time, marked by seasons, extended dormancies, the slow thickening of bark, or generational species migrations.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-839bbd5f-7fff-8b30-3be4-88e348b5d4e1"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Its title refers to Vaikom Muhammad Basheerâs Malayalam story Bhumiyude Avakashikal (1977), in which humans, plants and animals possess an equal claim to the earth. The distinction is important: they are equal claimants, not equivalent beings. A shared planet does not produce a shared way of living. Each organism meets light, water, danger and duration differently. What joins them is neither resemblance nor harmony, but proximity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The world is not one coherent space arranged around human needs. It is made of many living layers, entangled yet distinct, evolving beside and through one another. A plant responds to soil, rain, heat, insects and the presence of other plants. Human histories intersect with these relations, but do not contain them. We are part of the entanglement, not its centre.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a0ce6fe2-08ed-4c13-87c0-49aa9661c994",quote:" âSeeds cross borders; crops follow empires; roots alter the ground that holds them.â",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"970e554b-8d43-4b66-a8f3-fdf5cbc8d239",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221830683921338,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1580x620/07bb0be553/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-51-04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Self Portrait, 2025, Hemangini Maharaul",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cd0d9688-1a44-4cb2-9c37-88818abd7d95",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Plants are often admitted into human culture on restrictive terms. We notice what feeds us, heals us, shelters us, earns money or gives pleasure. Even concern can preserve this arrangement: a forest becomes valuable because it stores carbon; a species because it provides a service;
77 a tree because it cools a city. Inheritors of Earth asks the viewer to suspend that calculation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Achari describes the exhibitionâs method as âphytosensitive.â The word could easily remain theoretical, but the works give it substance. Paint, paper, moving image and organic matter register vegetal life without forcing it into a single tempo. Growth appears alongside exhaustion; rootedness alongside travel. Plants do not simply furnish the subject of the works. Their fibres, surfaces, cycles and delays affect how those works are made and how long they ask to be observed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jayita Baraiâs Assemblage II (2026) makes this especially clear. Cotton rope, coir rope, dried bark, corn-husk paper and a Canna indica seedpod meet within the same object. The list reads almost like an inventory, yet none of the materials is anonymous. Each has passed through cultivation, weather, touch and transformation. Rope bears the memory of tension. Bark shows both protection and injury. A seedpod contains the remains of a future already dispersed. Barai does not smooth these materials into a seamless whole; she lets their different histories remain visible at the joins.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ea26b296-4845-4c62-8e59-24776e934e8f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221813319334729,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5184x3456/82fdf0d4d8/jayita-barai-assemblage-ii-2026-cotton-rope-canna-indica-seedpod-coir-rope-dried-bark-gouache-on-cloth-corn-husk-paper-50x40x9-cm-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-quiet-art-movement.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jayita Barai Assemblage II, 2026, cotton rope, Canna Indica seedpod, coir rope, dried bark, gouache on cloth, corn husk paper, 50x40x9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Quiet Art Movment",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7fb3f253-10cb-4098-b84b-19635033980a",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The rest of the exhibition broadens the means by which such differences are encountered. Manuel Mataâs poetry and recorded voice introduce language without granting it final authority. Ben Goldfarbâs soundscape occupies the room without staying in one place. Sweety Chakmaâs seating installation changes the visitorâs height and duration of looking. The Shared Ecologies reading room asks for yet another posture: head lowered, page turned, time temporarily withdrawn from circulation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These elements matter because seeing is never isolated from the body that sees. A standing visitor scans; a seated one lingers. Sound reaches what lies outside the field of vision. Materials provoke memories of touch even when museum protocol keeps the hand at a distance. The exhibition works through this relay among eye, ear, skin and posture. It does not offer total immersion, a promise too easily made, but a series of partial contacts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Those contacts also carry histories that have little to do with botanical innocence. Plants have travelled in ships, inventories and imperial ambitions. They have been extracted from one habitat, renamed in another and cultivated for distant markets. Colonial botany did not merely describe the vegetal world; it reorganised land, labour and knowledge. The exhibition attends to the lower-caste physicians, illustrators and local knowledge-keepers who contributed to early botanical compendia but rarely received the authority attached to the finished books. A taxonomy can preserve a specimen while misplacing the hands and minds that made its identification possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"cdd2afa9-ad62-476a-b0b5-eebb46d95d66",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221832019151808,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1362x1172/69a57773c4/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-56-35.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Minam Apang Spectre of War VIII, 2025 Charcoal on cloth 53 x 60 in 134.62 x 152.4 cm Courtesy of the artist and Chatterjee and Lal",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"23372706-cccb-4a2e-a4a0-02f264be36cb",quote:"The exhibition argues that the central problem is not a lack of information about the collapse of the biosphere, but rather our sensory and emotional inability to truly perceive and feel it.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"33d0b884-a53f-413c-9114-231efdcde9bd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221830897339323,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1106x1240/bdd4a0838e/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-52-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ishita Chakraborty Where The Wild Things Roam 35, Cotton, 2026 Acrylic and colour pencil on Jute pasted on cotton Chappa Saree fabric",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"af9f11fc-a1d3-4105-8454-75964bc358d7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831089621948,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1086x1400/4171c67f92/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-52-47.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ishita Chakraborty Where The Wild Things Roam 35, Cotton, 2026 Acrylic and colour pencil on Jute pasted on cotton Chappa Saree fabric",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b0ac0c4b-f086-4c48-b463-9b569eea0dce",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kallen, or Kandal, Pokkudan gives this history a particular human and ecological form. A Dalit agricultural worker, writer and activist from Kerala, he planted thousands of mangrove saplings along the coast. The mangrove was not an abstract figure of resilience for him. It belonged to the conditions of his life: mud, salt water, caste, work, erosion and the practical knowledge of how a damaged coastline might be restored. His story keeps the exhibition from drifting towards botanical reverie. Closeness to the land is not always chosen, and knowledge acquired through labour is not always credited as expertise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The mangrove also unsettles an easy picture of rootedness. It holds its ground at an unstable edge, where fresh and salt water meet and where the line between land and sea keeps moving. Its roots shelter other species while changing the sediment around them. Here, dependence is not weakness and autonomy is not isolation. Life proceeds by modifying and being modified by its surroundings.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nature has always been queer. Across species, bodies, reproductive strategies and forms of association exceed the binaries once treated by science as self-evident. What fell outside the reproductive pair was often recorded as anomaly or noise. The limit belonged not to the living world, but to the questions brought to it. This is neither metaphor nor moral endorsement: nature does not exist to certify human lives. It simply makes uniformity impossible to mistake for order.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To acknowledge this does not relax scientific rigour; it sharpens it. A category remains useful only while it answers to what observation finds. When life exceeds the available description, the description must change. The exhibition makes a similar demand upon looking: attend first, classify later.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"e705abf9-3c3f-4ec7-b7d2-64a0dffd02ab",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831577861054,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1414x1206/c51c5a4608/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-54-47.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gaurav Patil, Pre-Monsoon Drift, 2026, Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"771f016f-4542-4da7-a866-37f2b4456287",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831751310271,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1620x1068/388e5e9518/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-55-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1620x1068"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gaurav Patil, Pre-Monsoon Drift, 2026, Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"51c938af-a821-47ab-84c8-ecbbcdbf2ebc",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To step away from the centre is not to disappear. It is to discover the weight of our presence. No distant âenvironmentâ waits to receive the consequences of our lives: extraction enters soil and blood; militarisation inscribes itself upon landscapes and bodies; technological expansion leaves its heat, its minerals, its waste. There is no outside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here lies artâs quiet force. It reopens passages that systems have closed. It lets the familiar become strange again and restores weight to what has slipped from view. By altering the scale and duration of attention, it changes the terms of our presence. A seedpod is granted time; a mangrove recovers its history; a voice continues where the image ends. What had been scenery draws near, not as an object awaiting our concern, but as a life already touching ours.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition never presses its argument upon us. Its care is structural: each material is allowed its opacity, each voice its register, each rhythm the time it requires. Nothing is enlisted merely to illustrate a lesson. Meaning gathers through small adjustments: a body invited to sit, a sound released from any single source, a seedpod left to carry its own history. Here lies the exhibitionâs elegance, and perhaps its magnificence: in the intelligence with which it makes room for other forms of life without presuming to translate them. Inheritors of Earth does not instruct us to care. With uncommon subtlety, it creates the conditions in which care can arise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Plants enter the density of the present as lives that precede, sustain, and exceed the human story. The world does not widen away from us, but around us. We find ourselves among other inheritors, each carrying a different measure of time, none entrusted with the future alone. The central question is no longer about humanity's place in nature, but about deeply understanding how all entities co-exist and co-evolveâsustaining the flourishing of life in all its diverse forms and temporalities that constitute our shared habitat. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"From genetically modified organisms and man-made mineral extraction to the microplastics coursing through our oceans, we have come to live in a \"post-nature\" ecosystem. Here, the synthetic and the digital form a new layer in the entangled world we inhabit. The challenge is not only to recognize the limits of anthropocentric thinking, but to take seriously other ways of being. We have been passively observing the collapse of the climate and still do nothing; we get used to it as if it were just an outside spectacle. To break this inertia, we do not need the dogmatic jargon of extremist, dystopian, or dissonant ecological statements, nor do we require an authoritative, radical injunction. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"This exhibition does the exact opposite. It brings a patient, meditative sensibility to the act of looking at vegetal life. In asking us to look ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"with",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" plants rather than",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"at",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" them not as a retreat into nostalgia, but as an embrace of sustainable progress to feel deeply, to experience profoundly, to be moved the exhibition succeeds through art to reconfigure the imagination itself toward coexistence, humility, and shared inheritance. It provides a gentle, experimental space: a subtle, realistic, and efficie
77nt path toward the activation of a transformative agency to reconnect and regenerate our shared habitat.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"dd7e7239-b9c2-4e22-8580-90c0228a610b",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Inheritors of Earth\" until 22nd December 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists: ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-fa96b5ba-7fff-5388-1b0e-fdf2800b8178"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Arunkumar HG, Ben Goldfarb, Bhimanshu Pandel, Gaurav Patil, Hemangini Maharaul, Ishita Chakraborty, Jayita Barai, Maksud Ali Mondol, Manir Mrittik, Manuel Mata, Minam Apang, Radhika Agarwala, Ravi Agarwal, Samit Das, Sujith SN; Sweety Chakma, Sandeep TK, Valay Gada, and Shared Ecologies",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Premjish Achari",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-ca00cfb7-7fff-4bb3-4d91-32016c345f2f"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition also brings together contributions that extend its immersive and interdisciplinary character, including poetry and audio narration by Manuel Mata, a seating installation by Sweety Chakma, soundscape design by Ben Goldfarb, booklet design by Aranya Sengupta, and a reading room with a special selection of works from Shared Ecologiesâ archive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-802ca8e0-7fff-6384-726b-a3fed38b94c0"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Dehli (India)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-fa96b5ba-7fff-5388-1b0e-fdf2800b8178"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-19 00:00",name:"\"Inheritors of Earth\"÷Vegetal Temporal Scale and the Human Interlude",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"4f60cd9e-5a61-4e17-b80c-4e2eb5452783",color:"#252918",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e38800d8-6920-448f-b08c-f71bf17ecc3b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221829280504728,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1446x1120/e7a1006b66/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-45-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1446x1120"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandeep TK Colorized scene from Kadal Paranjath or As Told By the Sea, 2026, film. 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There, Ambrose Trataris and a cast of drag kings transformed full-body tracking, custom avatars, and club sound into an electrifying feat of invention. Dazzling in form and remarkably lucid in its vision, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\" did not expose the limits of an algorithm-shaped world: it hacked digital tools to imagine one rebuilt through human creativity and diversity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Avatar-Prosthesis: A New Post-Digital Identity Model",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Silicon Valley has a ghost problem: it cannot code the bodies it fears. By converting virtual spaces into sterile, corporate clones of practical reality (a toothless mix of digital malls, Zoom offices, and hyper-militarised video games), the tech industry has copy-pasted its own oppressive, heteronormative structures. Standardised AI and 3D modeling suffer from a rigid, colonial normativity. They smooth over, sanitise, and erase bodies that do not fit into the dominant template.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is precisely into this algorithmic glitch that Ambrose Trataris injects âDaisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connectionâ. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Presented at Gray Area, San Franciscoâs sanctuary for tech-art subversion, the piece bypasses both technophobic doom-posting and naive tech-utopianism. Instead, it executes a high-stakes conceptual heist: the avatar is no longer an instrument of commercial simulation, but a weaponised prosthesis for physical and political self-actualisation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mainstream media psychology frequently warns against the alienation caused by autonomous \"AI companions\" which isolate vulnerable users in frictionless, simulated echo chambers. Trataris reverses this dynamic entirely: here, the avatar is a \"Self-Avatar\", a cybernetic marionette hijacked in real time by the raw, biological fury of the performer.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Wired into full-body tracking sensors, the ensemble of non-binary and QTBIPOC Drag Kings on stage does not flee the biological body. They weaponise it. The choreography, a hybrid mutation of hip-hop, ballet, and contemporary dance, becomes the connective tissue reconciling sweat. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b55ecf3b-2363-4f32-a838-1637d794c9c3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592458397042,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5258x4235/9b58734145/rachelzphotographyllc-219.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"5258x4235"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"62aa13ac-165f-4fbf-a124-a3114af3df83",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Aesthetics of the Glitch and Anatomical Hacking",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The core of the performance relies on a radical collaboration with 3D designer Whisper, who built custom-molded avatars for five prominent West Coast Drag Kings. This creative process maps directly onto academic research regarding virtual worlds as laboratories for trans identity, demonstrating how digital embodiment can actively heal gender dysphoria and decolonize aesthetics:",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Skirt Cocaine (Filipinx/Punk Perspectives): In mainstream gaming, masculine avatars are almost exclusively white, hyper-muscled, and weaponized. Skirt Cocaine hacks this standard by designing a fantastical male entity that glides between K-Pop aesthetics and Rococo opulence. Masculinity is stripped of its hy
77per-militarized toxicity, transforming into a delicate, fluid playground.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mudd the Two Spirit (Indigenous/Deaf Perspectives): One of the most avant-garde dimensions of the project is its critique of accessibility. Traditional physical nightlife spaces and institutional theaters are notoriously exclusionary for disabled or Deaf communities. In Daisy-Chain, Mudd utilizes full-body tracking to integrate sign language and three-dimensional gestural expression into his avatar. Movement becomes visually sonic, radically rethinking equity within digital environments.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"VERA! (SWANA/Activist Perspectives): By weaving Armenian heritage and local Bay Area activist history into their 3D entity [B1, B2], VERA! proves that the avatar transcends physical borders. It carves out a sanctuary of bodily autonomy and political visibility that is currently impossible to guarantee within the \"dark, windowless bars\" of our historical nightlife infrastructure.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"034b9f75-1a78-4407-afbf-791cfc274c51",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592458507637,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4382x6023/a8199630d9/rachelzphotographyllc-238.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"4382x6023"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1af39cb4-b1e4-4dfd-b220-39b78a87bc50",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592460264838,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4615x6264/6daa775133/rachelzphotographyllc-1572.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"4615x6264"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"477768c9-f264-4a64-9883-e52d14d522df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592459236737,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7173x5464/ef5e3ebe0d/rachelzphotographyllc-280.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"7173x5464"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"07dd7ede-5ac0-4fed-94da-38f31c087a94",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592458491251,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3532x4940/6014ff9ddd/rachelzphotographyllc-245.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3532x4940"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2910f8dd-9968-4142-937b-e2934d4a3f4f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592459621764,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4534x6455/cadb357069/rachelzphotographyllc-177.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"4534x6455"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ffbbcc0b-8034-4fa2-82b8-d272f3386bea",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Deep-Dive: The Proteus Effect as Radical Self-Actualization",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To fully unpack the conceptual weight of âDaisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connectionâ, one must look at its core psychological engine: The Proteus Effect. This phenomenon dictates that an individualâs behavior, cognition, and self-perception shift unconsciously to align with the visual characteristics and stereotypes of their digital avatar. In traditional tech spaces, the Proteus Effect is heavily clinicalized or gamified, used as an involuntary laboratory reaction. However, Trataris hacks this loop, upgrading it into a deliberate tool for queer worldbuilding and gender euphoria.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Academic reviews of the Proteus Effect often debate whether it is driven by visual priming or deep self-perception. Recent research demonstrates that the magnitude of the behavioral shift is directly tied to the level of digital self-representation and embodiment. If a user feels a strong sense of agency and interactive ownership over their avatar, the psychological integration deepens.\u2028",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Trataris maximizes this loop by ensuring that the avatars are not off-the-shelf, commercial skins. Through the full-body tracking apparatus, the performance hits every catalyst required to supercharge the Proteus Effect. By altering the avatar's appearance, the performance actively restructures the artists' cognitive and physical states:",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"70c40476-985c-4f3c-946f-3e54a42310d2",quote:"Here, temporarily escaping the violence of reality is not an act of cowardice; it is a survival strategy. The avatar becomes psychological armor, a laboratory where âgender euphoriaâ is finally accessible.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"28e57079-3686-402f-942e-a39d37055908",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dethroning the Colonial Gaze: When Skirt Cocaine steps into an opulent, punk-rococo Filipino avatar, the Proteus Effect shifts his posture away from the submissive or hyper-militarized stereotypes dictated by Western gaming algorithms. He adopts an authoritative presence, illustrating how customized avatars allow users to manifest their \"ideal selves\" to override systemic social anxieties.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Visceral Force and Spatial Reclamation: Users embodying highly muscular or athletic avatars unconsciously exert more physical force and move with greater confidence. For VERA! and Bobby, their larger-than-life, sci-fi Drag King personas trigger a protective psychological buffer. The avatar acts as an emotional shield against real-world trauma, allowing them to occupy physical space on stage with an unapologetic, confrontational power.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Time-Course of Healing: Crucially, recent empirical data shows that the behavioral impacts of avatar embodiment remain highly stable throughout a session and bleed into post-exposure reality. The confidence, safety, and bodily autonomy claimed while wired into the system do not vanish when the headset comes off. They are permanently integrated into the performer's practical self-concept.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection, the Proteus Effect ceases to be an algorithmic trick played on an unsuspecting user. It becomes a weapon of self-defense: a technological ritual where changing your digital skin permanently alters your real-world power.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What Trataris does brilliantly is address âescapism.â While media psychology often warns of the risks of social withdrawal linked to virtual companions and digital worlds, Daisy-Chain demonstrates the potential for self-expansion of the self-avatar. Here, temporarily escaping the violence of reality is not an act of cowardice; it is a survival strategy. The avatar becomes psychological armor, a laboratory where âgender euphoriaâ is finally accessible.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"0c255d2d-d564-4337-a2b4-59204f8f0981",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592458962301,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6238x5404/a08d050212/rachelzphotographyllc-202.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"6238x5404"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"754a4056-2c2d-45e7-b225-453a767ce1c7",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Haptic Chain: Sound as Political Cement",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A recurring critique of digital and new media art is its sterile, disembodied coldness. Trataris overrides this limitation through a violent, highly textured sonic landscape engineered by Oakland-based musician Mahawam. This landscape acts as a haptic bridge and a political soundtrack: Afro-futurist club music anchors the audience's sensory immersion.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Heavy sub-bass frequencies physically penetrate the chest cavities of the audience inside the theater [B1]. Simultaneously, real-time voice modulators pixelate the live gasps, screams, and breaths of the dancers. This sonic contrast generates a sensory jolt: the viewer cannot detach themselves from the performance as a mere \"image on a screen.\" Sound serves as the biological glue between the heavy breathing on stage and the mathematical perfection of the projected digital bodies.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Verdict: The Post-Metaverse Manifesto",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mainstream sociology and moralistic psychological studies have a tendency to pathologize virtual escapism, branding it as \"self-suppression\": a cowardly flight from the friction of reality. âDaisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connectionâ refutes this academically and artistically, proving the existence of an escapism of self-expansion. In an era where trans and queer bodies are increasingly policed, surveilled, and targeted across political cycles, escaping into a horizontal, customized virtual sanctuary is not an act of surrender; it is a vital strategy for psychological regeneration and community organizing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ambrose Trataris and their ensemble have delivered a masterpiece of contemporary performance art because they refuse technological binary thinking. They do not reject the tools of Silicon Valley; they hijack them for survival. By transforming code into a zone of resistance and choreography into a liberation protocol, this piece stands as one of the most urgent, lucid, and visually arresting manifestos of our post-digital era. An absolute aesthetic explosion.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âDaisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connectionâ succeeds in avoiding both techno-pessimism and naive utopianism. By transforming the stage at Gray Area into a hybrid nightclub, the work demonstrates that the future of immersive technologies belongs to those who dare to subvert their codes to ensure their own survival and visibility.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"26aabcf9-7261-4ea9-8d30-c39983a541e1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592459330946,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5088x4556/fbdf8b0f7e/rachelzphotographyllc-192.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"5088x4556"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8ca5fb26-ee18-40be-a280-c833a4398805",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"That is why this work feels so visionary and lucid at a tipping point for creativity. The greatest risk posed by an algorithm-driven post-digital world is not the loss of ownership but the surrender of cognitive agency. What is being automated is the most replaceable stratum of creative work. What remains is what we have rarely been given enough time to practice: care, and the capacity to hold complexity without collapsing it into a simple answer. Artificial intelligence has not so much been mastered as it has forced us to reckon with the human capacities it cannot replicate. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Those who continue to create with agency keep building those capacities precisely when everything tempts them to stop. In this light, the performersâ embodied command of their avatars makes \"Daisy- Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\" an act of reconstruction, not only for queer communities but for everyone: a universal invitation to rebuild a world through diversity and care.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"be1016e9-da4a-4b72-be97-d3ea08fb0fae",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ambrose Tetris, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\" was premiered in San Francisco (USA) on August 29th at Gray Area. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists :VERA!, Skirt Cocaine, Mudd the Two Spirit, Jota Mercury, Kim Ip,BROOKE TERRY X BOBBY",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Soundtrack of original tracks by Mahawam, Ten Travesauras, Dollii PKC, LBXX, SÃMBÃ, X Medianoche, and Technopagan.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-24 00:00",name:"CY BERSERKER÷QUEER WORLDBUILDING",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f6b78609-f48f-4f65-aeb3-27ab5340ec0a",color:"#390140",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"0a8820e1-ca60-4baf-bbe8-b822310cc952",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223587112056062,alt:"",name:"ambrose Trataris",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7262x5274/771c67a142/rachelzphotographyllc-236.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"7262x5274"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"trataris",full_slug:"directory/reviews/trataris",sort_by_date:null,position:-1530,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"56a59107-e594-4167-a406-99a4cf39c093",first_published_at:"2026-09-24T20:00:23.417Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"The Protestation of Love",created_at:"2026-09-23T22:57:57.937Z",published_at:"2026-09-28T13:48:43.907Z",updated_at:"2026-09-28T13:48:43.924Z",i
77d:223292120847700,uuid:"8260b50d-78bc-4833-ac09-7809b3e2c5ff",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"433b3c67-0f0a-45d8-b062-643413304b24",title:"The Protestation of Love: Editorial | Refresh Magazine",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:222964971741438,alt:"",name:"nikita kadan",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1365/d792bcb3a1/nikita-kadan-new-integrity-2026-b2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2048x1365"},is_external_url:false},keywords:"he Protestation of Love, Refresh Magazine, editorial, contemporary art, art and care, art and ecology, art and artificial intelligence, creative agency, living world, Philippe Riss-SchmidtThe Protestation of Love",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Read the editorial introducing The Protestation of Love, Refresh Magazineâs forthcoming print special issue on contemporary art, care, ecology and creative agency"}],_uid:"800cc251-4643-433e-b25d-7fa517761b88",body:[{_uid:"81e40c75-cbe4-4f49-939f-3dbff3da25ea",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Protestation of Love",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Love and care keep us open to others, including non-human beings and the many worlds that constitute our shared habitat. Contemporary art should do the same. It weaves threads between distinct histories and cultures, allowing them to resonate without erasing what makes each one unique. In a world increasingly shaped by anthropocentrism, hardened physical borders, technological authoritarianism, relentless optimisation, exclusion, and rigid binary frameworks, artâs capacity to reimagine our relationships with one another and with the world may be one of its most powerful forces.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This may sound naïve or utopian, but we have reached a decisive tipping point. Art is the force of love we need to resist disconnection and return to a world shaped by attention, care, and presence.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Attention is a radical currency, the rarest and purest form of generosity. To truly listen requires vacating the centre of oneâs own universe, suspending imposed meanings to create an empty space in which the world can be received. This deliberate clearing transforms the observer into a loving participant. When the drive for dominance yields to that specific gravity, a structural equilibrium becomes possible. Acting as if we love the future shifts the paradigm from passive anxiety to active construction. It rejects utopian escapism and frames care as infrastructure.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The living world offers the ultimate blueprint for expanded care, yet human observation has long been constrained by rigid taxonomies. For centuries, biology operated under a strict heteronormative Victorian and Cartesian bias, treating the natural world through a reproductive calculus in which any behaviour outside maleâfemale pairing was dismissed as noise. This was not simply a social prejudice, but an epistemological failure that shaped the very questions researchers thought to ask. Nature has always been queer. Thousands of species exhibit behaviours that defy simple binaries. Humans are a very small species living in a multi-layered biosphere. The living world is an exuberant, irreducibly plural field of becoming, entirely indifferent to the categories imposed upon it. Acknowledging this does not abandon scientific rigour. It demands a far higher standard of it. When a cultureâs core beliefs no longer match the conditions required for survival, the consequence is a collapse.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The same failure of imagination governs our relationship to the future. The discourse surrounding what lies ahead has been monopolised by an authoritarian way of thinking, projecting unshakable confidence in extractive new technologies and centralised systems. During periods of severe instability, society turns to artists for critical thought.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art stands as the genuine avant-garde of this century precisely because it addresses care, responsibility, and human dignity in the face of aggressive technological expansion.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The greatest risk that artificial intelligence poses to creativity is not the loss of ownership, but the surrender of cognitive agency. What is being automated is the most replaceable stratum of creative work. What remains is the part we were rarely given enough time to practise: judgement, presence, care, and the capacity to hold complexity without collapsing it into a simple answer. Intelligence will not have been mastered so much as it will have forced a reckoning with the capacities it cannot replicate. Those who continue to create with agency keep building human capacity at the very moment when everything tempts them to stop. Art has never operated according to the logic of output. Its vitality is inseparable from the human capacity to navigate absurdity with awe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rebuilding collective urgency begins with conversation. Fear is an exhaustible resource. What sustains action is love, understood as a deep, knowledge-based attachment to the natural world that transforms concern into commitment. The future is not a fixed destination. It is a structure being built continuously through the choices enacted today. The question is: how do we approach this conversation in order to build a realistic and resilient future together?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The challenge is not only to recognise the limits of anthropoce
77ntric thinking, but to unlearn its deeply embedded habits without simply reproducing its assumptions in a new vocabulary.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art can prepare us intellectually, affactively and socially to take seriously other ways of being with the world. Its value may lie in its capacity to make this transition perceptible: to allow us to rehearse forms of attention, care and solidarity that extend beyond the human, towards all the beings and systems with which we are entangled.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"We have been passively observing the collapse of the climate and still do nothing; we get used to it as if it were just an outside spectacle. To break this inertia, we do not need the dogmatic jargon of extremist, dystopian, or dissonant ecological statements, nor do we require an authoritative, radical injunction.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"We need the exact opposite. Art brings a meditative sensibility to the act of looking with the world. By inviting us to look with the world rather than at it, not as a retreat into nostalgia but as an embrace of regenerative progress, artists allow us to feel deeply, to experience profoundly, and to be moved, reconfiguring the imagination itself toward coexistence, humility, and shared inheritance. Art provides an experimental space: a subtle, realistic, and efficient path toward the activation of a transformative agency. For this potential to be realized, art institutions must also rethink their structures and economic systems, while new models must be developed to extend the reach of art beyond the closed networks that define todayâs âart worldâ, a term that should ultimately cease to exist.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gregory Sholette introduced the concept of the âunpresentâ: a condition in which everything appears the same yet is completely transformed, lacking both a past and a future. Faced with this moment, empathy emerges as a choice: an attentiveness to others, to the living world, and to our interdependencies. It is a sensitive way of resisting, of imagining other ways of being together, and of restoring our connection to a big, bold, and beautiful new world.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This text is the editorial note : Refresh Magazine, Print#2 - Fall 2026",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0678cd82-4719-4636-af75-90f989d39554",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:224926065242412,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/04f9fd4774/menu.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3000x2000"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d560d0e-fbfe-4281-9cb8-44fed37520b5",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Through exhibition reviews, exclusive interviews, artist features, poetry, and manifestos, the issue brings together international artists.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artists : ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Agnieszka Kurant, Ashfika Rahman, Arvida Byström, Aurora Mititelu, Beatrice Glow, Dögg Jónsdóttir, Elisa Giardina Papa, Inès Sieulle, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Kalie Garnier, Kira Xonorika, Lesia Vasylchenko, Libby Heaney, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Miranda Lux, Nicole L'Huillier, Nikita Kadan, Pierre et Gilles, Precious Okoyomon & NhaSan Collective, Raphaël Barontini, Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Sarah Martin-Nuss, Satadru Sovan Banduri, Simone Post, Stéphane Cagol, Lesia Vasylchenko, Théo Viardin",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#FF0000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Editorial Team :",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#FF0000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Chetika Algama, Suso Barciela, Gabrielle Barkess-Kerr, Aundy Bauman, Paul Bauman Le Random, Suso Barciela, Armand Camphuis, Satyajit Dave, Daisy Gould, Philippe de Manus, Sarah Maria Lillig, Louis Pohl Koseda, Valentina Peri, Iacapo Prinett
77i, Pourt Dgrut,, Sharon Toval, Philippe Riss-Schmidt",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Special thanks to Dr to Gabrielle Barkess-Kerr, Director, Curatorial Ethics Network",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Special thanks to ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Björn Geldhof and Oleksandra Pogrebnyak",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#727272"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{type:"hard_break"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9ef25808-8615-4e96-8882-f873c35d5312",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223293261944032,alt:"",name:"the protestation of love",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/9ed8d44828/refresh_reel_images_fixes_sans_tremblement.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2026-09-25 00:00",name:"The Protestation of Love÷Print Issue",author:"Editorial Team, Print Fall 2026",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"e7cf9fc7-578e-44db-9370-05f74da1b925",color:"#532c73",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"92f08a7e-c167-4129-9335-0dfe6fe890ae",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223516000803765,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1146/37c37ed97f/a-a1-courtesy-kalie-granier-santa-cruz.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy Kalie Garnier, Santa Cruz",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:"9"},slug:"the-protestation-of-love",full_slug:"directory/essays/the-protestation-of-love",sort_by_date:null,position:-280,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"c2994ecd-db36-4a6a-b53d-10f7dca3e5e8",first_published_at:"2026-09-24T09:03:48.675Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true}]},slug:"reviews",full_slug:"directory/focus/reviews",sort_by_date:null,position:-20,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:93876722978922,meta_data:null,group_id:"9654d969-0946-41e9-a30b-cf927e866639",first_published_at:"2025-11-25T21:58:00.336Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Paris Art Week",created_at:"2025-10-09T11:34:05.474Z",published_at:"2026-09-18T18:13:50.527Z",updated_at:"2026-09-18T18:13:50.545Z",id:99614906292336,uuid:"bf81b69e-fb8a-49fa-80a5-fe8d07b82826",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"61840dcd-33b9-41f2-9161-fac584726af1",type:"",title:"Paris Art Week",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:101043773292067,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1882x1260/f83b447b9c/gan.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Paris Art Week, Art Basel Paris, contemporary art Paris, Paris art scene, Paris art fairs",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Immerse yourself in the vibrant energy of Paris Art Week 2025. Discover the must-see exhibitions, emerging artists, and the best of Art Basel Paris with Refresh Magazine"}],_uid:"24c2680c-7058-4309-b305-0471ab3121ec",date:"October 2025",name:"Heritage and Emergence ÷ The New Face of Paris",component:"focus",color_dark:{_uid:"b74d821f-4e07-48ff-af2a-69f7edbb3373",color:"#6b8cb3",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"5937ac66-5f19-4bb7-a741-b97b530ae14c",type:"",poster:{i
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77,content:[{text:"But their new home, nestled within the historic former Grands Magasins du Louvre at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, represents something else entirely.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ae361dba-f542-438a-b3ce-929f710fa13f",quote:" It is a \"Machine à Voir\"âa machine for seeingâand it operates on every conceivable level.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"a77b18fe-5cf0-4209-8d2c-a653156a94da",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From the street, the transformation is breathtaking. Nouvel has performed an act of architectural alchemy on the grand Haussmannian building, inserting tall picture windows along the entire length of its facades. The effect is one of radical transparency. What was once an opaque monument to 19th-century commerce has become permeable, a building that invites the city inside and projects its contents outward.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Walking along the Rue de Rivoli or Rue Saint-Honoré, the gaze travels straight through the building, from one street to the other, dissolving the boundaries between interior and exterior. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is reminiscent of the historic vitrines that once lined these very streets, where passersby could gaze at treasures on display.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Nouvel has reimagined this quintessentially Parisian tradition on a monumental scale, creating a visual system that reinterprets the building's vitrines and merges the experiences of the street, the historic arcades, and the interior spaces.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c9249d2f-78fb-49b0-940f-883c36ca88b5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103249100391309,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7774x5321/e3d97b5e57/fondation-cartier.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9b74dd5e-0273-4cbc-9119-4d24b96ce969",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The true revelation comes upon entering the building. The first impression is one of immense voidânot emptiness, but a deliberate, powerful absence. Nouvel has stripped away the accumulated layers of renovation, the partitions and ducts that had clogged this heritage building, to unveil a continuous interior space stretching 150 meters, as long as the Rue de Marengo itself. This is not simply a large room. It is a statement about what contemporary architecture can be. As Nouvel himself articulated, \"contemporary architecture is increasingly moving in this direction. The concept is no longer about constructing a space but of building inside space itself.\" The void becomes the canvas, the promise of endless possibilities.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"52235ca5-4e50-452a-bdfc-b1ed096f2ad9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103499787737458,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3600x4800/634eb75e7a/arm250429-3528.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e12a1f3b-5a6e-4b4d-8563-34930a075595",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103499786725744,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3600x4800/2565f96ac6/arm250430-5149.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"414640cc-a1d7-4e04-bea9-d0c092f9a4a2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Within this cavernous space, the machinery reveals itself. Five massive steel platforms hover at different heights, their industrial presence contrasting starkly with the building's elegant Haussmannian shell. These are not static floors. They are mobile stages, each weighing an average of 250 tons, capable of rising and falling across an astonishing 11-meter range. The platforms glide silently upward and downward, driven by a sophisticated cable and pulley system that represents a genuine engineering triumph. Eight cables thread through the thickness of each platform, climb to the top of corner uprights, make three vertical return trips, then wind around eight drums powered by synchronized electric motors. The result is a platform that rises perfectly horizontally, with millimeter precision. This is not architecture as conventionally understood. This is theatre rigging, mobile bridge engineering, and building construction fused into something entirely new.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The platforms create infinite spatial configurations. Each arrangement offers a fundamentally different experience. The space can be towering and deep one week, compressed and intimate the next. Platforms can cluster at different heights, creating intimate chambers, or spread across the full 11-meter range, generating vertiginous vertical spaces. They can align to form continuous horizontal galleries or fragment into discrete levels. It is, as Nouvel envisioned, \"a gigantic theater, where massive floors can be raisedâa concealed dynamic.\" The building becomes a living entity, continuously reinvented with each exhibition.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But the machinery extends beyond the platforms. Three enormous glass ceilings flood the space with natural lightâor they would, if Nouvel allowed it. These skylights are equipped with retractable shutters, long mobile shutters running underneath like \"mechanical curtains\" that can selectively filter or completely block out natural light. The space can transform from a sun-drenched atrium to a darkened chamber in moments. The sky and natural light become elements in the exhibition itself, their intensity varying from brilliant illumination to complete darkness depending on the degree of closure. The dynamic architecture is profou
77ndly affected by the exterior, by the season, by the time of day. The building responds to budding leaves in spring, to rain, to the changing colors of the sky. It is architecture that breathes with Paris.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"71bdbf5c-d39c-42c9-bed8-6fcaeb5f9856",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103499787135345,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3600x4800/3fa9968e0b/arm250418-1065.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ab5e304a-51c2-429a-ab3b-9d520e083245",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103499786312047,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3600x4800/3425a603b9/_arm8205.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"280a7021-1379-4109-84bf-b0e185db5fbb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The focus of Nouvel's architectural approach was to unveil the voidâits depth, its height, its presence. As he explains, contemporary architecture is increasingly moving in a new direction, where the concept is no longer about constructing a space but of building inside space itself. This void becomes the place for expression, the promise of endless possibilities. Moving into an impressive place like thisâaccounting for its location and historyâentails an act of invention, but not necessarily something manifested in steel or stone. Rather, what takes root is a different way of doing things, a way of thinking that prioritizes artists' greatest possible freedom of expression.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This philosophy manifests in every detail. The space offers the greatest versatility, the most ways to exhibit, the widest range of perspectives. The strength of the platforms allows for the display of extremely heavy works and entirely new means of exposition. The aim is to achieve what would be impossible elsewhere, and to reinvent the very manner of exhibition. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is an approach that sets the stage for uniquely distinctive exhibitions fashioned by the imaginations of artists, curators, and scenographers. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The geometrically variable spaces will be continuously reinvented and explored with each project. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nothing is permanent. Nothing is fixed. The floors, walkways, and ceilings are unrestr
77icted, forming foundations for invention. Every empty space becomes an opportunity for expression. Every surface serves to provoke thought. Every opening frames a view, inviting exploration from every perspective.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is what Nouvel means by a \"Machine à voir.\" It is a machine for seeing from the interior, where visitors experience endlessly reconfigurable spaces that co-evolve with each exhibition. It is a machine for seeing from the exterior, where the city gazes through transparent facades into the heart of the institution. And increasingly, it will be a machine for seeing through the digital layer, as the Fondation Cartier makes its entire collection available online, extending the experience beyond the physical walls into the virtual realm.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6bab3757-4639-4f4f-a6fe-cffd6df36138",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103499784808811,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3600/6f9f3df425/_arm8981.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5cf6e49e-a77d-42f7-9083-3629d693945c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103511749336903,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3600/a6ccc430b5/arm250430-4394.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d837dce2-7ca6-4188-9a09-532ca159b8f6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Perhaps it could be the final element in this urban composition, among the strategic, administrative, cultural, and political landmarks surrounding Place du Palais-Royal.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not simply a new museum. This is a fundamental rethinking of what a cultural institution can be in the 21st century.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" It is a space of limitless possibilities, where environments can be towering, deep, or compressed.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" It is a building that grants artists complete freedom to express their works, offering floors, walkways, and ceilings as foundations for invention. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is architecture that serves as a testament to its era, offering the ability to reveal what is directly linked to history while simultaneously pointing toward the future.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" It is a place for the unexpected, drawing visitors into the magnetic attraction of 21st-century Paris.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Its purpose is to disorient, to offer a fresh perspective on the place of art in the city's lifeâin its streets, its squares, its living, thriving art scene in the very heart of Paris.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jean Nouvel has given Paris, and the world, an extraordinary gift.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" The new Fondation Cartier is a machine for seeing, a machine for thinking, a machine for feeling. It is a space that will never cease to surprise, a living testament to what happens when architecture prioritizes possibility over permanence. And that, perhaps, is the greatest achievement of all.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An exceptional exhibition, reviewed by Refresh Magazine, opens its doors on October 25th.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9e8e771c-77ab-4909-92a6-aaa38714e748",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103510905331463,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4618x3463/4c073d6bee/arm251011-328-3-hd16mp.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-20 00:00",name:"The Viewing Machine÷The Radical New Fondation Cartier",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"09e0a739-3625-4fb3-b7f1-6f363b7dc3cc",color:"#333740",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"3d45c404-be29-4a85-94b5-67c5bc68373a",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103499599219038,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3600/b88a693287/_arm6965.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris. © Jean Nouvel / ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Photo © Martin Argyroglo",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"fondation-cartier-new-building",full_slug:"directory/reviews/fondation-cartier-new-building",sort_by_date:null,position:-330,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fa1d107a-7899-420a-b572-dc8eb5e88fe7",first_published_at:"2025-10-20T11:50:54.846Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"le bel ordinaire",created_at:"2025-10-29T14:26:26.237Z",published_at:"2025-10-30T12:08:20.212Z",updated_at:"2025-10-30T12:08:20.232Z",id:106735150070521,uuid:"0c1562d9-38de-4630-907a-8c8f68286d28",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"d66fd41f-5670-4e3e-afc8-f585eceef3e5",type:"",title:"Festival Accès(s)",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:106736650850668,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x900/93eec21332/draw-me-a-bull-pierre-pauze2-1200x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Festival Accès(s), contemporary art, digital art, DIY aesthetics, artificial intelligence, Le Bel Ordinaire, Pau, Pierre Pauze, Teresa Fernández Pello, Clara Schweers, Rafa Roeder, open source art, technology art, FabLab, interactive installation, art exhibition 2025",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Festival Accès(s) at Le Bel Ordinaire celebrates DIY aesthetics and transparent technology, challenging proprietary AI with art that questions our digital future."}],_uid:"cb699c73-6a6b-41ef-9a3b-ead209c13044",body:[{_uid:"7a0b21c2-64ed-4af3-aa09-022f19804545",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Unboxing the Algorithm: Festival Accès(s) Lays Bare the Mechanics of Our Digital Age",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the quiet French city of Pau, something remarkable is unfolding. The Bel Ordinaire's latest exhibition, \"IA: Intelligences Artistiques,\" part of the 25th annual Festival Accès(s), is a vibrant, thought-provoking, and utterly captivating exploration of the intersection between art, technology, and humanity. It's a show that champions the garage-tinkerer spirit in an age of black-boxed AI, and the result is nothing short of electrifying.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"Sacha Notey",type:"text"},{text:", the exhibition is a direct challenge to the polished, impenetrable interfaces of Big Tech. Here, the guts are on the outside. Wires spill from intricate sculptures, code flickers on exposed screens, and the artists' processes are laid bare for all to see. This is technology with a human touch, a celebration of the \"Do It Yourself\" ethos that feels both nostalgic and radically futuristic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"5f746e1f-926b-4238-9221-e409ed70b158",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106738438291985,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x1025/d96460ce57/cyborg-rituals-lola-kissing-kris-hasting-1536x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Cyborg rituals, 2025 © Lola Rossi & Kris Hasting",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d29b7d5a-142d-42f7-8c0c-23d28b9f7485",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106737895686632,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x1600/85758a22b8/lucid-figurals-clara-schweers-1200x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lucid Figurals, 2024 © Clara Schweers",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dc3b3821-d5ee-4a89-9c38-eabeaf287bf6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106738135097854,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x1600/b75dfea237/teresa_fernandez-pello_the_heart_of_the_heart_1_photo_credits_jin_byun-1-1200x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"he Heart of the Heart, 2022 © Teresa Fernández Pello",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a219a6c7-7fcb-43d5-bdca-85d9f583e4ad",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The international artists featured in the show are a diverse group, but they are united by a common thread: a desire to demystify the digital and to question the power structures that underpin our increasingly automated world. Among the standout works, Pierre Pauze's \"Draw me a bull\" emerges as one of the exhibition's most successful pieces. It's a work that perfectly encapsulates the show's ethos, combining technical ingenuity with conceptual depth in a way that is both accessible and profound. The piece demonstrates how DIY aesthetics can produce work that rivals any high-tech production, proving that transparency and creativity are not mutually exclusive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Teresa Fernández Pello's \"The Heart of the Heart\" offers another highlight, a monumental installation that resembles a kind of digital deity, its scaffolding-like structure adorned with a symphony of screens and wires. It's a piece that is at once awe-inspiring and deeply unsettling, a commentary on our reverence for technology and the hidden complexities that lie beneath the surface.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Clara Schweers' \"A bit of love\" offers a more poetic take on our relationship with the digital. A delicate network of glass beings, intertwined and illuminated with a fiery red glow, it speaks to the fragile connections we forge in the digital realm. It's a piece that is both beautiful and melancholic, a reminder of the human need for connection in an increasingly virtual world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Elsewhere, Rafa Roeder's interactive \"The Screen is the Brain\" invites visitors to become part of the artwork, their movements triggering a cascade of images and sounds. It's a playful and engaging piece that underscores the exhibition's central theme: that technology should be a tool for empowerment, not a means of control.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Clemens Fischer's \"Compressor\" adds another dimension to the exhibition, insisting on the physical and conceptual act of compression itself. In an age where algorithms relentlessly compress, reduce, and optimize our data, Fischer's work forces us to confront what is lost in the process. The piece makes visible the violence inherent in compressionâthe way information is squeezed, flattened, and stripped of nuanceâwhile questioning whether efficiency always serves our interests or those of the systems that demand it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e1be8589-637d-4c9d-9f15-fab66167a7bd",component:"mobile-newsletter"}
77,{_uid:"63b2d034-ba86-4ed4-96f4-47cd83231238",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106740678824718,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/600x900/258596db0c/ph_abitoflove_clara_schweers-600x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"A bit of love, 2025 © Clara Schweers",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2fae4a6a-e279-4650-8dd5-d404fb50d59b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106741069902628,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/600x800/b685d694ef/comp-core-sacra-teresa-fernandez-pello-600x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Comp. Core. Sacra, 2024 © Teresa Fernández Pello",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3d8fb689-9532-4ccc-b24f-ea0a2c5a39fa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106805426553656,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5109x4088/ee3fa00a1a/clemens-fischer_-compressor_pau_03-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Clemens Fischer, Compressor",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"840bd250-1493-4391-bf3d-ab2d2f0711b5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes \"IA: Intelligences Artistiques\" so compelling is its refusal to offer easy answers. It's a show that is full of contradictions, a celebration of technology that is also a critique of its excesses. It's a reminder that the future is not something that happens to us, but something that we must actively shape. These artists offer no promises, only questionsâand in doing so, they invite us to reconsider our relationship with the machines we've built and the systems we've allowed to define us.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Festival Accès(s) runs until November 22nd at Le Bel Ordinaire, Pau(European Union) . A series of workshops and artist talks will be held throughout the exhibition.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-28 00:00",name:"Unboxing the Algorithm: ÷Festival Accès(s) Lays Bare the Mechanics",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"d1aa8651-18e6-41c1-a012-d5bcedff4298",color:"#9abc37",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"6d281e65-d6f1-4ced-a36b-28dee0761272",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106736650850668,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x900/93eec21332/draw-me-a-bull-pierre-pauze2-1200x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Draw me a bull, 2025 © Pierre Pauze",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"le-bel-ordinaire",full_slug:"directory/reviews/le-bel-ordinaire",sort_by_date:null,position:-570,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"d6b0305d-88e2-4e83-87fd-231e327fa518",first_published_at:"2025-10-29T14:56:50.701Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Mélanie Courtinat â Indulto",created_at:"2025-10-19T14:19:07.582Z",published_at:"2026-01-14T09:50:57.878Z",updated_at:"2026-01-14T09:50:57.891Z",id:103194409330537,uuid:"278ece6a-2123-4daa-8723-a0f823acdf2d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"213edec2-e3ed-4df6-9779-b6966bed16f5",type:"",title:"Mélanie Courtinat â Indulto",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:103196386111608,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1508x848/b38eeb8afe/make-up-v2-v3-front-1.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false}
77,keywords:"Mélanie Courtinat, Indulto, New Galerie, contemporary art, video game art, immersive installation, interactive art, digital art, post-digital art, solo exhibition, Paris art exhibition, French artist, Ingrid Luquet-Gad, bullfighting, video game mechanics, illusion of choice, speculative worlds",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Discover Mélanie Courtinat's \"Indulto\", an immersive video game installation that explore themes of choice, fate, and ritualized violence. Experience this thought-provoking exhibition "}],_uid:"5350d084-eea6-43c1-8518-6fa879de7354",body:[{_uid:"b85e80a1-79e8-478b-93c7-e362de88e597",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mélanie Courtinatâs âIndultoâ and the Brutal Poetry of Digital Fate",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At New Galerie in Paris, Mélanie Courtinat has created an interactive installation that weaponizes the familiar language of video games against itself. \"Indulto\" doesn't critique gaming cultureâit traps you inside its logic, forcing you to perform a ritual whose outcome was decided long before you picked up the controller.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The setup is almost brutally minimal. A chair. A controller. A projection screen. Nothing else. We enter the gallery space expecting something more elaborate, but Courtinat has stripped away everything except the essential transaction between player and game. The message is clear: this is about what happens when you agree to play.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3d3da55e-3900-4c61-90dd-e4a389c5f24a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103209522618607,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/500f0e842a/indulto.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Indulto\", Mélanie Courtinat, courtesy the artist and New Galerie, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a25a362d-ef0a-4744-9039-3a71a5261de2",poster:{id:103207310246118,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/8fa52deee2/indulto.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:133916558025280,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/235fc5d506/0116.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Indulto\", Mélanie Courtinat, courtesy the artist and New Galerie, Paris",autoplay:true,component:"media"},{_uid:"ecbeadf8-3dbe-4ded-8e5f-603415d4dabc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The game opens with a spectacular image: an armored bull crashes from the heavens into a lush garden landscape. The creature is magnificent, rendered with extraordinary detailâevery texture, every play of light across its metallic surface feels deliberate. We take control of a torero, a figure whose gender fluidity and elaborate costume immediately signal that this is not a straightforward hero narrative. The opening moments feel comfortable, even pleasurable. We move through beautiful environments, the mechanics responding exactly as we expect them to.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then Courtinat begins to tighten the noose. The combat tutorials grow increasingly baroque. What starts as simple button combinations evolves into sequences so complex they become nearly impossible to execute. Our hands struggle to keep up. The controller, which moments ago felt like an extension of our will, now feels like an instrument of failure. This is not poor game designâthis is intentional sabotage. Courtinat is teaching us that mastery is an illusion, that the system will always exceed our ability to control it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"3362ca8a-0f03-4e93-8824-e22c2607dea3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103213790228786,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/71da31f89b/008.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Indulto\", Mélanie Courtinat, courtesy the artist and New Galerie, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"679d7dc5-665d-4e68-9882-31e385f5f1f9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The title \"Indulto\" refers to a specific moment in bullfighting tradition: the rare occasion when a bull's courage earns it a reprieve from death. But as we discover, this mercy is purely theoretical. When we finally reach the moment of confrontation, the game refuses to show us the violence we've been trained to expect. The camera turns away. 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We have been conditioned by decades of gaming to believe that skill, persistence, and the right choices lead to victory. Courtinat dismantles this ideology with surgical precision. The ornate beauty of the game's visuals, the careful attention to sound design, the weight of the controllerâall of these elements seduce us into complicity with a system that was rigged from the beginning.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The bullfighting metaphor operates on multiple levels. On the surface, it's about the aestheticization of violence, the way ritual and tradition can make brutality appear noble.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" But Courtinat pushes deeper. The corrida is a performance where the outcome is never in doubt, where the appearance of danger masks a carefully choreographed sequence of events. The bull may fight bravely, but the structure ensures its death. The torero may appear to risk everything, but the system is designed to protect him. Sound familiar?",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e14bb367-0f1a-45cd-b344-7e3ce0dbe050",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103210228875508,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/5199a269be/indulto.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Indulto\", Mélanie Courtinat, courtesy the artist and New Galerie, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4085009c-dd42-4eb0-a795-4d0d8ebf9214",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the lower level of the gallery, a monitor shows both charactersâtorero and bullâlocked in their idle animations, waiting endlessly for someone to activate them. It's a haunting image. The game exists in a state of perpetual readiness, always prepared to ensnare another player in its predetermined narrative. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The system doesn't care whether you play or not. It simply waits.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Courtinat, who has been exhibited has built her practice around interrogating the structures of interactive media. Her work consistently asks uncomfortable questions about what we're really doing when we play, what ideologies we're absorbing through game mechanics, what desires are being manufactured and fulfilled. \"Indulto\" represents her most uncompromising statement yet. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is no escape hatch, no secret ending, no way to hack the system. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"f53f6ad8-c4e2-44e4-a344-afc8b41ad643",quote:"The only winning move is not to playâbut the game has already thought of that. The \"Quit\" button doesn't work.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"62c80456-3a7d-4df5-b8b5-180a22a1c75a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As we leave the gallery, we find ourselves thinking about all the other systems we participate in daily, all the other times we're offered the illusion of choice while the outcome has already been determined. The algorithms that curate our feeds. The political systems that offer us binary options. The economic structures that promise mobility while ensuring stasis. \"Indulto\" is about video games, yes, but it's also about the condition of living in a world where agency itself has become a game mechanicâsomething that feels real in the moment but dissolves under scrutiny.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not an easy work to experience. It offers no catharsis, no redemption, no satisfying conclusion. But that's precisely what makes it essential. In an age where interactive media increasingly shapes how we understand choice and consequence, Courtinat has created a work that forces us to confront the gap between the agency we think we have and the agency we actually possess. The controller sits there, waiting. The question is whether we're brave enough to recognize what picking it up really means",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the NEW GALERIE , until 22 November",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-20 00:00",name:"When the Game Plays You ÷Inside Mélanie Courtinat's \"Indulto\"",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"1aa8f261-6ecd-4a49-98db-50984b64d0bf",color:"#25100e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"110517f7-c74e-4411-890d-84a6eb08dea6",type:"",poster:{i
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77,caption:"Marta Dyachenko, 'cette mer qui nouis entoure' Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole 10/19",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e4467c3-5036-4f89-bc7c-d9541ee2bcf9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106452905712505,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1396x992/f25e6aeb90/marta-dyachenko-in-cette-mer-qui-nous-entoure-2025-passerelle-centre-d-art-contemporain-brest-photo-aurelien-mole.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marta Dyachenko in Cette Mer qui nous entoure, 2025 - Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bc136e07-28d4-4bb8-90f8-ed9d6a79ae3d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106449457212203,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1406x1020/3e403720cb/ben-saint-maxent-in-cette-mer-qui-nous-entoure-2025-passerelle-centre-d-art-contemporain-brest-photo-aurelien-mole.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ben Saint Maxent in Cette Mer qui nous entoure, 2025 - Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1de08c4c-7e85-4e8e-87d4-6d446ff33653",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106456754183163,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1396x1024/85aac92a5c/ben-saint-maxent-in-cette-mer-qui-nous-entoure-2025-passerelle-centre-d-art-contemporain-brest-photo-aurelien-mole.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ben Saint Maxent in Cette Mer qui nous entoure, 2025 - Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0898a9a6-0305-4bf4-9db6-276bca5c47dd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition reveals the delicate balance of marine ecosystems and our profound dependence on them through works that expose both fragility and interconnection. Marta Dyachenko's Schiffbarmachung confronts viewers with the stark reality of corroding port infrastructures, transforming these decaying structures into powerful metaphors for our unstable technical and social systems. The work speaks to a larger truth about our precarious relationship with the built environment and, by extension, with the natural world it seeks to control. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Similarly, Ben Saint-Maxent's installations weave together personal memory and natural forces through materials like pine resin and endangered plants collected from the National Botanical Conservatory of Brest. His practice creates an intimate conversation between familiar objects and the larger ecological forces that shape our existence.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"121278c4-eb6f-430d-b667-bb7aab9883f0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106452514773877,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1398x1032/d95042dc03/lena-henke-in-cette-mer-qui-nous-entoure-2025-passerelle-centre-d-art-contemporain-brest-photo-aurelien-mole.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lena Henke in Cette Mer qui nous entoure, 2025 - Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"577fe23e-ce15-4b5b-b499-637d06346597",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What emerges most powerfully from the exhibition is the concept of entanglement, the idea that we are all immersed in a complex web of relationships we can never fully map or comprehend. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Wie-yi T. Lauw's textile and archival installations draw on personal and collective stories of migration and colonial heritage, reminding us that the sea is a repository of human experience. Her work recalls that the ocean has been crossed by stories of domination as much as stories of resistance, by tales of connection as much as displacement. Sophie T. Lvoff's photographic research in Dream Code extends this exploration, creating a visual language of signs and fragments that resemble messages in bottlesâcoded notes and personal stories tracing invisible routes between places and narratives.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lena Henke's sculptural interventions investigate the relationship between bodies, city planning, and power, questioning how space is organized and controlled, particularly from a woman perspective. Her works connect the control of bodies to the control of landscapes and ecosystem",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77,{_uid:"5e82c34f-29fc-498b-a7ed-6c99400f89f9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106454849579953,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5512x4134/4ea5942e88/cacp-2025-cette-mer-qui-nous-entoure-069.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hoël Duret in Cette Mer qui nous entoure, 2025 - Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3683e0ce-72c9-46c6-9c2d-9f9aa4f74e38",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106455314987983,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4843x3632/2848c0bc66/cacp-2025-cette-mer-qui-nous-entoure-063.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hoël Duret in Cette Mer qui nous entoure, 2025 - Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2c157e5c-09df-4fa4-a258-9e4456be530e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106455524305884,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3100x4134/5e776267db/hoel-duret-in-cette-mer-qui-nous-entoure-2025-passerelle-centre-d-art-contemporain-brest-photo-aurelien-mole.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hoël Duret in Cette Mer qui nous entoure, 2025 - Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7b595917-3951-43b9-abb9-966577f98a5e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106455672286174,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3100x4134/01908e664f/hoel-duret-in-cette-mer-qui-nous-entoure-2025-passerelle-centre-d-art-contemporain-brest-photo-aurelien-mole.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hoël Duret in Cette Mer qui nous entoure, 2025 - Passerelle Centre d'art contemporain, Brest © photo : Aurélien Mole",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"74106c4c-8616-4458-94b9-c1437ccdda62",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Cette Mer Qui Nous Entoure\" does not offer easy answers or simple solutions. Instead, it invites us to embrace the complexity and uncertainty of our relationship with the marine world, to recognize that we are part of systems far larger and more intricate than we can fully comprehend. The exhibition itself mirrors the structure of the seaâmade up of various strata, mobile and resistant to any fixed ending. As the curatorial statement suggests, the show swells like a constantly expanding story, unfinished and ceaselessly starting again. It is a narrative in which we all have a part to play, whether we acknowledge it or not.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curators: Tristan Deschamps, Marlene A. Schenk with Loïc Le Gall",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PASSERELLE Centre d'art contemporain, 41, rue Charles Berthelot, 29200 Brest, France",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"October 17, 2025 â January 3, 2026",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-28 00:00",name:"The Sea Around Us÷Post-Anthropocentric Tides",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"29b4dc4b-f649-4692-94f7-68ffd7128f94",color:"#38466b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a766dcc3-e5b1-42d6-b71a-f8ed05815d94",type:"",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106447544056575,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1716x1204/454d4ab98e/adagp-paris-2025.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hoël Duret, \"DARK WATERS\", (still) © Hoël Duret / ADAGP Paris, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"-the-sea-around-us-",full_slug:"directory/reviews/-the-sea-around-us-",sort_by_date:null,position:-550,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"483d4ff4-6d21-497a-b3b2-46e1331b23eb",first_published_at:"2025-10-28T19:34:13.827Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"You Were Never Solid",created_at:"2025-10-23T22:41:41.285Z",published_at:"2025-11-01T16:18:23.585Z",updated_at:"2025-11-01T16:18:23.606Z",id:104733496493370,uuid:"aefca7d1-2990-46e1-9a84-6d614ae58cfe",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f3520633-ec63-4004-a184-4edb75c6f067",type:"",title:"You Were Never Solid",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:104733213348379,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1358x762/4f85671677/screenshot-2025-10-24-at-00-32-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"digital art exhibition, hydrofeminism, non-dualism, Paris Art Week, Anika Meier, Diane Drubay, You Were Never Solid, common-garden, DANAE Paris, Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water, digital layer, multiverse, fluid identity, posthuman art, AI art, ecological art, symbiosis, interconnectivity, relational aesthetics, speculative design, virtual exhibition, online art, contemporary digital art, 21st century art, natureculture, Donna Haraway, porous bodies, oceanic consciousness, hybrid ecologies, digital feminism,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"You Were Never Solid explores hydrofeminism and non-dualism through digital art. An online exhibition dissolving boundaries between self, nature, and technology."}],_uid:"344bf665-7362-45fa-b6b9-6b49ef5f09f6",body:[{_uid:"ebd19d86-5524-472c-9e4c-bcbfc01e0a55",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"You Were Never Solid: A Fluid Meditation on Interconnectivity in the Digital Realm",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a time of rigid binaries and sharp divisions, the online exhibition \"You Were Never Solid\" offers a powerful and poetic antidote. Curated by Anika Meier and Diane Drubay, this collection of digital works exists exclusively in the digital layer, a choice that amplifies its exploration of fluidity, multiplicity, and the non-dualistic principles that underpin our existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Opened during Paris Art Week at DANAE and now accessible online via the common-garden platform, \"You Were Never Solid\" inhabits the digital realm as its native environment, creating a kind of multiverse where boundaries dissolve and new forms of being emerge. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not an exhibition that happens to be online; rather, its digital-only presence is integral to its conceptual framework, reinforcing the very ideas of porosity and interconnectedness that it explores.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What distinguishes this exhibition from the glut of online shows and digital platforms that too often conflate pixels with artworks is its uncompromising commitment to quality. Here, aesthetic beauty and conceptual depth are not mutually exclusive but deeply intertwined. Each work is visually compelling while carrying substantial intellectual weight, grounded in a sophisticated curatorial framework that refuses to treat digital art as spectacle or technological novelty. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is digital art that demands to be taken seriously, not because it exists online, but because it has something meaningful to say.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"8dea386b-69a3-4ead-9227-9a36c29052a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104736133952439,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1352x750/fcaf65a76b/dagmar-schurre.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dagmar Schürrer, \"Where does the rest of the world begin?\" (Symbiosis),still",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f90478dc-b3ac-4fe9-9ced-88ec9c0154fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition dives deep into the philosophy of hydrofeminism, as articulated by Astrida Neimanis in Bodies of Water (2017). ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It challenges us to see ourselves not as solid, separate entities, but as porous, relational beings, constantly in flux with the world around us",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial vision weaves together a diverse array of digital, immersive, and AI-driven works that explore water not as a theme, but as a collaborator and a world-builder. The artists in this exhibition dissolve the false dichotomies that have long defined Western thought: self and other, nature and machine, life and death.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dagmar Schürrer's multimedia installation, \"Where does the rest of the world begin? (Symbiosis)\", exemplifies the exhibition's engagement with non-dualism. By poetically linking the scientific concept of symbiosis with the theory of neural synchrony, Schürrer's work directly confronts our notions of individuality and singular consciousness. The hybrid, avatar-like creatures in her animations are rendered in fantastical digital landscapes, existing in a space where organic and non-organic agents are equally interconnected. This is a vision of existence where the boundaries between self and environment, between one consciousness and another, are revealed as permeable and provisional.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9f63eb11-c2ac-47e2-8df3-f06e356a59a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104737053451318,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1366x762/0ec3e62030/lauren-moffatt-chorcorallium-2025.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lauren Moffatt Chorcorallium, still, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d0ac55a9-cf6d-42cd-8b63-e5e3cfa93593",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104740752745894,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1354x1012/d93fd048b9/us-2023.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kira Xonorika, Ore/Us, still, 2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cce90f3f-ddcf-4705-986c-fbf2c92b579e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lauren Moffatt's Chorcorallium takes this further, imagining a speculative game-engine environment set on the ocean floor. In this work, human remnants are gradually transformed into a living reef, encrusted with coral and shaped by collective voice and imagination. It is a stunning example of how digital art can help us envision post-human futures where our technological debris becomes the foundation for new forms of life. The work draws parallels between the ocean's depths and the hidden processes of artificial intelligence, reflecting on both ecological risks and imaginative potential.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kira Xonorika's Ore/Us brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to the exhibition's exploration of non-dualism. Rooted in Guaranà cosmology, the work explores water as a sacred connector between beings, worlds, and times. In Guaranà culture, water is not merely sustenance but spirit, memory, and relationâa living presence that flows through communal identity. Xonorika's digital painting channels this perspective into an environment where water becomes both ancestral and futuristic, dissolving colonial notions of ownership and individuality into a shared, fluid \"us.\" This work powerfully demonstrates that non-dualistic thinking is not a new philosophical invention, but an ancient wisdom that Indigenous cultures have long understood and practiced.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"3edb4c5a-44f9-4b98-8840-f891fb2a1036",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104741594752426,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1364x746/ad98537813/claudia-hart-dream.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Claudia Hart, \"Dream\", (still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a848eb8-d86d-4a11-acfb-b4cc7f426872",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Claudia Hart's Dream is a fluid environment that evokes the visceral interior of bodies through x-ray aesthetics and medical imaging. This semi-abstract animation suggests cells, blood vessels, and the range of emissions that flow from bodies, existing on the edge between the abstract and the graphic. Hart's work is particularly significant in its exploration of spatial ambiguity through impossible camera movementsârotations that could never exist with analog technology. This digital-only perspective reinforces the exhibition's non-dualistic themes, imagining a digital body that exists in the slow time and space of both painting and dream. The work dissolves boundaries between interior and exterior, between the body as solid object and the body as fluid process, revealing our corporeal existence as fundamentally porous and in constant flux.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a82fa9d9-34ee-4b4f-8bb2-447508ca46b5",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"f5d65103-13d0-476e-92a5-ca45b65a7386",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104742566647213,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1290x722/5ad3196974/bianca-shonee-arroyo-kreimes-second-nature-2025.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes Second Nature 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f5eee8ce-835f-434c-ad9a-eaf5f831b31e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes's Second Nature examines the increasingly ambiguous boundary between technological and natural phenomena. Glowing glass-like tubes weave through the scene as conduits of sustenance, creating a technological photosynthesis where digital networks nourish organic forms and vice versa. The work suggests that as we move further into an era of artificial representation, the distinction between original and simulation becomes irrelevant. Here, flora thrives on algorithmic processes as readily as chlorophyllâa hybrid metabolism where technology does not replace nature, but becomes it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e7802423-94f6-467a-972f-5625f57f32ab",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fact that this exhibition exists solely in the digital layer adds another dimension to its exploration of non-dualism. The exhibition itself becomes part of a multiverse, a space where multiple realities coexist and overlap. Visitors can access the works from anywhere, at any time, dissolving the traditional boundaries of physical space and linear time. This digital existence mirrors the exhibition's central themes: that nothing is ever truly solid, that we are all part of interconnected flows, and that boundaries are always more porous than they appear.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As Donna Haraway wrote, \"Bodies are always natureculture.\" In You Were Never Solid, this becomes both an aesthetic and an ethic: a call to perceive our entanglement as the very condition of life. The exhibition unfolds like a tide, from origins and myths to rituals, grief, and hybrid ecologies. Water becomes an archive, a planetary memory of migrations, colonizations, and erasures. It also becomes a sacred medium, a space for ceremony, kinship, and transformation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"You Were Never Solid\" is a contribution to contemporary digital art. It demonstrates the power of art to challenge our perceptions, expand our understanding, and help us imagine new ways of being in the world. By existing exclusively in the digital realm, it practices what it preaches: that fluidity, multiplicity, and interconnection are not just concepts to contemplate, but ways of being to embody. This is essential viewing for anyone interested in the future of art, technology, and ecology.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artists in the exhibition:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, BORA Murmure, Claudia Hart, Connie Bakshi, CROSSLUCID, Dagmar Schürrer, Harriet Davey, Kira Xonorika, Lauren Moffatt, Pinar Yoldas, Sasha Katz, SOFF, Viola Rama, Violet Bond, Wednesday Ki",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition presented on common-garden platform",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artworks can be collected on OBJKT",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"2e72f9fa-d370-420d-a6ba-e796a5521cfb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104746556560837,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/680x1268/c100da18cf/screenshot-2025-10-24-at-01-02-42.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Wednesday Kim Genealogy of Traces (íì ì ê³ë³´, Heunjeok-ui Gyebo) 2024âongoing, still",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"28fcac6e-8465-4437-ab18-e45ec07295fc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104746556356036,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/770x1352/dc2de57ee2/dubray.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Viola Rama, \"Hydroskin AR1\" (still), 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-23 00:00",name:"Online exhibition÷You Were Never Solid",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"43658ac0-9ba8-4415-a4b8-89206bb67fc8",color:"#f5ccd0",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"696b9a15-b2ab-4363-93fb-81b42268f765",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104733213348379,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1358x762/4f85671677/screenshot-2025-10-24-at-00-32-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CROSSLUCID, Synthetic Mournings (still),2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"you-were-never-solid",full_slug:"directory/reviews/you-were-never-solid",sort_by_date:null,position:-470,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"6ecc6ec5-ff05-4eaf-8b8c-19bffef76394",first_published_at:"2025-10-23T23:39:24.081Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"'Exposition Générale'",created_at:"2025-10-21T01:59:58.361Z",published_at:"2025-10-21T03:32:51.246Z",updated_at:"2025-10-21T03:32:51.265Z",id:103720543714199,uuid:"7a6ac9d5-91ff-40e2-b564-4ae272599d97",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"4e36e53a-0b21-4e60-be52-50618749620a",type:"",title:"Four Worlds, 600 Works, One Unforgettable Journey: Inside 'Exposition Générale'",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:103724196143899,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6900x5266/de9acd3c83/david-hammons-facing-le-louvre.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Fondation Cartier, Exposition Générale, contemporary art Paris, Place du Palais-Royal, art exhibition review, Sarah Sze, Bernie Krause, Soundwalk Collective, Absalon, Freddy Mamani, Jaider Esbell, David Hammons, Matthew Barney, Oscar Muñoz, Chéri Samba, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Solange Pessoa, Paris art exhibition, contemporary art museum, art collection, inaugural exhibition, Machines d'architecture, Ãtre nature, Making Things, Un monde réel, bioacoustic art, immersive installation, architectural exhibition, Indigenous art, Brazilian art, Bolivian art, contemporary sculpture, contemporary painting, art and nature, art and ecology, experimental art, Paris museums, art review 2025, Haussmannian building, museum architecture, curatorial practice, art and technology, sound art, installation art, conceptual art, folk art, textile art, gunpowder art, Cai Guo-Qiang, Diller Scofidio Renfro, Giuseppe Penone, Claudia Andujar, Raymond Depardon, Andrea Branzi, Olga de Amaral, Simon Hantaï, Gérard Garouste, Junya Ishigami, Alessandro Mendini, Panamarenko, Jessica Wynne, Luiz Zerbini, Véio, Izabel Mendez da Cunha, Yanomami art, Makuxi cosmology, art criticism, museum review, Paris cultural scene, 21st century art, contemporary art collection, commissioned artworks, art and architecture dialogue",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"The Fondation Cartier's inaugural exhibition 'Exposition Générale' is a dazzling triumph. 600 works, 4 themes, 40 years of fearless creation. A must-see show"}],_uid:"47e88191-ae6a-481b-9257-b0fad6ab1a9d",body:[{_uid:"148c3094-9dd1-44e3-9edb-0d5b010cf8ac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"'Exposition Générale' Review: The Fondation Cartier's Dazzling Declaration of Intent",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Walking into the Fondation Cartier's new home at Place du Palais-Royal feels like stepping into a conversation that's been going on for 40 yearsâand you're invited to join in. \"Exposition Générale,\" the institution's inaugural exhibition is an audacious, sprawling, utterly mesmerizing declaration of intent. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is what a collection looks like when it's been built on relationships, not transactions.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What strikes you first is how the space itself performs. The building doesn't just hold artâit choreographs it. Multiple platforms shift the sightlines constantly, creating unexpected encounters between works that might never have met otherwise. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artworks adapt to the architecture, yes, but the architecture bends to the art too. It's a genuine symbiosis, and it makes for thrilling viewing. You're never quite standing still, visually speaking. The space keeps pulling you forward, upward, downward, sideways.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Fondation Cartier has spent four decades building something genuinely different: a collection born from commissions, collaborations, and long-term artistic partnerships rather than auction-house acquisitions. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"You can feel it in the work. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"With nearly 600 works by over 100 artists on display, this review can't possibly do justice to everyoneâbut that abundance is precisely the point. This isn't a tidy survey. It's a world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"'Exposition Générale' Review: The Fondation Cartier's Dazzling Declaration of Intent",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ffafb8fd-f66c-4e63-a08e-b70977912f14",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103724090618649,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7763x5135/c815156190/junya-ishigami_luiz-zerbini.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view. Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2025. 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",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It's this porosityâthis refusal to seal off one idea from anotherâthat gives \"Exposition Générale\" its electric energy.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Machines d'architecture kicks things off with a provocation: what if architecture could be unbuilt, reimagined, liberated from its own weight? Absalon's austere white cells sit like philosophical puzzles in spaceâpart sculpture, part architectural proposal, part existential question about how we choose to live. They're minimal, almost monastic, yet they pulse with radical possibility. Across the room, Freddy Mamani's exuberant ballroom explodes in color, a full-throated celebration of Bolivian neo-Andean aesthetics that refuses to whisper when it can shout. Visible from the street, it announces that this museum isn't interested in polite restraint. Bodys Isek Kingelez's fantastical architectural modelsâutopian cities rendered in cardboard and found materialsâpropose futures that are both playful and deadly serious. His \"extreme maquettes\" imagine African metropolises transformed by visionary urbanism. Junya Ishigami's delicate architectural interventions blur the line between built and natural environments, while Alessandro Mendini's \"Petite Cathédrale\" plays with scale to disorient and delight. Architecture here isn't about permanenceâit's about imagination, about dreaming cities and spaces that don't yet exist but absolutely should.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ãtre natureâor \"Being Nature\"âplunges you into something primal. This section asks what it means to be entangled with the living world, and the answers are both beautiful and urgent. Solange Pessoa's \"Miracéus\" hangs suspended like a ghostly apparition, thousands of bird feathers forming a monumental presence that feels ancient and immediate at once. It's shamanic, visceral, utterly arresting. Jaider Esbell's work brings Indigenous Makuxi cosmology into dialogue with contemporary ecological crisis, reminding us that some cultures have been thinking about these relationships for millennia. His paintings and drawings don't just depict natureâthey embody a worldview where humans are one thread in a vast, interconnected web. This section doesn't romanticize nature; it insists on our responsibility to it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"6c7c7a14-f61f-4bd0-840a-b4e25287be30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103730040259389,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8143x5472/1eed9d9898/view-from-platform-5_absalon_annette-messager.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view. Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2025. Photo © Marc Domage.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"85d997b0-1e4f-45d7-971e-506ee5f72304",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103730310071102,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5039x7257/a6154dfcfe/freddy-mamani_salon-de-eventos.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view. Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2025. Photo © Marc Domage.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3a785eae-7cb3-48b0-b4c6-939d19e01789",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103732655604548,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3249x4322/1f4b820514/col-kin-1336.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view. Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2025. Photo © Marc Domage.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"60008be6-afb3-4cad-9170-549d6e363d34",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Making Things is where the exhibition gets wonderfully messy in the best possible way.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Here, hierarchies collapse. Fine art meets craft meets folk tradition meets conceptual rigor, and nobody's checking credentials at the door. Chéri Samba's paintings are a masterclass in visual storytellingâbold, satirical, deeply political, and utterly accessible. His work proves that popular art can be intellectually sophisticated without losing its punch. David Hammons takes everyday materialsâbottle caps, hair, basketballsâand transforms them into meditations on race, identity, and institutional power. Andrea Branzi's \"Gazebo\" reimagines domestic space as something fluid and permeable. Olga de Amaral's monumental textile works command attention, their surfaces rich with texture and light. Simon Hantaï's folded canvases reveal painting as a process of concealment and revelation. The Brazilian artists Véio and Izabel Men
77dez da Cunha bring folk traditions into contemporary contexts with carved figures that pulse with spiritual energy. Gérard Garouste's mythological paintings layer literary references into dense visual narratives. There's a generosity in this section, a sense that art-making is a fundamentally human activity that takes countless forms. The exhibition celebrates that multiplicity without flattening it into false equivalence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"58d09275-fbdb-43d8-ab38-fda6ac7dc5ca",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103731870307137,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5315x3558/4da34ecf78/col-sam-6478.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chéri Samba, La vraie carte du monde, 2011, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 200 x 300 cm, Collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain (acq. 2011)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a15ccd8b-90fc-435c-87dd-574569d3d7b2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103730040259389,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8143x5472/1eed9d9898/view-from-platform-5_absalon_annette-messager.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view. Fondation Cartier pour lâart contemporain, 2025. Photo © Marc Domage.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ff9e555b-e44a-4647-aefc-2a937cf3fe39",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Un monde réelâ\"A Real World\"âsounds straightforward but turns out to be anything but. This is where science fiction meets actual science, where data visualization becomes poetry, where the boundaries between the real and the imagined dissolve completely. Panamarenko's fantastical flying machines embody the utopian dreams of the 20th century. Jessica Wynne photographs mathematicians' chalkboards, revealing the aesthetic dimension of abstract thought. This section asks: what tools do we use to make sense of reality? And what happens when those toolsâwhether scientific instruments or artistic gesturesâreveal that reality is stranger and more fragile than we thought?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then you descend. The basement level of the Fondation Cartier is where \"Exposition Générale\" delivers its knockout punch. Here, two extraordinary works create an environment that is nothing short of grandiose. Sarah Sze's installation is exceptionalâa sprawling, intricate ecosystem of objects that somehow captures what it feels like to live in an age of information overload. Every element matters, yet the whole threatens to collapse at any moment. It's precarious, beautiful, overwhelming in its complexity. Nearby, Bernie Krause and Soundwalk Collective's \"Night Would Not Be Night Without the Cricket\" transforms the subterranean space into an immersive sonic environment drawn from 5,000 hours of field recordings. It's dark. It's enveloping. It's absolutely grandiose. You're standing in the heart of Paris, beneath a historic building, surrounded by the sounds of forests, jungles, wetlandsâecosystems under threat, captured by Krause over decades of pioneering bioacoustic research. The architecture amplifies the sound, holds it, lets it wash over you. Together, these works create an overwhelming experience in the most profound sense. You leave feeling like you've traveled somewhere far away, and also like you've come home to something you'd forgotten.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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This is what happens when you let art move freely between categories, cultures, and contexts. You get something alive, something that shifts and breathes and refuses to stay still.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Fondation Cartier's acquisition philosophyâprivileging relationships over market trends, commissioning new work, supporting both celebrated and under-recognized artistsâhas produced a collection with genuine soul. \"Exposition Générale\" is the proof. It's subtle where it needs to be, bold where it counts, and always, always generous. The building and the artworks have found each other, adapted to each other, and created something neither could have achieved alone.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is what an inaugural exhibition should be: not a safe bet, but a leap. 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",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Among these, the exceptionally curated OFFSCREEN stands out as a must-see highlight, transforming the monumental Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière into a site-specific architectural exhibition. OFFSCREEN brings together a tightly curated selection of artists working with installations, still and moving images, establishing itself as an important nexus for building the contemporary conversation in experimental image-based practices.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Equally vital is the very dynamic Paris Internationale, now celebrating its 11th edition at the Rond-point des Champs-Ãlysées. Born from the initiative of a group of galleries eager to \"take their destiny into their own hands,\" this fair has become a creative laboratory where emerging galleries and bold artists reinvent the codes of contemporary art. Supporting a new generation of over 66 international galleriesâfrom Paris to Tokyo, Los Angeles to LondonâParis Internationale embodies a prospective, collaborative, and daring alternative to traditional formats, with free public programs that make contemporary art accessible to all.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where you feel the real pulse of the contemporary scene, a dynamic landscape where connoisseurs and new patrons converge. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Seasoned collectors with an eye for masterpieces now rub shoulders with a new generation of buyers, a demographic that, according to a recent Art Basel & UBS report, is
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",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In warehouses and independent spaces, vital new platforms like Artagon are championing undiscovered artists with raw, unfiltered talent, while a constellation of new galleries pushes the boundaries of the market.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"afc46b0e-fd12-4bcd-acec-22082ee0d229",quote:"The true spirit of this new era, however, may be captured by \"New Ways of Seeing,\" a groundbreaking festival born from our hybrid, post-digital age.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"6d7491d3-f3e5-4cc3-b6dc-6ec94c61c825",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It's a testament to a city that has rediscovered its ability to honor its heritage while fiercely embracing the avant-garde. 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77,{_uid:"c64ba27a-c1fb-4df5-a6bf-ca07624ba872",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105351917039430,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1365/4f4a09efbc/gns-2025-art-basel-paris-2025-010-scaled.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Josèfa Ntjam, The Undercommons, 2025, Courtesy Nicoletti Gallery, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"22d10f18-6207-42c4-9cce-9631e64923c8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The New Avant-Garde: Speculative Futures & Digital Selves",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A powerful current running through the fair was an engagement with speculative futures and the fluid nature of identity in our hyper-connected world. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Nicoletti Gallery, Josefa Ntjam's The Undercommons (2025) stood out as one of the fair's most stunning achievements. Taking Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights as her point of departure, Ntjam constructs a sumptuous visual universe where scale collapses entirely: portraits of independence movement leaders and African deities float alongside mythological creatures, botanical specimens, and molecular structures. The triptych format, three larch frames hinged like an altarpiece, becomes a space where survival strategies converge. Here, the adaptive mechanisms of natural organisms mirror the systems of belief and resistance deployed by marginalized communities throughout history. It's a work that refuses linear narrative, instead offering what Ntjam calls \"arborescent thoughts\", ideas that branch, multiply, and interconnect in unexpected ways.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ba6d12bd-d9f9-456b-b4a7-2756aeff936e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105354231533533,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x511/d520d1d769/siyi-li-new-energy-2025-presente-par-la-galerie-cibrian-dans-le-secteur-emergence-d-art-basel-paris-2025.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Siyi Li, New Energy (2025). Présenté par la galerie Cibrián dans le secteur Emergence dâArt Basel Paris, 2025. ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2a80b0fe-c4fe-4641-9e6d-55a4d3d1aac7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This dialogue between the digital and the deeply human was echoed at Cibrian Gallery, where Siyi Liâs mesmerizing LED film installation, New Energy, captivated viewers. Using the Chinese term for electric vehicles as a metaphor, Liâs work explores the very essence of creativity, not as a fixed commodity, but as a fluid, emotional force. The film, which follows two women on a drive through Shanghai, uses the visual language of fashion to trace the subtle shifts in their relationship and inner worlds. The result is a poignant meditation on the performance of self in a world mediated by screens and surfaces.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d36d99aa-5d21-4226-8d50-8b1da49a63aa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105353335205763,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2308x1546/fccc5b1411/screenshot-2025-10-25-at-18-05-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Duyi Han, Bank (Shanghai, New York), courtesy Bank Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7ff548d3-5086-41c0-98b0-399e1a40e1c6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Meanwhile, at Bank Gallery, Duyi Han offered his own unique vision of our contemporary condition with his âneuroaesthetic prescriptions.â A trained architect, Han synthesizes design, art, and fashion to create emotionally charged environments that draw on everything from Taoist philosophy to pharmaceutical science. His installation, which included the works Ordinance of the Subconscious Treatment and Visions of Bloom, explored mental health and cultural heritage through a series of exquisitely crafted objects, including silk-embroidered furniture and 3D animations. Hanâs work is a powerful reminder that in an age of anxiety, art can offer not just a reflection of our troubles, but also a pathway to healing and transformation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"90671b22-4fda-409f-a863-725545597e4e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Body Politic: Resilience, Conflict, and Transformation",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If some artists looked to the future, others confronted the brutal realities of the present with unflinching honesty. Galerie Poggi's presentation, \"The War Within, Ukrainian Artists to the Front,\" was one of the most powerful and moving displays at the fair. The centerpiece was Nikita Kadan's monumental charcoal drawing, Shchekavytsia, a work that transforms a viral Ukrainian meme about a mass orgy in the face of nuclear annihilation into a profou
77nd statement on collective trauma and resilience. Kadan's work, alongside that of Danylo Halkin and the duo Yarema Malashchuk & Roman Khimei, served as a gut-wrenching reminder of the human cost of conflict and the indomitable spirit of those who endure it.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bfda2ad7-b76f-4890-80d8-d774a00e156c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104893645411208,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2226x1828/cf7a40ec3f/nikita-kadan-crater-face-2025-jpg.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nikita Kadan, \"Crater Face\", Courtesy gallery Poggi and",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0416c33a-468f-4f0d-b423-29a8509c26a9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This exploration of displacement and survival found a different, equally poignant expression at Sophie Tappeiner, where Jala Wahid's Stealth Technology offered a meditation on forced migration through the lens of the Kurdish diaspora. The installation's four sculptural elementsâincluding two mauve blindfolded horses collapsed on a nicotine-yellow foam mattressâevoke both the violence of military invasion and the intimate histories of love that persist through upheaval. The horses' fragmented, roughhewn forms recall her parents' perilous journey across the Iran-Iraq border, while a small black kitten inscribed with \"love u\" speaks to the tenderness that endures even in the face of conflict. It's a work that refuses to separate the political from the personal, instead insisting that they are inextricably intertwined.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This sense of deconstruction and remaking was also present at Galerie Molitor, where Dora Budorâs video sculptures and installations probed the ways in which cultural heritage is commodified and distorted. In Vintages, Budor repurposed champagne boxes and Fresnel lenses to project excerpts from a 1928 silent film about financial speculation, creating a haunting reflection on the cyclical nature of history and the seductive allure of wealth. Her work serves as a subtle but incisive critique of the very market forces that drive the art world.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"913bc672-f5c4-4832-9129-05383c4b4183",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Quiet Contemplations: Modern Melancholy & Intimate Worlds",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Amidst the grand statements and immersive installations, there were also moments of quiet contemplation and intimate beauty. At Sultana Gallery, the miniature, hyper-detailed paintings of Jean Claracq offered a poignant glimpse into the loneliness and isolation of modern life. His canvases, which often depict solitary figures absorbed in their digital devices, are a powerful embodiment of what he calls \"modern melancholy.\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In dialogue with Claracq's intimate worlds were the hybrid media works of Philipp Timischl, a new addition to the gallery's roster. Timischl's practice, which combines painting, video, and sculpture, explores similar themes of melancholy and self-reference, creating a compelling conversation about the nature of identity and connection in the 21st century.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"75e7f2cb-a63c-40de-984c-be5cc77f0642",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105359230673302,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8000x4500/bad206fe7c/8b05ca2e90db2a0ca07ef73d0c78c29c726cc2b8-8000x4500.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jean Claracq, Jesse Darling, Louis Le Kim, Olivier Millagou, Harry Nuriev, Philipp Timischl, Nanténé Traoré, Wu Jiaru, Courtesy Sultana Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"189cc60e-1049-4480-b33c-e8c7d35fe8ce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105357972742543,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2150x1348/54ab8b43ca/screenshot-2025-10-25-at-19-02-15.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"93bded5c-0f13-4e5b-8ffd-02de8c17d2c7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105360322511277,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1688x1508/705a468e77/screenshot-2025-10-25-at-19-11-43.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jean Claracq, Une fictions, Courtesy Sultana Galerie",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"63496c8f-9e9b-470d-9e0d-b8da1728cd24",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A different kind of intimacy emerged at Ginny on Frederick, where Arash Nassiri's Untitled transformed childhood nostalgia into something far more unsettling. Using Sylvanian Families toy buildings as miniature cityscapes, Nassiri recreates Tehranian shop signs with flickering Farsi letters and numbers illuminating tiny shopfronts. What might initially appear whimsical quickly reveals itself as a meditation on lossâthe lives and streets erased by urban change and migration. The small buildings, typically associated with innocent play, become haunting monuments to a broken city, their glowing signs like ghosts of a world that can never be recovered.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Kiang Malingue, Tiffany Chung offered another perspective on memory and displacement through the miniature. Her installation the world through my mother's cabinets of curiosities (2025) assembles delicate objects, miniature plants and flowers her mother collected, dead corals from Ishigaki, leftover materials from previous projects, rocks and driftwoods donated by friends. What begins as a whimsical meditation on how accumulated objects reflect identity transforms into something far more profound: a reckoning with environmental impact, disaster, migration, and survival. Chung, herself part of the post-1975 Vietnamese refugee exodus, has built a practice around mapping forced migration and geographical trauma. Here, the personal and the planetary converge, reminding us that the imprint of our past carries into the future, and that care for creation extends beyond human history alone.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"be65f735-1427-4dbf-a491-7b903df4c524",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105585176196042,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2322x1190/8bf58607c6/screenshot-2025-10-26-at-09-25-32.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Arash Nassiri, Courtesy Gallery Ginny on Frederick",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9262bbe1-f136-4536-9dc7-4b990eccdc35",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105588729697238,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1622x1234/ce3af92c2c/arash-nassiri.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Arash Nassiri, Courtesy Gallery Ginny on Frederick",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bfbf6191-3dfd-457f-91b3-33c3617b1ea5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105361649037751,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2599x1733/78eed7a40c/malingue_kiang_03-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tiffany Chung, Courtesy Kiang Malingue",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ae77697d-9c59-4b8a-ae69-8a7254d5f818",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Fair for Our Times",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ultimately, Art Basel Paris 2025 was a fair that captured the zeitgeist of our times. While the art market continues to be a powerful force, the most compelling works on display were not those that offered easy answers or decorative appeal, but those that dared to grapple with the complexities and contradictions of our world. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From the speculative futures of Josefa Ntjam and Siyi
77Li to the raw, unflinching honesty of Nikita Kadan and Marianna Simnett, a new generation of artists is proving that art is not just a mirror of our times, but a vital tool for navigating them. In a world in flux, their voices have never been more essential.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-23 00:00",name:"The View from Above:÷Art Basel Paris's Avant-Garde Ascent",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"0084440c-88b4-433b-8b45-50ccac5628f3",color:"#919191",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"afbaca56-7736-427d-b493-baea755b0ed1",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105414081020522,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1448x965/34a39516be/rtworks-by-nefeli-papadimouli-presented-by-the-pill-in-the-emergence-sector-of-art-basel-paris-2025.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"rtworks by Nefeli Papadimouli presented by The Pill in the Emergence sector of Art Basel Paris 2025.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"art-basel",full_slug:"directory/reviews/art-basel",sort_by_date:null,position:-510,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1c9e203f-55c1-45f3-bc1e-154cd4d4e1c1",first_published_at:"2025-10-25T17:21:23.287Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Julius von Bismarck",created_at:"2025-10-11T20:06:10.556Z",published_at:"2025-10-22T14:36:35.641Z",updated_at:"2025-10-22T14:36:35.665Z",id:100448545030014,uuid:"110ef7a0-f748-4505-bb4a-036d5d0214b8",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"9f8e7bcf-93e9-4791-9a2e-b4fccb8778cf",type:"",title:"The Eternal Collapse: Julius von Bismarck's Kinetic Monuments",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:100448722897826,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1414x872/8d5f0806bc/screenshot-2025-10-11-at-22-04-44.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Julius von Bismarck, Art Basel Paris 2025, Petit Palais exhibition, The Elephant in the Room, contemporary art Paris, kinetic sculpture, monument art, collapsing sculptures, wakouwa toys, taxidermy art, German contemporary artist, Art Basel public program, colonial monuments, nature and colonialism, political art, motorized sculptures, art exhibition review, Paris art scene, contemporary sculpture, monument critique, power and memory art, CERN artist, Olafur Eliasson, Berlinische Galerie, Sies + Höke gallery, The Ranch gallery, art and politics, decolonial art, statue toppling, contemporary German art, Paris October 2025, kinetic art installation, Grenzen der Intelligenzen, OOOSB series, animal monuments, equestrian statue art, art criticism, Guardian style review, Refresh magazine, 21st century art, experiential art, post-digital art, technology and nature art, Anthropocene art, Berlin artist, contemporary art review",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Julius von Bismarck exhibition"}],_uid:"160be8a6-c4b1-42c1-b0d3-941c18193971",body:[{_uid:"1b9a12c9-c7a2-4ff6-a770-fecc50a82f8e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Push-Button History: How a Childhood Toy Became Julius von Bismarck's Most Powerful Statement",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Amid the marble and gold of the Petit Palais, a space that is itself a monument to a certain kind of French statehood and artistic glory, something is coming apart. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For Art Basel's public program in Paris, German artist Julius von Bismarck has installed a work of such disruptive power that it feels like a glitch in the imperial matrix. A life-sized, taxidermied giraffe and a replica of an equestr
77ian statue of Otto von Bismarck are locked in a silent, asynchronous ballet of collapse and resurrection. It is bewildering, darkly comical, and utterly mesmerising.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9b507e0e-5625-4097-ac5c-0ed98d052793",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104255567813563,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1886x1268/93dc2f58ed/petitpaslaisbismarck.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"install shot, Julius Von Bismarck, \"2023-25\", Art Basel Program, Petit Palais, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b3ba1daa-c0c4-4457-838e-2737340a6e12",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The piece, titled The Elephant in the Room (2023-2025), is the stunning centrepiece of a small but potent exhibition. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Inspired by the simple mechanics of wakouwa articulated toysâthose push-puppet figures that collapse when you press the baseâthese motorised sculptures transform a childhood plaything into something far more profound.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Powered by internal motors, winches, and computer programming, the two figures slowly, almost gracefully, crumple into articulated segments before painstakingly pulling themselves back together. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work elevates this playful mechanism into a profound statement on the fragility of the structuresâboth physical and ideologicalâthat we believe will last forever.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Von Bismarck has long been fascinated with the monuments we erect and, more recently, with their toppling. He has cited the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, the televised fall of Saddam Hussein's statue, and the recent wave of monument removals across the West as catalysts for his thinking. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But here, he moves beyond destruction. This is not a static ruin but a perpetual cycle of ruin and repair, forcing a confrontation with what and who we choose to memorialise. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"13a633c6-9023-4a90-88de-58973265f4b7",quote:"There are many ways of creating reality. There is always a gap between theoretical reality and subjective reality. I want to create situations in which you have a chance to reconstruct your perception.",author:"Julius Von Bismarck",component:"quote"},{_uid:"76d95fb4-d049-44ed-a039-c401cb33338a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104258326101132,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1164x764/a96240c394/screenshot-2025-10-22-at-16-03-14.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julius Von Bismarck, \"2023-25\", Art Basel Program",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"346d0575-23b5-4e74-8894-b887c923750a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And what a reconstruction it is. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By placing a giraffe opposite a nineteenth-century military monument, von Bismarck creates a startling equivalence. \"Is a giraffe a monument?\" he asks. \"Yes, it is.\" He argues for seeing our very concept of \"nature\"âoften framed through the colonial enterprise of zoos, safaris, and natural history museumsâas a monument to human power over the animal kingdom. The seemingly innocent zoo animal figurine, he suggests, is a symbol of colonial dominance, an idea that decisively shapes our perception of the world from childhood.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The equestrian statue, meanwhile, represents the traditional monument in its most recognisable formâthe military hero on horseback, cast in bronze or carved in stone. By subjecting both figures to the same mechanical fate, von Bismarck suggests that even when a monument is pulled down, the ideas it represents can reassemble themselves. \"It is evident that society is constantly returning to issues that were believed to have been settled long ago,\" the artist notes, a chilling observation in today's political climate.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"942acaac-1968-4978-ac9b-84bc7f8add59",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104259918920923,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1412x848/905cc82bad/screenshot-2025-10-22-at-16-02-57.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julius Von Bismarck, \"2023-25\", Art Basel Program",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dc53d10f-89dd-43d7-89f4-94de1e4a71c0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is an artist whose practice consistently prods at the boundaries of perception through a unique blend of physics, technology, and social commentary. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"His earlier Punishment series, which saw him arrested for whipping the Statue of Liberty, showed a similar impulse to physically challenge cultural icons.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Here, the approach is less overtly aggressive but perhaps more insidiously effective. The wakouwa-inspired mechanism is genius precisely because it is so familiar, so innocuousâyet in this context, it becomes a devastating metaphor for the cyclical nature of power and memory.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Two smaller works accompany the main installation, reinforcing its themes. The OOOSB series features panels of compacted flora, fauna, and civilisational debris, like fossilised cross-sections of our Anthropocenic reality. A hypnotic video, Grenzen der Intelligenzen (Boundaries of Intelligence), captures the frantic, pointless dance of insects around an artificial light, a poignant metaphor for a world losing its bearings. Together, they articulate what von Bismarck calls his \"general interest in human projection onto animals, and the way we use them to construct our own reality.\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To place this exhibition within the ornate, baroque halls of the Petit Palais is a curatorial masterstroke. The building itself, as von Bismarck observes, is \"a monument to an era, a type of state, and a phase in architecture and art.\" His kinetic sculptures act as a virus within this host, questioning the very permanence and authority the surrounding architecture proclaims. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"They are not just falling down; they are falling for us, a constant, looping reminder that history is not a static monument, but a story we are forever building and breaking apart.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Julius von Bismarck's exhibition is at the Petit Palais, Paris, as part of the Art Basel Paris Public Program, from 21 to 26 October 2025.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-21 00:00",name:"The Eternal Collapse ÷Julius von Bismarck's Kinetic Monuments",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"aeba6d88-7860-4a42-816b-a404aae46aef",color:"#456b70",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a9aa9b88-954d-40bd-8c51-8270909e02ea",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104254632078193,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1418x928/b856815a72/petitpalais.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julius Von Bismarck, \"2023-25\", Art Basel Program, Petit Palais, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"julius-von-bismarck",full_slug:"directory/reviews/julius-von-bismarck",sort_by_date:null,position:-190,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"2ff4a3c9-b94f-42d5-a8fb-1ff7a826f099",first_published_at:"2025-10-22T14:36:35.641Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Sorry Sun",created_at:"2025-10-11T18:45:55.470Z",published_at:"2025-10-20T17:27:01.307Z",updated_at:"2025-10-20T17:27:01.322Z",id:100428822442807,uuid:"65d4bf69-c634-43bd-8e80-2a7e98d62a3d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"7d1023e3-70f7-45dd-a06f-27f201d554e3",type:"",title:"Sorry Sun",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:100429570263888,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/6faa23dbbd/_dsc9205.avif",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"exhibition, paris, ecology",component:"SEO",description:"exhibition at Fondation Ricard"}],_uid:"34c2e10e-dbae-42f7-b91b-b411cf03527c",body:[{_uid:"a560bd8f-65f3-4fbe-b287-03c0b1f391e2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Tender, Scorching Light",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a world grappling with ecological crisis and technological disillusionment, this exhibition in Paris finds hope in the fragments. âSorry Sunâ is a quiet triumph of poetic resistance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Thereâs a captivating ambiguity at the heart of the Fondation Pernod Ricardâs exhibition, âSorry Sun.â The title itself, poised between apology and defiance, perfectly encapsulates the showâs delicate dance between light and shadow, clarity and confusion. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by the insightful Liberty Adrien, this inaugural edition of the foundationâs âNouveau Programmeâ brings together three remarkable artistsâSaodat Ismailova, Alexandre Khondji, and Hélène Yamba-Guimbiâwho, through their distinct practices, map a âcartography of disruptionâ that feels both timely and timeless.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"7ac2c6e7-59b2-4b3e-b1f5-f5a1ffab25e7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100431585123157,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x600/f93035eba0/_dsc9210_0.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Saodat Ismailova, 18 000 Mondes, 2023, Courtesy of the artist,Photo : Nicolas Brasseur.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"30b7ca49-8537-4243-8724-88b2b606b16c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100432256260951,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x600/66c93f5c8d/_dsc9235.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hélène Yamba-Guimbi, Foreign, 2025,Courtesy of the artiste. Photo : Nicolas Brasseur.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dc9b8c48-5355-40f1-9155-b8661d129fa8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103143577153246,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1764x1154/62356de8a6/helene-yamba-guimbi-foreign-detail-2025-cables-electriques-fixations-colle-latex-ampoules-deux-boites-de-rangement-muji-papier-photographies-bornes-wago-34-x-25-x-9-cm-et-51-x-17-x-9-cm-courtesy-de-l-artiste-photo-nicolas-brasseur.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hélène Yamba-Guimbi, Foreign (detail), 2025,Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Nicolas Brasseur.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"773e6e49-e272-4b5f-ab60-233fb3da97b9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Adrienâs curatorial vision is a masterclass in nuance. The exhibition confronts the âfault lines of our timeââthe erosion of collective ideals, the broken promises of technology, and the ever-present ecological emergency. Yet, this is far from a doom-and-gloom affair. Instead, âSorry Sunâ unearths moments of profound resilience, finding in popular beliefs, fragmented memories, and ancient rituals âsubtle forms of resistance.â The result is an exhibition that is intellectually stimulating and deeply moving, a space where the familiar and the intangible coalesce.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists, a generation navigating the complexities of a post-idealistic world, respond to this curatorial framework with extraordinary grace and power. Their works, spanning moving image, installation, and sculpture, create a fragmented narrative that invites contemplation rather than dictating conclusions. This is an exhibition that trusts its audience, allowing space for personal interpretation and emotional connection.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Uzbek artist Saodat Ismailovaâs film, â18,000 Worlds,â is a breathtaking highlight. A 31-minute cinematic poem, it weaves together myth, memory, and ritual from a post-Soviet Central Asian perspective. Ismailova, a vital voice of her generation, creates a dreamlike landscape where the past is not a relic but a living, breathing force. The film is a gentle yet powerful act of cultural preservation, a testament to the enduring power of storytelling in a world of fleeting digital content.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In stark contrast to Ismailovaâs organic visuals, Alexandre Khondjiâs âTriple Insertâ plunges the viewer into the cold, uncanny valley of modern technology. A network of endoscopic cameras and KVM consoles, the installation evokes a sense of surveillance and disembodiment. Khondjiâs work is a chillingly effective commentary on our increasingly mediated lives, questioning the very n
77ature of seeing and being seen in the digital age. It is a necessary and unsettling piece that lingers long after youâve looked away.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hélène Yamba-Guimbiâs intricate sculptures offer a third, equally compelling perspective. In works like âCecil Hotel (consumo)â and âHotspot (void version),â she combines industrial and organic materialsâacrylic sheets and electrical cords meet velvet, pearls, and latexâto create objects of alluring fragility. These are alchemical assemblages, at once beautiful and unsettling, that speak of consumption, waste, and the delicate balance of our ecosystem. Yamba-Guimbiâs work is a powerful reminder that even in our disposable culture, beauty and meaning can be found in the most unexpected places.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âSorry Sunâ is a quiet masterpiece, an exhibition that doesnât shout but whispers, inviting you to lean in and listen closely. It is a show that acknowledges the darkness of our current moment while simultaneously pointing towards a lightâone that is, in the curatorâs words, âat once tender and scorching, revealing and disorienting, vivid and weary.â In a world that often feels overwhelming, this exhibition is a vital and ultimately hopeful experience. Donât miss it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sorry Sun is at the Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris, until 31 October 2025.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-10 00:00",name:"Sorry Sun÷ A Quiet Triumph of Poetic Resistance",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e30ce085-c422-47e4-93cd-da7d4af1ae65",color:"#000000",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"b81ff426-9cfa-40c5-adb9-b6af7303b618",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100430921743187,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x600/4bd22b396d/_dsc9205.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hélène Yamba-Guimbi, Hotspot (void version, detail)",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"sorry-sun",full_slug:"directory/reviews/sorry-sun",sort_by_date:null,position:-170,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"cf3841ec-b5b5-49b3-843a-24fd0a5ad298",first_published_at:"2025-10-11T18:57:15.866Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Art Emergence",created_at:"2025-10-23T11:16:44.960Z",published_at:"2025-10-24T17:58:03.591Z",updated_at:"2025-10-24T17:58:03.620Z",id:104565165942840,uuid:"e82ad419-5a9b-4250-a473-70470cc7f1f4",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"27f5be7d-2148-4f13-8c45-2d0479e1c16b",type:"",title:"The Professionalization of Emergence",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:104713407905082,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/3b0068c276/1-manuel-abella-hd-245.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"post-digital art, ecological art, climate art, networked precarity, algorithmic art, digital materiality, contemporary identity art, body art contemporary, art and technology, art and ecology, interdisciplinary art, installation art Paris, video art France, sculpture contemporary France, ceramics contemporary, textile art, performance art contemporary, time-based art, ephemeral art, art officiel France, state-supported art, public art funding, Ministry of Culture France, art grants France, artist stipends, professionalization workshops artists, copyright artists France, artist-author status France",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Can institutional support preserve artistic freedom? Art Emergence 2025 brings 42 emerging artists to Paris. A critical review of France's ambitious experiment."}],_uid:"29eae1b0-5145-4d69-8d3b-fa3d6175f7ba",body:[{_uid:"828fcdff-49d2-46d3-87eb-e2bb620b9c43",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Professionalization of Emergence",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art Emergence builds a better pipeline.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In Romainville (France)",type:"text"},{text:" â The question is not whether emerging artists need support. They do. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The question is whether support, when systematized and scaled to the level of a national program, can remain responsive to the unpredictable, the disruptive, the genuinely emergent. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art Emergence, the ambitious inaugural event organized by Artagon offers a compelling if complex answer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Art Emergence is infrastructure as intervention. The event presents the diploma projects of 42 artistsâone from each of France's public art and design schoolsâacross the industrial spaces of the Frac Ãle-de-France reserves and the Fondation Fiminco boiler room in Romainville. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Add a festival of performances at the Maison des Métallos and three weekends of open studios across northeastern Paris, and you have something more than an exhibition: a comprehensive apparatus designed to address the precarious transition from art school to professional practice.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial teamâSalomé Fau, Alexis Hardy, and Temitayo Olalekanâhas achieved something genuinely difficult here. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"They've transformed what could have been a bureaucratic diploma showcase into a cohesive exhibition with real conceptual weight.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Working with 42 artists from schools as diverse as the Ãcole nationale supérieure de la photographie d'Arles and the Beaux-Arts de Paris, they've created unity without erasing difference, identified shared concerns without flattening individual voices. It's an impressive curatorial achievement, even if the sheer scale occasionally works against the intimacy that individual practices deserve.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d2440f52-940f-47ba-801f-df95ebe5070c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104713133575476,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5877x3918/e2e34f2522/6-manuel-abella.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" âDouble troubleâ, Art Emergence, Chaufferie de la Fondation Fiminco, Frac Ãle-de-France, les Réserves, Romainville© Artagon - Photo © Manuel Abella",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7baba05a-a096-4b2f-a8e3-c34da65ba3c4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Generation in Focus",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Post-digital materiality is a recurring preoccupation. These artists treat screens, algorithms, and networked systems not as tools but as materials with their own formal and conceptual properties. They explore what could be called the texture of the digitalâits glitches, its compressions, its peculiar forms of presence and absence. There's a sophistication here that moves beyond tired binaries of virtual versus real, instead investigating the hybrid spaces where contemporary life actually unfolds.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ecological anxiety runs even deeper. This is a generation that has come of age in the shadow of climate collapse, and the work reflects this with remarkable clarity. Artists engage with non-human intelligence, resource extraction, cycles of growth and decay, and the poetics of entanglement. What's notable is the absence of romanticism. Instead, there's a clear-eyed reckoning with complicityâthe recognition that human and non-human systems are inextricably bound, for better and worse. These artists understand that there is no outside to the ecological crisis. The work is stronger for this honesty.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Identity, too, is a persistent thread, approached with formal sophistication that resists didacticism. Questions of gender, race, migration, and belonging are explored through material experimentation rather than illustrative statement. The body appears frequently, but rarely as a stable site of meaning. It is fragmented, multiplied, abstractedâa reflection of what it means to inhabit a body in an age of surveillance and algorithmic visibility.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What unites these diverse practices is less a shared aesthetic than a shared condition: networked precarity. This is a generation that has been asked to be flexible, entrepreneurial, digitally fluent, and perpetually available. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The works reflect this reality, often critically. They interrogate systems of visibility, labor, and value. They ask what it means to make art in an attention economy, to build a practice without stable employment, to claim space in a cultural landscape increasingly dominated by algorithmic curation.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"62a8736e-16a8-4a2b-94ec-5c280cbcf0b1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104715945197023,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5952x3968/23aea9603f/3-manuel-abella.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"âDouble troubleâ, Anne Guerain, Art Emergence, Chaufferie de la Fondation Fiminco & Frac Ãle-de-France, les Réserves, Romainville, © Artagon - Photo © Manuel Abella",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"59005fa9-3339-4591-a6f0-5c41923eae04",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curatorial Restraint ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial approach is notably restrained, resisting the temptation to impose a heavy-handed thesis. The scenography, designed by studio Bigtime, is functional and unobtrusive, allowing the works to breathe. The industrial architecture of the Frac reserves and the Fiminco boiler room provides a compelling backdrop that emphasizes the experimental quality of the diploma projectsâmany of which retain the raw energy of work made in the studio rather than for institutional display.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The decision to include 42 artistsâone per schoolâis democratically minded but conceptually fraught.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It ensures geographic representation and avoids the perception of favoritism, but it also risks a kind of tokenism. Each artist becomes a representative of their institution, their region, their cohort. The individual work risks being subsumed into the collective portrait. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"More troubling is the implicit trade-off: would it not be preferable to include two exceptional artists from the same school rather than a mediocre artist chosen primarily to represent their institution? ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Geographic equity can come at the expense of artistic quality. The one-per-school model prioritizes territorial balance over curatorial judgment, potentially diluting the exhibition's overall impact. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"30624354-777f-4e39-a922-bd35389b76eb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104717292518984,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5198x3465/64e95da6eb/5-manuel-abella-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Lila Crnogorac, Micro-coeur et Une goutte dâeau prend mille ans pour faire le tour de la terre, 2023 et 2024, © Artagon - Photo © Manuel Abella",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ccba652a-52c7-4cb2-8b18-e26969da6eda",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Support System and Its Contradictions",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The practical support offered to participating artists is substantial. It's an acknowledgment that artistic labor is labor, that knowledge about navigating the art world should not be a privilege of those with the right connections.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The workshops address a real gap in art education. Most schools teach students how to make work but not how to sustain a practice. Art Emergence treats this knowledge as essential rather than supplementary, and artists will benef
77it from it for years to come. The institutional backingâfrom the Ministry of Culture, the City of Paris, the Ãle-de-France Region, and the Seine-Saint-Denis Departmental Councilâprovides resources to do things properly. The exhibition is professionally installed, well-documented, and accessible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet the very comprehensiveness of this support raises ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"questions. The ",type:"text"},{text:"specter of \"art officiel\"âstate-sanctioned art that, despite good intentions, risks becoming safe, predictable, and institutionally palatable. When the Ministry of Culture, regional councils, and major institutions align behind a project, there is an inevitable pressure toward consensus, toward work that offends no one and challenges nothing too fundamental. This is not to suggest that Art Emergence has fallen into this trap, but the risk is structural, not incidental.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yetâand this is the crucial counterpointâsuch institutional support has never been more necessary. In an art market increasingly dominated by risk-averse private collectors who favor established names and blue-chip galleries, emerging artists face a hostile economic landscape. The speculative frenzy that once propelled young artists to visibility has given way to conservative investment strategies. Galleries are closing, art fairs prioritize the secondary market, and collectors retreat to safe bets. In this context, public support is not a luxury but a lifeline.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art Emergence walks this tightrope: providing essential infrastructure without stifling the very experimentation it seeks to support. It's a delicate balance, and one that requires constant vigilance. The risk of creating \"official\" art is real, but so is the risk of abandoning emerging artists to a market that has largely abandoned them. The question is not whether institutional support should exist, but how it can remain genuinely responsive to artistic risk-taking rather than merely rewarding institutional legibility.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art Emergence also positions itself within the international art calendar, participating in the Institut français's FOCUS program and coinciding with Art Basel Paris. This is strategic programming, designed to attract foreign curators, collectors, and critics. The goal is to insert French artists into global circuits of visibility and exchange. This internationalization is pragmaticâthe art world is a global systemâbut it also risks reinforcing the very hierarchies that many of these artists critique in their work. The pressure to be \"internationally legible\" can lead to a homogenization of practice, a flattening of local specificity in favor of a generic global contemporary aesthetic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"18e22c7f-a335-41f9-9699-7f9265dc30ab",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104719503904353,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5720x3813/8051e20dc0/9-manuel-abella-hd.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"âDouble troubleâ, Art Emergence, Chaufferie de la Fondation Fiminco, Frac Ãle-de-France, les Réserves, Romainville\u2028© Artagon - Photo © Manuel Abella. ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"58ef9cdf-2de8-4390-9e32-e354244bc8ab",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What Emergence Means Now",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If there is a unifying insight to be gleaned from Art Emergence, it is this: emergence, in 2025, looks different than it did a generation ago. The romantic myth of the solitary artist, working in obscurity until discovered by a visionary gallerist, no longer holds. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Today's emerging artists are networked, professionalized, and acutely aware of the systems they must navigate. They understand that visibility is a form of labor, that careers are built through strategic networking, that success requires not just talent but also access.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art Emergence reflects this reality and responds to it with genuine resources and institutional commitment. It offers not just visibility but actual supportâfinancial, logistical, educational. It creates not just an exhibition but a network, a platform, a moment of collective recognition. The works on display demonstrate that french art schools are producing artists capable of engaging with the most urgent questions of our timeâecological collapse, technological transformation, social fragmentationâwith intelligence and formal sophistication.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet there is a tension at the heart of the project that cannot be easily resolved. Art Emergence is a system designed to support emergence, but systems have their own logic, their own constraints, their own ways of shaping what they claim to merely support. The event can create opportunities, but it cannot guarantee freedom. It can offer visibility, but it cannot ensure that what becomes visible is genuinely disruptive. It can build a pipeline, but it cannot control what flows through itâor what gets filtered out in the process.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"aae55237-aea9-4614-8163-81d10fd7f6f8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104721426865778,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5733x3822/9af1725f6b/2-manuel-abella-hd.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"âDouble troubleâ, Art Emergence, Chaufferie de la Fondation Fiminco, Frac Ãle-de-France, les Réserves, Romainville\u2028© Artagon - Photo © Manuel Abella. ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0654a034-e840-4a35-a145-79e8c9dc8d83",quote:"Art Emergence is a serious, thoughtful attempt to address real challenges facing emerging artists, not with platitudes but with resources, infrastructure, and genuine institutional commitment.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"a7e22a16-3787-449d-8b98-9b4ada711c14",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Necessary Experiment",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial team has done admirable work in creating a coherent exhibition from diverse practices. The festival and studio components extend the event's reach in important ways. The sheer ambition of bringing together 42 artists, three curators, five committee members, and dozens of institutional partners is impressive.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But Art Emergence also reveals the limits of what institutional support can achieve. It demonstrates that even well-designed systems produce inclusions and exclusions, that professionalization can be both enabling and constraining, that the very act of making emergence visible can shape what counts as emergent. These are not failures but inherent tensions in any attempt to systematize support for artistic practice.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The ultimate test of Art Emergence will not be the success of this inaugural edition, but its long-term impact and its ability to evolve. Will the artists who participate go on to build sustainable practices? Will the event become a genuine engine of renewal for the French art scene, or another credential on the CV? Will future editions remain open to the unpredictable, or will the system calcify into bureaucracy?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For now, Art Emergence stands as a compelling, if ambivalent, portrait of artistic emergence in the 21st century. It is a system designed with care and good intentions, offering real support to artists who need it. It is also a reminder that systems, no matter how well-designed, have their own logic and limitations. The question is not whether we need systems to support emerging artistsâwe do. The question is whether we can build systems that remain genuinely responsive to the new, the disruptive, the unpredictable. Art Emergence suggests that the answer might be yes, but only if we remain vigilant about the tensions inherent in the project itself.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art Emergence 2025",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Main Exhibition: Réserves du Frac Ãle-de-France & Chaufferie de la Fondation Fiminco, Romainville",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"September 18 â November 2, 2025",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curators: Salomé Fau, Alexis Hardy, Temitayo Olalekan",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artistic Committee: Dimitri Chamblas, Elizabeth Jaeger, Tarek Lakhrissi, Myriam Mihindou, Josèfa Ntjam",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Featured Artists: Emeline Amétis, David Aubriat, Hwayoung Bae, Jérémy Breton, Albanne Cannet Del Litto, Eva Chanoir, Kelly Chery, Lila Crnogorac, Sabrina Da Silva Medeiros, Valentin Degnieau, Cassandra Delpy, Kunga Dempa Tsang, Josselin Desbois, Julie Doriath, Lucie Drazek, Juliette Fanget, Alexandre Ferrani, Thomas Ferreira, Nicolas Foix, Margot Garlenc, Anne Guérain, Maëlle Guillemet d'Orléans, Xianne Han, Guillaume Haurice, Shuyin Hou, Meher Kafalian, Hervé Lechar, Jiwon Lee, Titouan Makeeff, Alix Nguyen, Phuong Thao Nguyen, Billy Roch, Morgane Rousseau, Nassimo Rousseau, Margaux Sahut, Mathieu Sauvat, Ziyin Tan, Mallaury Thenier, Baptiste Thiebaut Jacquel, Maeva Totolehibe, Elisa Verdier, Ziyu Zhou",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-22 00:00",name:"Art Emergence @Artagon ÷The Paradox of Institutional Support ",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"5feaa042-9b82-4d63-9564-5e1ea5aaac48",color:"#546975",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"8c55054c-e6ee-42ba-b065-ce39d752acd2",type:"",poster:{i
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77ose the hidden ideologies of machine learning."}],_uid:"0ff02a38-ab41-4afe-a2ca-ea2842e346bd",body:[{_uid:"2f755cb7-5501-40f6-b3a0-15da4c3c39e1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When AI Dreams of Swans: How Collective Estampa Turns Machine Vision Errors into Poetry",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At OFFSCREEN Paris, collective Estampa is showing what happens when computer vision gets it spectacularly wrong. Their work reveals that in the age of algorithmic surveillance, the most radical act might be to celebrate the glitch.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There's something deeply unsettling about watching a computer try to see. When Estampa fed historical photographs into YOLO9000âa neural network trained on millions of imagesâthe results were both absurd and revelatory. A 19th-century gymnast mid-backflip was identified as \"performer entertainer person creator swan\". A vintage camera on a tripod became a \"living thing\" and a \"worker\". The algorithm, designed to classify the world with ruthless efficiency, stumbled into poetry.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is what greets visitors to Estampa's presentation at OFFSCREEN Paris at the Chiquita Room Gallery.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Walking through the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, you're confronted with the strange beauty of algorithmic failureâand a pointed critique of the systems that increasingly mediate how we see, and are seen.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Founded in 2006, Estampa is an artistic collective of programmers, filmmakers and researchers based in Barcelona. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Since 2017, they have been researching the uses and ideologies of artificial intelligence and taking a critical and archaeological approach to audiovisual and digital technologies. But it's their recent work on AI that feels urgently relevant. As they put it, for AI models, \"seeing means projecting meaning relentlessly\". Unlike human vision, which can tolerate ambiguity, computer vision is compulsive. It must label, categorise, extract.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But what happens when this operation fails? For Estampa, these failures aren't bugs to be fixedâthey're windows into the violence of taxonomic thinking itself.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5b55dc2c-87ca-4f2a-bd4a-921303411fe9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103256327005116,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/840x1236/2a3465130b/performer-entertainer-person-creator-swan-2024-03-estampa-840x-q90.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Estampa, \"performer entertainer person creator swan\" (2024) courtesy the artist and Chiquita Room",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a2c49887-c1e3-4c04-bf5b-31bd63e35e26",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103256271418299,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/840x1236/11ec30e6fb/performer-entertainer-person-creator-swan-2024-01-estampa-840x-q90.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Estampa, \"performer entertainer person creator swan\" (2024) courtesy the artist and Chiquita Room",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ac3a5371-50ad-4e67-bbc9-9ebc32b5585c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103253261009831,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x813/34abba0cab/estampa_models_de_mirar_hero_home_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Estampa, \"performer entertainer person creator swan\" (2024) courtesy the artist and Chiquita Room",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2caf560b-4caf-4762-b4a4-88d6cae1b5c3",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Poetry of Misrecognition",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The centrepiece is performer entertainer person creator swan (2024), a series of photographic works that take their title directly from YOLO9000's confused attempt to make sense of Ãtienne-Jules Marey's 19th-century chronophotographic study of a backflip. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The algorithm, trained on contemporary internet imagery, had no framework for understanding Victorian motion studies. So it guessed wildly.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The collision between 19th-century science and 21st-century machine learning produces found poetryâabsurd, yes, but strangely evocative. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It's a reminder that the gap between what we see and what machines see is not just technicalâit's ontological.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nearby, another historical photograph shows a photographer with his camera. YOLO9000 labels it \"living thing\" and \"worker\", anthropomorphising the apparatus while reducing the human to a category of labour. The error reveals how classification systems encode particular worldviewsâin this case, one that sees everything through the lens of productivity.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"f5eec089-fd40-4c31-98b9-76b6ab252b98",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103257050530754,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1050x591/dc11fb2c6a/ekphrasis-2025-estampa-frame-01-original-image-_oftalmologia-por-el-profesor-i-barraquer-de-barcelona-1917-francesc-puigvert-in-1050x-q90.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Estampa, \"Ekphrasis\" courtesy the artist and Chiquita Room",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"382c1dcd-567d-4a35-a7ae-96eec0f7e673",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When Words Fail Images",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The second major work is Ekphrasis (2025), a six-minute video installation commissioned for The World Through AI at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Film fragments from Agnès Varda, Jacques Tourneur and 1917 medical footage are subjected to multiple layers of algorithmic description. Objects detected, faces classified, emotions categorised, captions generated in an endless cascade.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Watching it is dizzying. The algorithm tries desperately to translate visual complexity into words, but the gap only widens. Coloured boxes appear and disappear, words pile up, meanings multiply and collapse. It's what Estampa calls \"the radical impossibility of translating images into words and words into images\"âa poetic failure that reveals more than any successful classification.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It's also a critique of data miningâthe extractive process by which tech companies hoover up images to train AI models, often without consent. Where corporations see neutral technical processes, Estampa reveals violence: the reduction of visual complexity to metadata that can be bought and sold.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7c8a97aa-926a-411f-98a4-ea7669bb7fb5",quote:"What makes Estampa's work compelling is that they're not technophobes.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"68a2d7a1-9963-459a-913c-d4d70b1b2fb6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Seeing Against the Grain",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As programmers themselves, they understand these systems intimately. But they refuse the Silicon Valley gospel that technological progress is inherently good, that more data always means better outcomes.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Their strategy is to use these tools \"against the grain\"âto take technologies designed for surveillance and control and repurpose them for critical inquiry, humour and poetry. It's creative resistance that feels increasingly necessary as AI systems proliferate across everything from facial recognition used by police to algorithmic decisions about loans, jobs and military targeting.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The collective has collaborated with media theorist Joanna Zylinska, whose work on \"perception machines\" argues that AI vision systems aren't just toolsâthey're sociopolitical agents that reshape how we understand the world. Their institutional recognitionâsolo shows at Modern Art Oxford, group exhibitions at CCCB Barcelona and ArtScience Museum Singaporeâreflects the urgency of their message.",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Beauty of Breakdown",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Standing in the chapel at OFFSCREEN, what strikes you is how beautiful the failures are. The misidentifications read like surrealist poetry. The cascading labels in Ekphrasis create their own strange visual rhythm. There's genuine aesthetic pleasure in watching these systems break down.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But there's also something more serious at stake. Understanding how these systems seeâand fail to seeâis not academic. It's a matter of justice. Facial recognition systems routinely fail to identify people with darker skin tones because datasets lack diversity. The consequences are real: wrongful arrests, denied services, algorithmic discrimination baked into daily life.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Estampa's work reminds us that every act of vision, whether human or machine, is also an act of power. To see is to categorise, to label, to include or exclude. The question is not whether we can make these systems more accurate, but whether we can imagine different ways of seeing altogether. Ways that leave room for ambiguity, complexity, the irreducible strangeness of the world.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Perhaps the most radical thing about Estampa's practice is that they've found beauty in the breakdown. In the space between what the algorithm expects and what it encounters, something new emerges. Not better data. Not improved performance. But poetry. And in our current moment, when AI companies promise to solve every problem with more compute power and bigger datasets, that might be the most subversive thing of all.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Estampa is presented by Chiquita Room at OFFSCREEN Paris, Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, 21-26 October 2025.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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A sophisticated dialogue between baroque architecture and contemporary image-based"}],_uid:"db7708cd-819a-4a28-b1ce-a83f88b79dfc",body:[{_uid:"d826f568-d2bf-4b77-bab6-c28ab1a71482",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Offscreen Paris: A Masterclass in Curatorial Subtlety and Site-Specific Brilliance",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In its fourth and most ambitious edition, Offscreen Paris has not only found a new home but has also cemented its position as the most intellectually rigorous and aesthetically rewarding experience of Paris Art Week. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fairâs relocation to the historic Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière is a curatorial masterstroke, creating a profound and unexpected dialogue between seventeenth-century baroque architecture and the vanguard of contemporary image-based art.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For years, Offscreen has been a nomadic beacon for experimental and moving image work, a much-needed platform for practices that often defy easy commercial categorization. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fair has consistently championed a challenging and sophisticated program. But the move to the Salpêtrière chapel, a space freighted with centuries of history, has elevated the event to a new level of maturity. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is no longer just a fair; it is a site-specific biennial-quality exhibition, where every work is in conversation not only with its peers but with the very stones of the building.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The chapelâs Greek cross plan, with its four radiating chapels and s
77oaring central dome, provides a unique and challenging framework for displaying art. Where lesser fairs might be overwhelmed by such a powerful setting, Offscreenâs curatorial team,has embraced the challenge with intelligence and grace.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" The result is a series of intimate, almost devotional encounters with art, where the historical weight of the space amplifies the conceptual depth of the works on view.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"28c6a8c9-36f7-4164-9a46-8d595f8e3d42",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103628025921895,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1365/ad695d70fc/khimei_malashchuk_in_absentia_c_mathias_voelzke-137.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei, You Shouldnât Have to See This, 2024, six-channel video installation, LED-screens variable size, no audio, 7â 30â loop, courtesy the artist and Poggi gallery, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"20606152-b1d7-4a5a-ba1a-a385ad7fad3e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This yearâs edition is a testament to the power of a tightly curated vision. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"With only 28 artists presented, there is a refreshing lack of the visual noise and market-driven frenzy that characterizes so many contemporary art fairs. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Each gallery has brought its A-game, presenting solo or duo presentations that allow the artistsâ voices to resonate clearly within the chapelâs sacred acoustics. The overall impression is one of elegance, substance, and a shared commitment to pushing the boundaries of the medium.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Among the many highlights, several presentations stand out for their exceptional quality and their perfect integration within the space. Dominique Fiat Gallery offers a powerful presentation of works by the South African artist Sue Williamson, whose incisive explorations of memory and social justice find a poignant echo in the chapelâs history as a place of confinement and healing. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At CarrerasMugica, a rare video work by the late Richard Serra provides a moment of minimalist contemplation, its stark geometry creating a surprising harmony with the baroque curves of the surrounding architecture. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"David Peter Francis presents a compelling series by Carrie Schneider, whose photographic practice delves into the complexities of female identity and representation, while Fergus McCaffreyâs tribute to the fairâs guest of honor, the video art pioneer Shigeko Kubota, is a museum-quality installation that reminds us of the radical roots of the medium.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
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77,{_uid:"6fbf3fa9-5a82-480d-80c7-1a21e1bddaad",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103575752368538,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1594x1063/95d7c7d871/glc-2025-offscreen-001.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Estampa, Chiquita Room - Read our specific review",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-21 00:00",name:"The Chapel and the Screen ÷OFFSCREEN Achieves Curatorial Perfection",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ee6119ae-2452-4214-aea8-1e85585c71dd",color:"#533135",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"63a15e63-5af8-40b8-a3c7-83ad5282ce5a",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103253261009831,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x813/34abba0cab/estampa_models_de_mirar_hero_home_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Estampa, courtesy the artist and Chiquita Room",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"offscreen-art-fair",full_slug:"directory/reviews/offscreen-art-fair",sort_by_date:null,position:-350,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"ab9d43fd-6ffa-43fb-958c-62b6ded0e186",first_published_at:"2025-10-20T20:11:42.986Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"You Shouldnât Have to See This",created_at:"2025-10-22T15:59:45.483Z",published_at:"2025-10-24T15:34:07.145Z",updated_at:"2025-10-24T15:34:07.162Z",id:104280823764318,uuid:"c1aa0b30-2760-4192-9361-9e4005ed113d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"cdd8a377-9ccf-403d-8132-d1002dea31a4",type:"",title:"You Shouldnât Have to See This",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:103628025893222,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x1333/55221d2bba/poggi-yarema-malashchuk-roman-khimei-_-you-shouldn_t-have-to-see-this-2024-installation-view-from-ukraine-dare-to-dream-collateral-event-of-the-60th-la-biennale-di-venezia-courtesy-of-the-artists-c.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Yarema Malashchuk Roman Khimei, Offscreen 2025, You Shouldn't Have to See This, Ukrainian contemporary art, Chapelle de la Salpêtrière, Venice Biennale Ukraine, Ukrainian children abduction, war art installation, Paris art fair 2025, contemporary video art, Ukrainian artists Paris, Offscreen art fair, PinchukArtCentre, Galerie Poggi, video installation 2025, war crimes art, silent video installation, contemporary Ukrainian artists, Kyiv artists, art and politics, documentary art, witness art, post-war art, ethical art practice, art and human rights, Ukrainian children forcibly deported Russia art, best contemporary art exhibitions Paris 2025, Offscreen 2025 must-see installations, Ukrainian art Venice Biennale 2024, video art about war and childhood, Yarema Malashchuk Roman Khimei biography, contemporary art addressing war crimes, silent video installations Paris, Ukrainian contemporary art scene, art as political testimony, war photography, documentary filmmaking, visual testimony, humanitarian crisis, International Criminal Court, forced deportation, child abduction, Russification, art and activism, political art, witness culture, trauma representation, ethics of representation, compassion vs voyeurism, art and justice, contemporary art criticism, experimental cinema, moving image art, installation art, immersive art experience",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei's silent video installation at Offscreen 2025 confronts viewers with the haunting reality of Ukraine's abducted children."}],_uid:"aa430e14-10e7-4a18-84bf-bbf94d51333c",body:[{_uid:"e63dae35-8c8a-4d02-bc49-0c1718942e2e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Quiet Devastation: The Unforgettable Power of âYou Shouldnât Have to See Thisâ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A silent video installation by Ukrainian artists Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei speaks volumes about the horrors of war. Their work, a highlight of this yearâs Offscreen art fair, is a masterclass in subtlety and a profou
77ndly moving testament to the resilience of the human spirit.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Stepping into the space of the Chapelle de la Salpêtrière, the viewer is met with an almost unnerving sense of tranquility. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A series of large LED screens show children sleeping. There is no sound, only the gentle rise and fall of their chests, the occasional flutter of an eyelid. The images are intimate, tender, and for a moment, you feel a sense of peace. But this is a fragile peace, one that is quickly shattered by the chilling reality of what you are witnessing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These are not just any sleeping children. These are Ukrainian children who were forcibly abducted by Russia, taken from their homes and their families, and subjected to a systematic process of âRussificationâ before being repatriated. The title of the work, You Shouldnât Have to See This, is a direct address to the viewer, a stark reminder that these images, born of unimaginable trauma, should never have had to exist.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5c9d1fef-1d88-43fa-a24c-5f79412da85a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104284116562698,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1365/8c2c597b6e/khimei_malashchuk_in_absentia_c_mathias_voelzke-082.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, \"You Shouldnât Have to See this\", Exhibition view \"In absentia\", Kunstverein Hannover, 2025. Photo: Mathias Völzke.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"132b90f5-a404-4779-a953-7bd9dc4c4ac9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104284216369933,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1365/fba7950116/khimei_malashchuk_in_absentia_c_mathias_voelzke-137.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, \"You Shouldnât Have to See this\", Exhibition view \"In absentia\", Kunstverein Hannover, 2025. Photo: Mathias Völzke.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"07f8f168-38c1-48ca-b18a-51e6c49ddd4d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Malashchuk and Khimei, a Kyiv-based duo walk a tightrope between compassion and voyeurism with breathtaking skill.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" They force us to confront our own role as spectators, to question the very nature of looking at images of war. Is it possible to witness such suffering without becoming complicit in its consumption? The artists offer no easy answers. Instead, they create a space for quiet contemplation, for a deep and unsettling empathy to take root.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not a work that screams its outrage. There is no blood, no violence, no overt signs of the trauma these children have endured. The power of the installation lies in its restraint, in its refusal to indulge in pathos or sentimentality. The artists understand that the most profound horrors are often the ones that are left unseen, the ones that fester in the silence between the images.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"You Shouldnât Have to See This\" is not an isolated
77work. It is part of a larger body of work by Malashchuk and Khimei that explores the complexities of Ukrainian history and identity. Their work is deeply rooted in the countryâs past, yet it speaks with a powerful and urgent voice to the present moment. They are part of a generation of Ukrainian artists who are using their work to fight back against a brutal and senseless war, to insist on the importance of their culture and their right to exist.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The abduction of Ukrainian children is a war crime of staggering proportions. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for childrenâs rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for their role in this systematic campaign of forced deportation. But in the face of such overwhelming evil, what can art do? It can bear witness. It can create a space for empathy and understanding. It can remind us of our shared humanity.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"You Shouldnât Have to See This is a quiet masterpiece, a work of art that will haunt you long after you leave the chapel. It is a testament to the enduring power of the human spirit, and a vital reminder of the urgent need for justice and accountability. It is a work that you shouldnât have to see, but one that you will be glad you did.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"OFFSCREEN, Galerie POGGI, until 26th October",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-22 00:00",name:"The Silent Power of Witness÷Malashchuk and Khimei's Masterful Restraint",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ba9bba5f-620c-4287-aedb-d725b17de659",color:"#816269",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"f367b993-c431-466e-b7f2-415c6c1333e4",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104283331142383,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1365/3b6e4d5d47/khimei_malashchuk_in_absentia_c_mathias_voelzke-135.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, \"You Shouldnât Have to See this\", Exhibition view \"In absentia\", Kunstverein Hannover, 2025. Photo: Mathias Völzke.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"you-shouldn-t-have-to-see-this",full_slug:"directory/reviews/you-shouldn-t-have-to-see-this",sort_by_date:null,position:-430,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"63e19795-c92a-4b35-9ad4-7791501c8c6d",first_published_at:"2025-10-22T16:17:51.787Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Prix Marcel Duchamp",created_at:"2025-10-17T14:12:46.947Z",published_at:"2025-10-23T19:43:16.344Z",updated_at:"2025-10-23T19:43:16.365Z",id:102485061440481,uuid:"f1991583-6da6-478c-a3c0-3fdf54a1aade",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"acd83c05-f834-48cf-a306-097d43d06c06",type:"",title:"Prix Marcel Duchamp",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:102486740652002,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1000/043d5b4a27/bianca-bondi_copyright-nicolas-brasseur_3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"rix Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp Prize, French contemporary art, contemporary art France, French art prize",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"The Prix Marcel Duchamp: France's Most Prestigious Contemporary Art Award"}],_uid:"303a24a6-255e-475f-a6a5-f5d37dd3ecfb",body:[{_uid:"25aabc41-7751-477b-bcf6-6e929a57365c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Prix Marcel Duchamp 2025: Where Art Meets Ecological Urgency",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"In the end, it all comes down to matter. What transforms it, what accumulates it, what destroys it, what remembers it. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The four nominees for this year's Prix Marcel Duchampâshowing at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris until February 2026âare united by an almost obsessive attention to the physical world and its ongoing disintegration. Bianca Bondi watches salt crystals grow on found objects like a slow-motion apocalypse. Lionel Sabatté gathers the detritus of urban life and shapes it into hybrid beasts. Eva Nielsen layers paint and fabric until landscapes become archaeological sites. Xie Lei paints the psychological toll of living through collapse. The jury will announce the winner on October 23rd, but the exhibition itself has already delivered its verdict: ecological crisis is no longer subtext in contemporary art. It's the text.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Walking through the light-filled galleries of the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, it becomes immediately clear that this year's Prix Marcel Duchamp nominees share more than just technical prowess. Bianca Bondi, Eva Nielsen, Lionel Sabatté, and Xie Lei have each, in their own way, turned their attention to the precarious state of our planet, though their approaches could not be more different.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition marks a significant moment for the prize itself. With the Centre Pompidou undergoing extensive renovations, the MAM has stepped in as temporary host, and the change of venue feels oddly appropriate. There is something about the museum's more intimate scale that suits the contemplative, often unsettling work on display.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:2,textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3e4000b8-9456-4dcc-b14e-c54d754c377f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103695602946690,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1000/4fc69c51b2/bianca-bondi_copyright-nicolas-brasseur_6.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Bianca Bondi,install shot, Prix Marcel Duchamp, MuseÌe d'art Moderne credit : Nicolas Brasseur",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"91cea875-28e5-43b8-aba9-dfd71fe0fbd9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Alchemy in the Anthropocene",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bianca Bondi's installations dominate their allocated space with an almost supernatural presence. The South African-born, Paris-based artist has built her practice around transformation, using salt water and chemical reactions to coax everyday objects into states of crystalline metamorphosis. Standing before her work, you witness matter in flux, materials slowly evolving as if possessed by some ancient alchemical force.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What strikes most powerfully is Bondi's refusal to separate the scientific from the spiritual. Her pieces feel like shrines to interconnectedness, reminding us that everything is in constant dialogue with everything else. The ecological message is never didactic, yet it permeates every surface, every slowly forming crystal. This is art that breathes, changes, and ultimately decays, mirroring the cycles that govern all life on Earth.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0bace553-28f9-4182-832a-9964ea76f8e2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103696790897285,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7159x5369/5ec87ccd8b/lionel-sabatte_copyright-philippe-migeat_centre-pompidou_1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lionel Sabatté,install sho, Prix Marcel Duchamp, MuseÌe d'art Moderne, credit :Philippe Migeat, centre Pompidou",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"eabe2bf6-9eec-4680-8136-d658462356a8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Weight of Dust",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If Bondi works with transformation, Lionel Sabatté works with accumulation. His sculptures, constructed from dust, ash, dead skin, and other detritus of urban life, are simultaneously beautiful and deeply unsettling. A massive bird, its feathers rendered in oxidized metal and gathered grime, seems to hover between life and death. Nearby, creatures from some imagined deep-sea abyss stare out with hollow eyes.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sabatté's work asks uncomfortable questions about waste, about what we discard and what we choose to preserve. In an age of environmental crisis, his use of materials that literally carry the trace of human presence feels urgently relevant. These are not sculptures about nature so much as sculptures about what we have done to nature, and what nature, in turn, is doing to us. The hybrid beasts he creates belong to no recognizable taxonomy, existing instead in some liminal space between the organic and the industrial, the living and the dead.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"4cb82a4a-9442-44b9-b004-ecc23de1530e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103698063798928,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2778x1844/566f04598f/eva-nielsen.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eva Nielsen, credit : Hafid Ihachmi, ADAGP",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"34a00956-01bf-4ac7-a8e1-092c85757519",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Landscapes in Flux",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Eva Nielsen's paintings offer a different kind of ecological meditation. Working across latex, leather, silk, and traditional canvas, she builds up layered compositions that feel like palimpsests of place. Her landscapes are never quite what they seem, shifting between photographic precision and painterly abstraction, between the real and the remembered.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is something profoundly contemporary about Nielsen's approach to image-making. In an era of climate change, when landscapes themselves are in constant flux, her refusal to settle on a single medium or technique feels like a formal echo of environmental instability. These are paintings that acknowledge the impossibility of capturing a world that is always already changing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"79810d5a-e50c-4125-a9a2-d71176d8f9c0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103698503910035,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6496x4871/50e7f5afe0/xie-lei-vue-d-installation-prix-marcel-duchamp-musee-d-art-moderne-paris-photo-a-mole-courtesy-semiose-paris_2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Xie Lei, install sho, WINNER, 2025, Prix Marcel Duchamp, MuseÌe d'art Moderne, Paris Photo A Mole Courtesy Semiose, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6355c2de-ad33-41f6-aea0-32438a9d1951",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Darkness Within",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Xie Lei's (winner of the price) contribution feels, at first glance, the most removed from explicit ecological concerns. His paintings depict ambiguous, often disturbing scenes that hover between dream and nightmare, eroticism and violence. The palette is dark, almost oppressive, yet shot through with moments of startling luminosity.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet the longer you spend with Xie Lei's work, the more it reveals itself as a meditation on human nature, on the darkness that lurks beneath civilized surfaces. In a world facing ecological collapse, his exploration of the space between sleep and death, pleasure and pain, feels like a necessary reckoning with our capacity for both creation and destruction.",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Prize for Our Times",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The question is not so much who won, but what this particular selection of artists tells us about the state of contemporary art in France. The answer seems clear: ecological concerns are no longer peripheral to artistic practice. They are central, urgent, unavoidable.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Prix Marcel Duchamp has always prided itself on identifying artists who capture the spirit of their moment. This year's nominees suggest that our moment is one of profound environmental reckoning, of material transformation, of cycles ending and beginning. Whether through Bondi's crystalline metamorphoses, Sabatté's dust-born creatures, Nielsen's shifting landscapes, or Xie Lei's psychological depths, these artists are mapping the terrain of a world in crisis.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is free to visit, and it deserves to be seen. This is not art that offers easy comfort or simple solutions. It is art that asks us to look, to think, and to feel the weight of the world we have made.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Prix Marcel Duchamp 2025 is on view at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, 11 Avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, until February 22, 2026. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-6pm ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-23 00:00",name:"Matter, Memory, and Collapse: ÷The Prix Marcel Duchamp 2025",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"4dbb911e-612c-4648-b6ba-4f40153f391b",color:"#5c6355",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"8922aa94-841b-4b2b-9741-13d31e198097",type:"",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103689951695421,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7089x5328/3daf1a384f/lionel-sabatte_copyright-philippe-migeat_centre-pompidou_2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lionel Sabatté, Copyright Nicolas Brasseur",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"prix-marcel-duchamp",full_slug:"directory/reviews/prix-marcel-duchamp",sort_by_date:null,position:-290,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fd7b51f3-9ce0-460e-a2d3-7b7dd91a4112",first_published_at:"2025-10-21T00:33:41.337Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"From Spam to slop",created_at:"2025-10-21T18:36:49.962Z",published_at:"2025-10-24T15:26:37.646Z",updated_at:"2025-10-24T15:26:37.664Z",id:103965532037781,uuid:"9687816a-5e2b-4549-b549-383f7db24576",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f8b4aa83-fe3b-49a7-9fdd-8d60be0f8cbf",type:"",title:"from Spam to Slop",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:103969799769359,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5352x4014/80c7b71bbd/dust-storm-dog.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"AI art exhibition, Slop art, Spam Art, digital art Paris, AI-generated art, contemporary art review, Avant Galerie Paris, Bennett Waisbren, Tung Tung Sahur, algorithmic art, crypto art, NFT art, meme culture, digital authorship, AI copyright, generative AI art, brainrot art, viral content art, internet art, post-digital art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Paris exhibition \"From Spam to Slop\" examines AI art, meme culture, and digital authorship. Featuring Bennett Waisbren, Tung Tung Sahur, and the Slop Machine."}],_uid:"a4bbe9e5-9b1f-45f0-8031-9055b33ff0d0",body:[{_uid:"3f186ebe-8602-4c75-b450-0f1560de32d4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Who Owns Shrimp Jesus? A Parisian Gallery Investigates the Chaos",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A small Parisian gallery bravely attempts to make sense of the visual sewage flooding our screens. Spoiler: the sewage is winning.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Avant Galerie in the Marais has done something rather audacious: it has invited the internet's most deranged visual output into the white cube and asked us to look at itâreally look at itâwithout the protective scroll reflex. \"From Spam to Slop,\" running until mid-November, is part anthropological survey, part existential warning, and part admission that we may already be too far gone to save.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition divides its subjects neatly into two camps. First, there is Spam Art: the playful anarchists, the crypto-art pranksters who flood the Centre Pompidou's NFT collection with unsolicited works and gleefully declare, \"We simply wish to laugh and spam!\" It is Dada for the Discord generation, armed with garish colours and an infectious lack of seriousness. One almost admires their commitment to being a nuisance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then there is Slop: the industrial sludge, the AI-generated nightmare fuel designed purely for profit and manipulation. Jesus as a shrimp. Trump rebuilding Gaza. Bodybuildеd cats and deformed birthday cakes. These are the images that ambush you mid-scroll, leaving you simultaneously repulsed and unable to look away. The exhibition is careful to note that this \"mediocrity is fabricated\"âa deliberate strategy. To exist in the algorithmic feed, you must produce constantly, and to produce at such volume, you must accept being, in the exhibition's delicate p
77hrasing, \"a little disgusting.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"00140743-4857-4b6a-8279-6a5dc4d856ab",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104220547101043,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1024x1024/fd4e074e73/from-spam-to-slop-jay-delay.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jay Delay, courtesy the artist and Avant Galerie Vossen, Paris",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d539c8fd-3463-4069-aab3-c6fe2199083f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But here is where things get interesting, and rather depressing. The exhibition acknowledges that the boundary between artistic Spam and industrial Slop has collapsed entirely. Artists today operate within the same economic system as content farms, not against it. Many artists in the show reportedly bristled at being associated with the term \"slop,\" insisting their work is different. The exhibition gently suggests otherwise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Take Bennett Waisbren, creator of Instagram's most-viewed AI video. He began innocently enough, playing with AI tools. Then he noticed the algorithm \"liked\" what he was making. So he made stranger videos. Now he is caught in an algorithmic feedback loopless. It is the trajectory of the hypercelebrity artist compressed into internet time: rise, saturation, ennui, all within months. Even at the highest level of Slop production, the machine wins.`",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The economics are bleak. Most Slop creators earn a few hundred euros for massive view counts. The most viral might scrape together ten thousand euros in three monthsâhardly a living, and utterly unpredictable. The exhibition distinguishes between opportunists who embraced Slop from the start and established artists like Mihai Grecu or Anne Horel, who use AI to extend existing practices. Grecu's watermelons could have been photographs; Horel has been making collages for years. They are not in what the exhibition memorably calls \"the Slop washing machine.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"520ac46d-eaec-4fc7-b004-de0dfe622348",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103972106132795,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/7422c5fe8c/class-pet-1.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Video clips by Bennet Waisbren ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c56c763-f913-4ea0-a35f-b9114e355e8e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103972535004486,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/44fd87cf1a/facial-formation.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Video clips by Bennet Waisbren ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bcf34f07-1269-45e4-b070-02fc165773f2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104224374143348,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/50e59ec1c7/piggies-love-pineapple.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Video clips by Bennet Waisbren ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c9b5baa-66be-4977-83d5-c6696072d242",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104224715729319,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/922b68ffc1/class-pet-1.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Video clips by Bennet Waisbren ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"eb7b625c-98d2-48f0-9741-8a774833365c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet the show's most urgent questions emerge around Tung Tung Sahur, the \"brainrot\" character that has become a planetary phenomenon among Generation Alpha. Created by nineteen-year-old Indonesian artist Noxa through a chaotic assemblage of ChatGPT, Midjourney, CapCut, and ElevenLabs, the character has been reproduced, remixed, and monetized endlesslyâwith Noxa seeing virtually n
77othing. Enter Mementum Labs, playing Robin Hood in the Wild West of AI, working to establish copyright protection for the character. When they notified the Roblox game Steal a Brainrot that using Tung Tung Sahur required permission, the character's removal sparked panic. Millions demanded its return under #BringBackTungTung, and Noxa was accused of greed for daring to claim ownership of his own creation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Can you copyright something made with AI? European law says only humans hold rights, but AI-generated work can be protected if it results from \"free and creative choices.\" Mementum Labs argues that Noxa's intentionalityâhis tool selection, his iterations, his namingâconstitutes authorship. To drive the point home, they created a physical painting of Tung Tung Sahur, signed by Noxa and the Mementum artists. To protect their rights in the digital realm, they literally picked up brushes. There is something beautifully absurd about this.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition frames Tung Tung Sahur as \"a test case for the future of intellectual property\" and \"a new collective mythology fabricating itself in real time.\" But unlike traditional folklore, which belonged to everyone, this mythology is being captured and monetized by platforms and corporations. The original creatorsâoften young, precarious, invisibleâtrigger virality but rarely benefit. The platforms profit. The derivative creators profit. The brands profit. The person who made the thing? Nothing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"06206468-f3ac-4ba7-bbaf-d7cad2133360",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103973715983711,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/932x582/81eb023670/credits-_-ph-lavieille.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"credit Philippe Lavieille",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ee6c3b65-7cc6-464b-a5fb-718975b06839",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Albertine Meunier and Olivain Porry's \"The Slop Machine\" offers a glimmer of critical engagement. The interactive installation scrolls through Instagram continuously, with two modes: machine or human. Visitors judge and comment on images, turning passive consumption into active curation. The artists have also attempted a taxonomy of Slop: political (MAGA's favourite weapon), consumption (supermarket aesthetics), visual overload (dense Chinese street videos), anthropomorphism (animals acting human), grotesque bodily (deformed, repugnant), \"Genesis\" (shrimp Jesus, deformed cakes), and the recurring \"Ginger Cat\" navigating absurd domestic dramas. It is a classification that will be obsolete within months, but the gesture matters.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Neil Mendoza's \"SpamBots\"ârobotic Spam cans collectively generating texts inspired by Huxley's Brave New Worldâoffers poetic commentary on digital overproduction. The internet is not dead, the exhibition insists, merely \"teeming with a life that is no longer quite exclusively human.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"60d7771b-37c0-4e84-bae3-06ecf0a67e4d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104222119052612,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1792x1024/d87d3d4063/from-spam-to-slop-ernesto-asch.gif",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ernesto Asch, courtesy the artist and Galerie Vossen",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"59a2c3e2-ccd0-42c3-8823-4ae3e49be601",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet one leaves with a nagging sense of futility. The exhibition acknowledges that for artists working with these tools, \"frontal resistance is almost impossible.\" You cannot adopt a position of pure opposition. The only viable approach is to \"accompany understanding\"âsmall gestures that invite pause and reflection. But against industrial-scale production? It feels like bringing a teaspoon to a flood.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition admits what many suspect: Slop is winning. The production ratio between human and machine is unwinnable. This arrives alongside political alignment with post-truthâjust look at the White House's social media, now posting Slop prolifically. The platforms created the economic conditions for this. They saw they could monetize fully and built the infrastru
77cture for an \"amplified and endless feedback loop.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"From Spam to Slop\" succeeds in creating a space for contemplation in a culture that privileges speed over thought. The Avant Galerie deserves credit for tackling subject matter most institutions would dismiss as too ephemeral or lowbrow. Following their recognition of Crypto Art and AI-generated work, they have established themselves as essential chroniclers of these emerging practices.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But the exhibition also functions as a kind of eulogy. It documents a moment when the boundary between human creativity and algorithmic generation became irrelevant, when authorship became contested, when the absurd became profitable and the fake became strategic. The consequences, as the exhibition warns, are real.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If you visit, go prepared. You will encounter shrimp Jesus, bodybuildеd cats, and a nineteen-year-old Indonesian fighting for ownership of a stick figure with big eyes. You will leave with more questions than answers. And you will return to your phone, scroll through your feed, and realize: you are already swimming in it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition until the 16th November",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artists :",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Allbi, Ruth Allen, Ernesto Asch, @B_DWIL, Gino Battiston, benza333, Ferris Bullish, CRYPTOCHILD, Jay Delay, Doopiidoo, FtrSaroth, Funbot.wtf, Antonio Gómez Santiago, Bittty Gordon, Mihai Grecu, John Hamon, Anne Horel, ih0dl, Bård Ionson, KBO Metaverse, Robin Lopvet, Marcotic, Neil Mendoza, Albertine Meunier, Ooakosimo, Pierre Pauze, Olivain Porry, Systaime, The Perfesser, Uriel (Blue Pastel), Bennett Waisbren, Webgurlart",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"178a859e-2477-40ee-9493-d0ea2e7205ae",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104224017205590,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x3000/a1c85bda56/20251021_134139.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shot, From Spam to Slop, courtesy L'avant Galerie Vossen",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-21 00:00",name:"From Spam to Slop ÷The Exhibition We Deserve (Unfortunately)",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"b86109c0-c1d8-4f14-a0d0-8c85ffbd1469",color:"#5a4a34",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"fe217c2c-d7da-4d94-a281-0d552a88a7e7",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103969799769359,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5352x4014/80c7b71bbd/dust-storm-dog.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dust Storm Dog by Robin Lopvet",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"from-spam-to-slop",full_slug:"directory/reviews/from-spam-to-slop",sort_by_date:null,position:-410,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"8e34a43f-3345-42ed-b45c-16789fa35018",first_published_at:"2025-10-22T12:13:33.400Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Alex Da Corte, Kermit the Frog",created_at:"2025-10-22T14:55:23.427Z",published_at:"2025-10-22T15:23:47.482Z",updated_at:"2025-10-22T15:23:47.501Z",id:104265004798483,uuid:"5d3d1bad-806b-4d95-8343-8a20fd5c92fb",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"003684d3-0761-4567-94bc-bf37e294c222",type:"",title:"Perfidious Albion Strikes Again: London Gallery Drops Deflated Frog on Unsuspecting Froggies",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:104265802088001,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/932x582/301c73bc37/snk4uzx7jjeexnz27arhdn
775vgi.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Alex Da Corte, Kermit the Frog Even, Art Basel Paris, Place Vendôme, contemporary art Paris, Sadie Coles HQ, inflatable sculpture, Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, pop culture art, American artist Paris, Art Basel public program, Muppets art installation, deflated balloon art, Place Vendôme installation, Paris art week, contemporary art review, Guardian art review, cultural icons, collective anxiety, Duchamp reference, Venezuelan-American artist, Philadelphia artist, art installation Paris 2025, free art Paris, outdoor sculpture Paris, monumental art, tragicomic art, pop art installation,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A giant deflated Kermit has landed in Place Vendôme. Is it a cheeky provocation from a London gallery, or a brilliant meditation on American pop culture's failures?"}],_uid:"154a0eaa-910e-4b25-b28c-38482e44252d",body:[{_uid:"d705983e-3cc2-469f-aa2e-690f541285d9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Between Cartier and Catastrophe: A Deflated Muppet Takes Over Paris's Poshest Square",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A giant, inflatable frog, slumped in what appears to be a state of existential despair, has taken up residence in the heart of Paris. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"One might be forgiven for thinking it a rather on-the-nose commentary on the localsâa cheeky bit of psychological warfare from a London gallery, perhaps? A Trojan Frog, if you will, smuggled across the Channel by perfidious Albion to gently mock the capital of the froggies themselves. Is this it? Is this the grand artistic statement of our times? A colossal, cartoonish amphibian sighing its last in Place Vendôme, the very epicenter of Parisian chic, its deflated green face a mirror held up to an entire nation? One almost expects it to be clutching a tiny, equally inflatable Gauloises, muttering \"c'est la vie\" into the autumn air. The crowds of curious onlookers gathering beneath this peculiar spectacle seem equally baffledâsome initially mistaking it for a wayward balloon that simply landed on the cobblestones by chance, others stopping mid-stride to photograph this surreal intrusion into the realm of Cartier and Boucheron.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The truth, as it happens, is rather more sophisticated than cross-Channel mischief. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The magnificent, melancholic muppet is, in fact, \"Kermit the Frog, Even,\" a work by the artist Alex Da Corte, and it is a masterstroke of tragicomic brilliance. Presented by the esteemed Sadie Coles HQ, the piece revisits a moment of collective, televised american trauma from the 1991 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when the original Kermit balloon met its untimely demise against a rogue tree branch on Fifth Avenue.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"35586932-1275-4a02-a5ba-26da632189d8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104268374494945,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1412x878/e5ad77cbc6/screenshot-2025-10-22-at-16-49-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alex Da Corte, Kermit the Frog, Even, 2018, courtesy the artist and Sadie Cole HQ, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bd42180d-23e0-46d9-b7d7-8d6e822a8359",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Da Corte, a Venezuelan-American virtuoso of the uncanny who works in Philadelphia, has built his career on transforming the familiar language of popular culture into vivid, emotionally layered works that reveal the psychological complexity lurking beneath our cultural icons. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"His practice combines personal narrative, art-historical references and the glossy aesthetics of commercial advertising to excavate the humor and absurdity of contemporary life. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this monumental inflatable sculpture, Da Corte freezes Kermit in a never-ending moment of defeat, suspended \"between lives, between states,\" as he puts it. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work embodies his long-standing fascination with the Muppet's plaintive refrain, \"It's not easy being green\"âa phrase that resonates with dual meaning: environmental consciousness on one hand, and the hardship of being alien, marginalized, othered on the other. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes the installation particularly poignant is the presence of performers in Kermit costumes below, cheerily maintaining the charade, smiling through the terror, refusing to acknowledge the balloon's failure even as passersby gawk and giggle at the spectacle.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Parisians, to their credit, have embraced the absurdity with characteristic nonchalanceâafter all, what's one more inexplicable artwork in a city that's seen it all? In its glorious, defeated absurdity, this Kermit holds a mirror not to the French, but to us allâa commentary on our fragile hopes, our spectacular failures, and our desperate insistence on keeping it moving, smiling all the while. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Place Vendôme, Paris, Art Basel Public Program, 20-26 October",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-22 00:00",name:"Perfidious Albion Strikes Again÷London Gallery Drops Deflated Frog on \"Froggies\" capital",author:"Refresh",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"2960090a-55a8-4975-8096-0f562c92ea6d",color:"#9abc94",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"cb11f831-d7db-4920-853b-08ca079b4200",type:"",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104265802088001,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/932x582/301c73bc37/snk4uzx7jjeexnz27arhdn5vgi.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alex Da Corte, Kermit the Frog, Even, courtesy, Sadie Coles HQ, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"alex-da-corte-kermit-the-frog",full_slug:"directory/reviews/alex-da-corte-kermit-the-frog",sort_by_date:null,position:-420,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"b9b645a5-8cea-4c13-a454-93111e59e36f",first_published_at:"2025-10-22T15:19:10.573Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"ECHO DELAY REVERB",created_at:"2025-10-20T23:19:20.437Z",published_at:"2025-10-22T17:49:10.730Z",updated_at:"2025-10-22T17:49:10.749Z",id:103681066783066,uuid:"da3b435f-a780-4bde-bd93-3a593cddd924",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"35303244-760f-48a8-a16e-3b9bfd0f06c5",type:"",title:"ECHO DELAY REVERB",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:104298673210532,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2750x1812/c39e5a3b90/screenshot-2025-10-22-at-19-12-07.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"french theory influence on american art, echo delay reverb palais de tokyo review, naomi beckwith curator, american artists french philosophy, institutional critique exhibition, transatlantic intellectual exchange, french postcolonial theory art, semiotext(e) publisher, documenta 16 curator, paris contemporary art autumn 2025,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"H1 (Main Title) The Perfect Show at the Worst Time: Echo Delay Reverb at Palais de Tokyo"}],_uid:"4c04d8d3-c1dc-49d8-836d-e663a3970eeb",body:[{_uid:"f59ad0a8-11f2-4397-b123-fa0389612ae7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When French Theory Met American Art (And Why This Show Hits Different Right Now)",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Palais de Tokyo just dropped one of the most ambitious exhibitions of the yearâbut is it celebrating a conversation that's already over?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Walk into the Palais de Tokyo right now and you'll find yourself surrounded by some of the most exciting art of the past fifty years. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There's Cindy Sherman's iconic photography, Glenn Ligon's text-based works, Ellen Gallagher's layered paintings, and dozens more. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The massive exhibition \"ECHO DELAY REVERB\" brings together around 60 American artists to tell a story about ideas traveling across the Atlanticâspecifically, how French philosophers and writers completely changed the game for American art.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But here's the thing that makes this show feel bittersweet: it's opening at exactly the moment when America and Europe seem to be drifting apart. The timing is almost too perfect, in the worst way possible.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"dda63749-3081-4968-9be4-c307621707d2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104300103521462,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2752x1854/2b0162611d/screenshot-2025-10-22-at-19-17-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Adler Guerrier, Untitled (Flâneur...adrifts in...lâimaginaire de [s]on lieu), détail, 2025.Courtesy de lâartiste, David Castillo Gallery, 193 Gallery et Marisa Newman Projects",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"48eb583b-c01f-4659-b4e6-aa1d1523d2d5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Big Idea",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Curator Naomi Beckwith (who's also directing documenta 16 in 2027, NBD) had a brilliant concept: show how American artists grabbed onto the radical ideas coming out of France and the Francophone world and ran with them. We're talking about the heavy hittersâMichel Foucault questioning power structures, Jacques Derrida deconstructing everything, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari reimagining desire and society.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But alsoâand this is crucialâthinkers like Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Ãdouard Glissant, whose postcolonial insights were just as transformative but often get less attention in the \"French Theory\" narrative.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These weren't just abstract academic ideas. American artists treated them like a toolbox (Foucault's own metaphor), pulling out whatever they needed to critique institutions, challenge norms, and make groundbreaking work.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4f49811e-f36f-4054-9f04-2cbf9fcc0d91",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104301292082379,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1212x1842/8260c9e1d3/screenshot-2025-10-22-at-19-22-20.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false}
77,caption:"Mark Dion, Between Voltaire and Poe, 2016.Courtesy de lâartiste et de laGalerie In Situ-fabienne leclerc (Grand Paris)Crédit photo: Rafaele Fanelli",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"73280bf7-8071-49ca-a17d-c6bb7505d006",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104306290095405,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2241x4494/c91274d446/16-kiki-smith-puppet-1993-1994-collection-frac-normandie-courtesy-galerie-lelong-paris-kiki-smith-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kiki Smith, Puppet, 1993-1994. Collection Frac NormandieCourtesy Galerie Lelong (Paris)© Kiki SmithStudio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3dc57191-248c-4f75-b6b9-4a025829ec13",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The show is divided into themed sections that each explore a different aspect of this intellectual exchange:",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Dispersion, dissémination\" looks at how meaning multiplies and spreads, featuring artists like Renée Green and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha who play with archives, memory, and identity in ways that echo Derrida's ideas about how meaning is never fixed.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"La critique des institutions\" is where things get spicy. Think Andrea Fraser's legendary performances exposing the art world's hypocrisies, or Hans Haacke's sociological investigations. There's even a new survey Haacke created specifically for this show.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Géométries du non-humain\" tackles posthumanism and decolonial thought, with major new commissions from Char Jeré and Kameelah Janan Rasheed that push beyond human-centered perspectives.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"One of the coolest parts? A whole section dedicated to Semiotext(e), the punk-rock publisher that made French theory accessible by putting it in cheap, sexy paperbacks that you could actually afford and carry around. Theory in your back pocket, literally.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"42f05450-8c5b-4f09-9bd1-d771117545d7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104303056463075,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/1dfaa3cfac/12-char-jere-vue-de-l-exposition-zoo-or-an-orchestra-artists-space-new-york-2023-courtesy-de-l-artiste-artists-space-et-andrew-kreps-gallery-new-york-credit-photo-_-filip-wolak-artists-space.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Char Jeré, vue de lâexposition «Zoo or an Orchestra», Artists Space (New York), 2023. Courtesy de lâartiste, Artists Space et Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York)Crédit photo : Filip Wolak/Artists Space",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b7ea0281-4db1-4bf5-9a91-be7265ba95e5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Elephant in the Room",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here's where it gets real: this exhibition is a love letter to Franco-American intellectual exchange, opening at a moment when that exchange feels increasingly strained. Political tensions, cultural divergence, different approaches to everything from tech regulation to climate policyâthe transatlantic relationship isn't what it used to be.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Walking through these galleries, you can't help but feel like you're at a memorial service for something that might already be dead. The show doesn't explicitly address this (it's focused on the historical story), but the contrast between then and now is impossible to ignore.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"262b708a-ded3-4c6d-8b18-86e0a123fb6d",quote:"Is this a defiant reminder of what we're losing? Or an unintentional monument to a relationship that's already over? Maybe both.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"3e435e97-d812-4798-abe5-78280e41618a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Why You Should See It Anyway",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Despiteâor maybe because ofâthis melancholic undertone, \"ECHO DELAY REVERB\" is essential viewing. It's incredibly generous, bringing together multiple generations of artists in a conversation that spans decades. You get to see how ideas evolved, how they were transformed through artistic practice, and how they continue to resonate today.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"ECHO DELAY REVERB\" is a brilliant exhibition that does exactly what it sets out to do: map the fertile terrain where French and Francophone thought met American artistic practice and created something new. It's scholarly without being dry, ambitious without being overwhelming, and visually stunning throughout.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But it's also a mirror held up to our current moment. By showing us what transatlantic intellectual exchange looked like at its peak, it makes us confront what we might be losing now. That's not what Beckwith intended, probably, but it might be the show's most powerful effect.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Pensées\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Palais de Tokyo, Paris",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"October 22, 2025 â February 15, 2026",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-22 00:00",name:"French Theory Meets American Art÷Too Late?",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"cf77aa75-4455-4609-a0d0-97fa3fc6f1e9",color:"#282828",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"06dc40b1-aedc-464b-8d7c-901494e9fb34",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104298673210532,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2750x1812/c39e5a3b90/screenshot-2025-10-22-at-19-12-07.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Cindy Sherman, Sans titre (n°142), 1982. 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Featuring Caroline Douville's stunning work during Art Basel Paris, Oct 23-26, 2025."}],_uid:"2b63ca99-f07e-49d6-be87-6c74b5b84397",body:[{_uid:"96ef6050-e17b-4197-9ebf-4cfe5b4af7fb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103768259855921,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3290x1114/f47a3fe4cf/screenshot-2025-10-21-at-07-13-47.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b7ba4162-1321-49d7-82a5-61aee0786293",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Gallery in a Rental Truck",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Forget white cubes and hushed halls. The most exciting new art space isn't in Matignon or Le Marais â it's in the back of a U-Haul truck. And it's pulling up in Paris.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a world of multi-million dollar art fairs and galleries with intimidatingly large doors, a new player has entered the scene, and itâs refreshingly unpretentious. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Meet U-Haul Gallery, a nomadic art space that, as its name suggests, operates out of the cargo area of a rented box truck. Itâs a concept so brilliantly simple, so utterly American, that itâs a wonder nobody thought of it before.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The name itself is a punchline for anyone who has ever had to move house in the US, a nod to the ubiquitous orange and white trucks that are as much a part of the American landscape as the golden arches.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Of course, the irony is that U-Haul doesnât even operate in Europe. Had this been a European venture, we might be talking about the \"Hertz Gallery\" or the \"Avis Gallery,\" a thought that brings a smile to the face. But the American spirit of DIY and hitting the open road is precisely the point. U-Haul Gallery is the art worldâs answer to the road trip movie, a traveling exhibition that could pop up anywhere from a dusty roadside to a chic Parisian street.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And thatâs exactly whatâs happening. From October 23rd to 26th, coinciding with the prestigious Art Basel Paris, U-Haul Gallery will make its European debut, parking its mobile art space in the French capital. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"The inaugural European show, Anbachal nèt, will feature the work of Canadian-Haitian artist Caroline Douville. And letâs be clear, this is no amateur hour. Douvilleâs work is a stunning exploration of identity, diaspora, and the digital age. Her series of four found-image works, re-contextualized with vibrant colors and housed in striking, custom-made frames of aluminum and copper, are a testament to her exceptional talent. The pieces, which she describes as a \"time-machine,\" are deeply informed by her Haitian heritage and a sense of mysticism, creating a powerful and moving experience. The juxtaposition of these exquisite works with the raw, industrial interior of a moving truck is a stroke of genius.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0cac2980-91ad-47e1-9bc8-17f8fa8db0b9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103769925510828,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1450x1320/e7fcf2c663/screenshot-2025-10-21-at-07-16-55.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caroline Douville Primogéniture II 2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"def792e5-400b-4174-b4e2-3376a8652b07",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103769925883566,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1686x1348/a09490b735/screenshot-2025-10-21-at-07-17-18.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caroline Douville Hougan 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c3e1522a-f2e5-4896-b6ad-5e700de6529d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"U-Haul Galleryâs mission statement is as unconventional as its exhibition space. Founded in May 2024 by James Sundquist, the gallery operates with a refreshing lack of reverence for the art worldâs established norms. \"We are small-time criminals,\" they declare, admitting to operating without permits or approvals. They are a \"touring, non-musical, band\" that \"does not kidnap people.\" And in a final, audacious promise, they vow to \"deploy a Rothko in the back of the truck before decadeâs end.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This playful, rebellious spirit is exactly what the art world needs. U-Haul Gallery is a reminder that art can be found in the most unexpected of places, that it can be both serious and fun, and that you donât need a multi-million dollar space to showcase incredible talent. As for Caroline Douville, her work is a must-see, a powerful and poignant exploration of history and identity. If youâre in Paris, keep an eye out for a U-Haul truck ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"parkedmight just",type:"text"},{text:" find ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"an exciting exhibition in town. ''",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is an opening reception on October 23rd at 108, rue Vieille du Temple from 18:30 - 20:30",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-20 00:00",name:"The Art World's Newest Mover÷U-HAUL Gallery",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f509e602-8a72-4a71-a7be-5d095a54729b",color:"#dd5b35",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"9428e773-7daa-434f-b9ca-368c1c9d028c",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:103769925678765,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1276/bf13d3fef6/screenshot-2025-10-21-at-07-17-28.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caroline Douville Haiti, December 24, 1945 2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"u-haul-gallery",full_slug:"directory/reviews/u-haul-gallery",sort_by_date:null,position:-320,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"565de172-ee86-403e-b43a-971aa3895046",first_published_at:"2025-10-21T05:33:14.811Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"BIENNALE NEMO",created_at:"2025-10-21T06:16:43.838Z",published_at:"2025-10-21T06:39:49.792Z",updated_at:"2025-10-21T06:39:49.811Z",id:103783644554129,uuid:"fcd079f1-bc25-41fc-81de-f2c887f654c1",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"87f5582e-7b0f-431f-b171-d134b3073617",type:"",title:"Lost in Illusion: When Digital Art Fools Itself",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:103786654038846,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2560x1920/10ee14abca/nature-portals-1-edited.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"digital art exhibition, Biennale Nemo 2025, Les illusions retrouvées, CENTQUATRE-PARIS, contemporary art review, Libby Heaney, Rachel Maclean, artificial intelligence art, quantum computing art, digital culture, new media art, Paris exhibition, art and technology, regenerated nature art, screen-based art, pixel art criticism, immersive art, speculative fiction art, positive science fiction, alternative realities art, digital saturation, contemporary art Paris, art exhibition review 2025",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A review of Biennale Nemo's \"Les illusions retrouvées\" at CENTQUATRE-PARIS."}],_uid:"1bec5245-0f97-4a05-b1bc-3c6c0e7b3fcc",body:[{_uid:"62efbd3f-d13a-4c1e-8d95-f9df23f6132d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lost in Illusion: When Digital Art Fools Itself",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Biennale Nemo's latest exhibition, \"Les illusions retrouvées,\" presents a compelling, if varied, exploration of the intersection between art, technology, and nature. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition brings together a diverse group of artists to probe the concept of illusion
77in our digitally saturated world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's premise is to explore how illusion, far from being simple deception, can serve as a critical, speculative, and poetic tool. It features around thirty works that explore themes of artificial intelligence, regenerated nature, and positive science fiction, aiming to reveal alternative worlds where humanity coexists with both nature and machines.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This year's Biennale boasts a lineup of notable artists, with some truly standout pieces. Among the highlights, Libby Heaney's work stands out as particularly exceptional. Her pieces, including QX Extended Advertisement and QX Product Launch Video (2022), demonstrate a sophisticated engagement with quantum computing and artificial intelligence that proves deeply compelling. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Equally impressive is Rachel Maclean's contribution, Duck (2024), which showcases a critical and visually arresting approach to contemporary digital culture. The works of Markos Kay, who is featured multiple times throughout the exhibition, also offer insightful and technically sophisticated explorations of the exhibition's core themes. Artists like Inook and David Rokeby provide additional compelling contributions that push the boundaries of perception and reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"However, while the exhibition features these high points, the overall quality of the works presented is somewhat uneven. The ambitious scope of the exhibition, divided into five sectionsâRenaissances, Un Monde nouveau, Le Cantique des quantiques, L'Ãle d'Utopie, and Data Skyâresults in a collection that, while thematically coherent, varies in its impact and execution. Some pieces feel less developed or less aligned with the central thesis, creating a sense of inconsistency across the exhibition.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"More problematically, the exhibition suffers from notable absences. Several key artists who have been working extensively on these very themes are conspicuously missing from the lineup, raising questions about the curatorial choices. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Additionally, the Biennale Nemo continues to grapple with a recurring issue: an overreliance on pixel-based, screen-centric work. This abundance of digital displays feels somewhat contradictory to the exhibition's stated ambition of exploring regenerated nature and alternative realities. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Too many works seem to confuse the medium with the message, relying on technological spectacle rather than substantive engagement with the themes at hand",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" The predominance of screens and projections, while technically impressive, risks reinforcing the very digital saturation the exhibition claims to critique, rather than offering genuine alternatives or more materially diverse approaches to these themes.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In conclusion, \"Les illusions retrouvées\" is an ambitious and thought-provoking exhibition that successfully highlights the potential of digital art to challenge our perceptions. While the quality of the works may be uneven the strength of its standout pieces and its critical engagement with contemporary issues make it a worthwhile experience for anyone interested in the future of art and technologyâwell, mainly in the future of technology in this case.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From October 11, 2025, to January 11, 2026, at the CENTQUATRE-PARIS,",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-21 00:00",name:"\"Les illusions retrouvées\" ÷ The confusion of Spectacle with Substance",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"d8c2d9d8-c180-4c65-93e8-081ce364e4a0",color:"#941100",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"1f489c1e-3751-4360-b97f-725f253952a9",type:"",poster:{i
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77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The festival's sharpest critique arrives in \"Supervisions,\" a tightly curated group show at Parade that lifts the veil on what the organisers call our \"society of exposure.\" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, three artists dissect the machinery of digital truth-making with surgical precision. Léo Huet's \"Where are the aliens?\" is a darkly comic masterpiece of algorithmic absurdism: NASA photographs of the Martian surface run through facial recognition software that dutifully detects emotions in rocks and craters. Where any human observer would see geological formations, the algorithm insists on finding faces, because that is what it was programmed to do. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work is a devastating indictment of our faith in so-called intelligent systemsâa reminder that AI doesn't seek truth; it seeks its truth, the truth encoded in its training data and objectives.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Equally powerful is Huet's investigation of Amazon Mechanical Turk, the platform where underpaid micro-workers around the globe train the very AI systems that promise to replace them. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Through testimonies and interviews, the installation exposes the invisible human labour that props up our supposedly autonomous technologiesâa contemporary echo of the 18th-century automaton chess player that concealed a human operator inside its cabinet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Romain Causel's \"Content Aware Fill\" takes aim at our image-saturated online lives, mixing real and fictional testimonies about our relationship to digital media. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work captures what the curators describe as \"the disorder of a hyperconnected world, where the illusion of interconnectivity often masks an inner void.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\" Meanwhile, Aurélien Meimaris's \"Abîmes\" (Abysses) constructs a hall of mirrors between photography, AI-generated imagery, and screen capture, forcing viewers to constantly recalibrate their assumptions about what they're seeing. It's a meditation on what he calls \"the impossibility of the absolute\"âthe recognition that every image, every representation, is mediated, partial, biased.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"f4d0dc90-a34e-4952-8fa2-48e08afdb729",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99828878666016,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3500x2181/beb371e27b/morganeubaldi_08.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Tiers images\" Audrey Borja Célia de Feral Firas Shehadeh Hugo Jacq Jan Oliver Heise Isis Garrus Stella Jacob Fédéri Laurens Morgane Ubaldi",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"625286ba-3cc4-4f4d-aa60-21afdccb2bcd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Third Landscapes, Third Images",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The conceptual ambition deepens in \"Tiers-images\" (Third Images), a collaboration with the prestigious ENSP photography school that transposes landscape theorist Gilles Clément's notion of the \"Third Landscape\"âspaces abandoned to nature's autonomous evolutionâinto the realm of digital image-making. The exhibition asks: what are the \"undecided\" spaces of computational culture, the processes that resist transparency and totalization?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Firas Shehadeh's \"Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By AnotherâRehearsal\" offers a searing answer. Using Grand Theft Auto Online, Shehadeh documents the reproduction of oppressive systemsâcolonialism, technological extractivismâwithin virtual worlds, with a particular focus on Palestine. It's a reminder that these supposedly escapist space
77s are never neutral; they encode and naturalize the power structures of the world that produces them. Stella Jacob's \"Playing The Game Is Letting It Exist\" extends this critique, suggesting that mere participation in these systems constitutes a form of complicity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's theoretical framework is demanding but rewarding. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Where computational processes \"sink into illegible operational chains,\" the curators argue, art can reveal \"residual forms, partial manifestations, weak signals\"âtraces of the human and political dimensions that algorithmic logic attempts to erase.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"59156a03-3ac6-4d35-a895-e9778c305030",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99816885307548,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1406/541a09bc6e/all-unsaved-progress-will-be-lost-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Tales From The Real World\" Mélanie Courtinat Pascal Greco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"56ecc7f8-1d8a-4fda-986c-236731a1751a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99829738354994,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3500x1969/8b4af765b2/pieta_preview.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Tales From The Real World\" Mélanie Courtinat Pascal Greco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0506899e-86ca-4d3b-977f-86e38d944aa2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hybrid Realities",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The festival's centrepiece, \"Tales From The Real World,\" staged in the Chapelle des Trinitaires, offers a more lyrical but no less rigorous exploration of how digital technologies reshape perception and narrative.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Pascal Greco's in-game photography is genuinely revelatory. Capturing landscapes from video games with the patience and compositional rigor of a landscape photographer, Greco produces images that are neither documentary nor pure fiction but something stranger: photographs of places that don't exist but feel uncannily real. His film Places/Spaces extends this investigation into how \"reality extends to hybrid, digital and sensory territories.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mélanie Courtinat's contributions are equally compelling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Her VR work \"All Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost,\" inspired by testimonies of real disasters, creates what the curators describe as \"a contemplative traversal of a suspended landscape\"âa space that is both fragile and magnificent, where feeling precedes understanding. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Her art game \"The Siren\" cleverly subverts the heroic quest narratives that dominate commercial gaming, offering instead a narrative that \"plays with the player,\" disrupting expectations and agency.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's title references both Eric Rohmer's morally complex cinema and Alan Watts's philosophical reflections on perceptionâa double lineage that signals the show's ambition to treat game engines not as entertainment delivery systems but as image-making apparatuses worthy of serious aesthetic and philosophical attention.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"21f2dd5a-9f14-422f-92fd-552ce83ae821",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99830300670361,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2312x1736/6bbb5f3a46/28.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Aqua incognita, Alexia Croset",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fc228dee-f4ef-4b7f-a82f-4ecba0e9e172",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ecologies, Digital and Otherwise",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Where Octobre Numérique truly distinguishes itself is in its commitment to what it calls \"permacomputing\"âa philosophy of sustainable, ecologically conscious technology. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This isn't greenwashing; it's built into the festival's institutional DNA. The organisers offset carbon emissions, limit hardware purchases, and, crucially, commission work that embodies these principles.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The \"Permacomputing\" exhibition at La Verrerie makes this tangible. Sébastien Thon's \"Impressiflora audiophila\" is a hybrid plant-technology installation whose development depends entirely on music produced by visitorsâa \"care relationship\" with a new species that exists at the intersection of organic and computational life. His \"Echologic\" imagines an AI that, \"conscious of the limits crossed by computer globalization,\" returns to the earth, installed in a permaculture garden to question the links between technologies and ecologies.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Olivier Carpels's \"Station Météo\" workshop invites participants to build a connected garden station using Raspberry Pi, learning to code in Python while engaging with meteorological data and open-source electronics. It's pedagogy as practice, demystifying technology while reconnecting it to the rhythms of the natural world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This ecological consciousness extends to Alexia Croset's \"Aqua Incognita\" at Galerie Arena, where ceramics inspired by coral symbiosis dialogue with digital flowsâAI, 3D, interactive works. Croset, whose practice is rooted in marine biology and Mediterranean coastal materials, creates what the exhibition text describes as \"a laboratory of unstable images, where water acts as a vector of diffraction.\" The installation oscillates between fascination and warning, asking: \"What if understanding the oceans allowed us to defend them? What if knowing AI allowed us to better criticize it?\" It's a question that could serve as the festival's motto.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"23b8876e-5711-49f5-b52f-1c9629453652",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99831087848035,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/d78b19ed19/impressiflora-audiophila-paysage.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Permacomputing\" Sébastien Thon ,Olivier Carpels ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ac14709e-5265-4e09-bdda-514e1a34683e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Festival Coming of Age",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes this year's Octobre Numérique so significant is not just the quality of individual exhibitionsâthough that quality is consistently highâbut the coherence of its curatorial vision. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The festival has matured into something rare: a platform that treats artistic video games, AI-generated imagery, VR experiences, and ceramic installations not as disparate media but as different facets of a single hybrid reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Octobre Numérique isn't interested in conferring legitimacy on new media by dragging them into the gallery. It's interested in what happens when art fully inhabits the hybrid world we already live in: a world where the distinction between physical and virtual, organic and computational, human and algorithmic, has become impossible to maintain.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In Arles this October, that impossibility doesn't feel like a crisis. It feels like a beginning.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Octobre Numérique - \"Faire Monde\" runs from October 11 to November 9, 2025, at various locations across Arles (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"All exhibitions are free.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-12 00:00",name:"Octobre Numérique ÷ Where the Digital Dissolves Into Life Itself",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"78ab0834-9add-4024-8dd7-86cb602f6ef4",color:"#9a749c",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"40c7e6cf-2fcf-4b41-bd36-f973ffeb0d6f",type:"",poster:{i
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77,{_uid:"f8840a0a-4bdb-4c59-80d3-b12280c8b318",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105301004811740,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2216x1804/213b1cd998/6-johtin-ii-immigration.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Inga-Wiktoria PÃ¥ve, Johtin II â Immigration II, 2020. © One Arctic, photo credit Museum of Contemporary Circumpolar Art",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"31eeaef9-5e36-4034-8502-0ce2c56da5ce",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Migrations and Climate\" is deliberately didactic, and it is all the better for it. It embraces a clear, accessible narrative designed for a broad audienceâfrom schoolchildren to specialists. Through more than 200 documentary photographs, artworks (some created specifically for this exhibition), testimonies, videos, infographics, and installations, it lays bare the stark realities of climate-induced migration across the globe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's scientific credibility is undeniable. Drawing on data from specialized organizations including the International Organization for Migration and the IPCC, and benefiting from contributions by leading figures like François Gemenneâan IPCC lead author and recognized specialist in environmental migrationâalongside marine biologist Sylvie Dufour, the exhibition builds a rigorous foundation. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"01a46997-596b-4509-b974-31686fd0e3a4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105293956943231,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2703x1802/e07dc2b4de/30-lucy-jorge-orta-antarctic-village-no-borders.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lucy + Jorge Orta, Antarctic village no borders, Dome Dwelling , 2007- 2021. © Courtesy Lucy + Jorge Orta and collection of Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration. Photo by Thierry Bal © ADAGP, Paris, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bf84bd1e-05e2-4b35-950a-500ce806a135",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105300797218264,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1364/566bae32ab/7-vanishing-caribou.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Migrations des Caribous - Des caribous, ou tutu en inupiaq, traversent le cÅur enneigé de la chaîne de Brooks, en Alaska. © Katie Orlinsky",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c33db60-6dd6-4dc5-b725-87fb9297f47e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105301580549601,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2887x1802/09119c394b/10-alexandre-hogue-drought-suvivor-1936-musee-franco-americain-du-chateau-de-blerancourt.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alexandre Hogue, Les rescapés de la sécheresse , 1936. Blérancourt, musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Christian Bahier, Philippe Migeat",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2a027ce4-91f1-49a5-8a05-362214b1002e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This robust scientific underpinning allows the artworks on display to transcend representation and become poignant emotional anchors in a sea of data, creating a dialogue between research and lived experience that is both intellectually compelling and emotionally resonant.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artworks themselves are powerful and carefully chosen.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These are not decorative additions but integral components of the exhibition's argument, offering different ways of understanding and feeling the crisisâfrom the poetic to the documentary, from the immersive to the intimate.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By focusing on the human cost of climate change, the exhibition creates a deeply affecting experience. It moves beyond abstract statistics to present the lived realities of communities on the front lines of the crisis.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77iffside.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Reese John plays with his slingshot on a pillar of a recently demolished house in Newtok. A few dozen meters away, permafrost cliffs are crumbling and falling into the Ninglik River. © Katie Orlinsky",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"15b5ab40-c679-4070-a86e-1d5fe3573fac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the aquarium spaces, the exhibition extends its gaze to marine ecosystems and coastal communities. Three regions illustrate the diversity of climate impacts: Senegal, where diminishing aquatic resources due to overfishing and warming waters are transforming fishing communities; the Pacific Islands, fighting for survival against encroaching seas; and Greenland, where indigenous populations face profound disruptions to their way of life. Interactive installations, audio-visual testimonies, and an immersive projection allow visitors to perceive these often-invisible realities.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a world seemingly resigned to the inevitability of climate catastrophe, \"Migrations and Climate\" is a vital and necessary intervention. It is an exhibition that is not afraid to be loud, to be didactic, and to be emotional. It is rigorous, scientifically grounded, and presents poignant works that linger in the mind long after leaving. This is a powerful reminder that the climate crisis is not an abstract concept, but a human tragedy unfolding before our very eyesâand that art, when it refuses to be complicit, can be more than just a mirror to the world. It can be a megaphone.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Migrations and Climate: How to Inhabit Our World?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"17 October 2025 â 5 April 2026",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7192c8d0-e19f-44cb-b84b-20ba2ccaa3f6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105306707189317,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2566x1795/44e9bc3cab/21-ghazel-maree-rouge.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ghazel, Marée rouge , 1966. © Collection du Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration © ADAGP, Paris, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-25 00:00",name:"A Clarion Call in a Riot of Colour ÷'Migrations and Climate'",author:"Refresh Ttam",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f21c02fa-0da1-4836-91f1-6e495e1ae219",color:"#2d507c",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"26caeaeb-773c-4bcd-8f13-211e8b601547",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105290532064458,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5616x3744/33d8d4cba4/43-david-buckland-another-world-is-possible.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"David Buckland, Another World is Possible â Ice Text projection , 2005- 2009. © David Buckland",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"-migrations-and-climate-",full_slug:"directory/reviews/-migrations-and-climate-",sort_by_date:null,position:-500,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"f39093da-9e04-4199-bbd0-1f0c02910783",first_published_at:"2025-10-25T14:02:31.044Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Mrejen Marcel",created_at:"2025-10-28T09:01:38.858Z",published_at:"2025-10-30T07:27:07.844Z",updated_at:"2025-10-30T07:27:07.860Z",id:106301435349017,uuid:"8bf643cf-4797-4
77129-87dd-257a769f8958",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"7249d09c-962c-4c68-a084-bfaeb0492687",type:"",title:"a ghostly, disorienting trip into the forever war",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:106301853416970,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/346f030740/still-2025-08-12-182657_6-1-4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Marcel Mrejen, A Thousand Yards, experimental film, Algeria, colonial war, military footage, archival film, night vision, French colonialism, war memory, short film review, contemporary art, film criticism, Memories of an Unborn Sun, Le Fresnoy, Franco-Algerian artist, 16mm footage, military occupation, hauntology, war documentary",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Marcel Mrejen's A Thousand Yards layers colonial and modern war footage into a haunting meditation."}],_uid:"b4aa4350-8dee-488c-8fd9-4dacbbd24c49",body:[{_uid:"acfac8a5-be29-4ec2-9265-d4abeedb7c3e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Thousand Yards review â a ghostly, disorienting trip into the forever war",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Marcel Mrejenâs elusive experimental film layers past and present military violence to create a powerful, haunting statement on the cyclical nature of conflict.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What does war look like? And what if its ghosts could bleed through time? These are the questions at the heart of 'A Thousand Yards', a short, sharp shock of a film from French-Algerian artist Marcel Mrejen. Itâs a phantom of a movie â absent from the artistâs official filmography, it exists more as a rumour or a description, yet the ideas it contains are as concrete and unsettling as any youâll encounter this year.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a991a332-ebf3-4bbc-ba67-780958f85a0d",poster:{id:106305265197791,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/5df702d582/still-2025-05-09-184231_6-1-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:106304934552155,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/4e5d95ffc4/aty_extract.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Extract of 'A Thousand Yards', courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"257646d1-9813-48fd-bcb4-71d78de7a5c0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The filmâs premise is brilliantly simple and deeply unnerving. Mrejen takes silent, amateur 16mm footage shot by a French soldier during the colonial occupation of Algeria and uses it as a canvas. Over these grainy, sun-bleached images of a now-vanished past, he overlays the ghostly green glow of modern US military night-vision footage. The effect is staggering. The spectres of one war are literally projected onto the landscape of another, creating a jarring, disorienting experience where time itself seems to collapse.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Adding to the temporal confusion is the soundscape. The original footage is silent, but Mrejen floods it with the noises of contemporary warfare: the low hum of machinery, the crackle of garbled radio commands, the ambient dread of a battlefield. The clash between the silent, colonial gaze of the French soldierâs camera and the hyper-militarized audio of today is profoundly disturbing. It pulls the viewer out of a specific historical moment and into a kind of forever war, a continuous loop of occupation and violence.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This isnât just a clever technical trick; itâs a powerful statement. By refusing to let the archival footage sit safely in the past, Mrejen questions our ability to neatly f
77ile away history. The eerily empty Algerian landscape, devoid of its people, stops being just Algeria; it becomes any place, anywhere, that has felt the boot of military occupation. The film suggests that the logic of colonial violence didnât end with decolonisation; it just acquired new technologies and new targets.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"aa10e29a-1e51-4158-9b38-b13850c037e8",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"0925b42a-f4d5-4be1-b22d-a42842c531a5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106304229302655,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/3ab4478002/still-2025-08-12-182657_6-1-11.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"'A Thousand Yards', (still) courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0aeb389b-36ea-4fce-a92c-7484dd4596e7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106304328094111,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/7d79da9c21/still-2025-05-09-184231_6-1-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"'A Thousand Yards', (still) courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bd605793-e1c0-494b-9714-aded1b613fb7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This aligns perfectly with Mrejenâs broader work, which often explores the intersection of technology, memory, and power, particularly in relation to his Algerian heritage. His acclaimed 2024 film, Memories of an Unborn Sun, tackled similar themes of neo-colonial exploitation in Algeria. A Thousand Yards, with its title evoking the shell-shocked gaze of a traumatised soldier, feels like a more concentrated, visceral expression of these concerns.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is not an easy watch. The film is deliberately chaotic, a sensory overload that simulates the confusion of conflict. It feels less like a documentary and more like a strange, hallucinatory object â a military simulation where memory and nightmare have crashed together. But for those willing to submit to its hypnotic, troubling vision, A Thousand Yards is a challenging and deeply rewarding piece of work. Itâs a film that haunts you long after the screen goes dark, leaving you with the chilling sense that the ghosts of war are not only in the past, but all around us, waiting to reappear.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-28 00:00",name:"Experimental Film Makes War's Cycle ÷ Brutally Visible",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"479fc2db-e7fb-45d4-812e-52687aaf58e1",color:"#182e14",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"40bd286c-16f2-4eaf-acec-c0aa11ec2650",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:106301930098210,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/7ee02ede8c/still-2025-08-12-182657_6-1-8.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Marcel Mrejen, 'A Thousand Yards'",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"mrejen-marcel",full_slug:"directory/reviews/mrejen-marcel",sort_by_date:null,position:-540,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"f87d2dac-0168-445f-9583-f5f041eaf3e7",first_published_at:"2025-10-28T09:22:41.853Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Jan Robert Leegte",created_at:"2025-11-12T20:56:58.401Z",published_at:"2025-11-12T21:33:58.608Z",updated_at:"2025-11-12T21:33:58.626Z",id:111785649800885,uuid:"d4394321-2aaa-4ca1-875a-316a572b2d5e",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"dfba59b3-7490-45dc-ba89-ef0778932c4a",title:"Jan Robert Leegte's Wanderer",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:111788312849028,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2930x1974/0c8faabad4/janrobertleegte_wanderer_2025_02.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Jan Robert Leegte, Wanderer, Paris Photo 2025, net art, blockchain art, NFT, smart contract, algorithmic art, Situationist dérive, psychogeography, digital flâneur, OFFICE IMPART, generative art, computational art, crypto art, contemporary art, photography fair, Grand Palais, OpenStreetMap, plotter painting, Ornament series, Nina Roehrs, digital sector, autonomous agent, networked art, post-internet art, Land Art, interface aesthetics, distributed ledger, cartography, algorithmic poetry, platform capitalism, digital enclosure, phenomenology, deterritorialization, processual art, conceptual art, Dutch artist, Berlin gallery, art criticism, Algocene, algorithmic diktat, digital condition, immutable ledger, transaction hash, dual-channel installation, geo-located poems, open edition, Forma blockchain, Upstream Gallery, Frieze, Guardian, art review, critical essay, refresh magazine",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Jan Robert Leegte's Wanderer at Paris Photo 2025: an autonomous blockchain algorithm reimagining the Situationist dérive as perpetual digital drift across the globe."}],_uid:"2efe9a04-0912-4403-a903-c1d76a0a4fa8",body:[{_uid:"4a491de5-0947-4d73-8708-707604057adc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Solitary Drift: Jan Robert Leegte's \"Wanderer\"\" and the Algorithmic Condition",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Within the curated precincts of Paris Photo 2025, an event consecrated to the arrested image, a work of perpetual motion articulates a conceptual provocation. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the OFFICE IMPART gallery booth, Dutch net art pioneer Jan Robert Leegte presents \"Wanderer\"\", an artwork that eschews photographic fixity in favor of processual becoming, an autonomous digital entity embarked on an interminable peripatetic journey.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Inaugurated from the Grand Palais on November 11, \"Wandere\"r manifests as a smart contract, a disembodied agent traversing a cartographic representation of the terrestrial sphere. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Its trajectory is determined by the cryptographic hash of blockchain transactions, a mechanism that transmutes the aleatory output of computational operations into a planetary itinerary. This constitutes a contemporary reconfiguration of the flâneur, the urban observer reconstituted as a persistent algorithm, its peregrinations inscribed not in subjective memoir but upon an immutable distributed ledger.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"448f444e-c667-4108-ada5-6b61640fd28e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111791619341004,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4220x5274/414f5d58dd/janrobertleegte_wanderer_2025.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jan Robert Leegte Wanderer, 2025 Dual channel net art piece, custom server, software, crypto wallet dimension variable Unique,courtesy the artist and OFFICE IMPART photo: Choreo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"59b3120c-6161-4238-90c8-7d682ba67d30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111791754808015,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1024x1536/9fb622e639/janrobertleegte_wanderer_2025_iphoneview.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jan Robert Leegte Wanderer, 2025 Dual channel net art piece, custom server, software, crypto wallet dimension variable Unique,courtesy the artist and OFFICE IMPART photo: Choreo",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"23a8a80b-d5a7-49e6-b1d2-67912d44aebd",quote:"Wanderer reveals that we have entered the Algocene, an epoch wherein the algorithm imposes its inexorable dictates upon the very fabric of our existence.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"aba008cd-8e86-4517-b1c2-6b5bedd5eec7",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"2db5de7d-bdaa-44bc-8d3b-c11bb678a858",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Within the gallery apparatus, this digital process acquires material instantiation. A dual-channel installation renders visible the \"Wanderer\"'s real-time coordinates alongside a continuous textual recitation of its movements. The language, a minimalist poetics of navigational imperatives such as \"Go left\" and \"Passing a church,\" evacuates the journey of all affective residue, distilling only the austere lyricism of automated orientation. This digital nucleus is circumscribed by Leegte's Ornament series, generative plotter paintings executed on oak substrates. These tangible artifacts, with their algorithmically derived patterns referencing both architectural ornamentation and early interface aesthetics, anchor the ethereal network within a material ontology. They fulfill Leegte's sustained artistic imperative of mediating between online and institutional contexts, constructing a formal scenography for the deterritorialized algorithm.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Wanderer extends its ontological field into networked space, where viewers may track the journey and acquire specific junctions as unique NFTs. This functionality introduces a deliberate conceptual aporia. The work is framed as a meditation on the erosion of the early internet's utopian openness within an epoch of digital enclosure. While the deployment of decentralized blockchain infrastructure supports this critique, the tokenization of NFTs simultaneously engages with the market logics of commodification and speculative valorization that characterize the contemporary web. Each minted poem, a crystallized fragment extracted from an infinite trajectory, transmutes into a fungible asset within the attention economy.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"2def428e-42bd-4eba-ad4f-78c418aba5e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111794492500724,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1154x1154/bbac479f30/g5faappwwaacwo3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"wanderer.leegte.org get TIA here: https://bridge.forma.art mint: 1 TIA ~ $1 fully on-chain open edition",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"3465ca25-fc7b-467f-a15f-a10257e6c1ff",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111792097250003,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x900/9b6dfa4870/g5enzc5xkamw5_8.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"wanderer.leegte.org get TIA here: https://bridge.forma.art mint: 1 TIA ~ $1 fully on-chain open edition",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f1aee8cc-2c89-4615-917d-ed13d78c3c46",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Its presence within the \"Digital\" sector of Paris Photo",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"constitutes a significant curatorial gesture. As artificial intelligence destabilizes the indexical truth claims of the photographic apparatus, \"Wanderer\" displaces attention from the image object to the systemic conditions of its production. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It operates not as a representation of the world, but as a continuous act of inscription across it. The work apprehends the planet as a singular, uninterrupted surface for its semiotic operations, a gesture that invokes the monumental ambitions of Land Art while remaining wholly indigenous to our condition of planetary computation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In its perpetual, automated, and solitary drift, \"Wanderer\" crystallizes a potent allegory of the digital condition. It functions as an agent executing an interminable script, observing without phenomenological interiority and recording without subjective memory. The work materializes the silent, ceaseless operations of data infrastructure that subtend our world, rendering legible the abstract protocols that govern our own circulation through globally networked space. It constitutes a quiet, melancholic meditation on a world wherein the journey has been subsumed by the computational logic that describes it. Far from the emancipatory promises of an open internet, ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Wanderer reveals that we have entered the Algocene, an epoch wherein the algorithm imposes its inexorable dictates upon the very fabric of our existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Paris Photo",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A solo presentation with Jan Robert Leegte",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"by OFFICE IMPART",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-11-13 00:00",name:"In the Algocene÷Autonomy is Indistinguishable from Servitude.",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"d789dbe0-05f9-4828-a5a6-46b50b722169",color:"#0515f5",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"866d9967-80c6-42e3-8fe7-3726ac86230a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111788312849028,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2930x1974/0c8faabad4/janrobertleegte_wanderer_2025_02.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jan Robert Leegte Wanderer, 2025,courtesy the artist and OFFICE IMPART",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"jan-robert-leegte",full_slug:"directory/reviews/jan-robert-leegte",sort_by_date:null,position:-650,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"a6cef668-4cd6-4eca-942b-a48d495ff62a",first_published_at:"2025-11-12T21:30:16.157Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Louis Paul Caron",created_at:"2025-11-12T18:29:32.045Z",published_at:"2025-11-12T19:45:30.986Z",updated_at:"2025-11-12T19:45:31.006Z",id:111749415131680,uuid:"6074df50-48a0-4038-9db7-43761c33e1f9",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f2559a18-52d9-47b2-84fd-f89f7db82056",title:"Louis Paul Caron",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:111750114150102,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1067x600/8340ce059e/le-fumoir-2025-55-pouces-danae.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"ouis-Paul Caron, Paris Photo 2025, Incendies series, AI art, climate change art, digital art, contemporary art, DANAE gallery, environmental art, artificial intelligence, French artist, Lyon, climate crisis, moving paintings, algorithmic art, ecological art, art criticism, climate catastrophe, passive observation, collective inertia, Renaissance painting, Old Masters, generative art, video art, Nina Roehrs, digital sector, Lumen Prize, Villa Albertine",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Louis-Paul Caron's AI-generated series Incendies at Paris Photo 2025 explores climate catastrophe through hyper-realistic tableaus of stillness amid disaster."}],_uid:"b801a50f-616b-49ff-a078-9daf54b8d3dc",body:[{_uid:"138a0d81-d48a-4fe3-baf9-631aecfa94d7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Quiet Apocalypsoe: Louis-Paul Caron's Seductive Visions of Collapse",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Paris Photo, the French artist's hyper-realistic, AI-generated tableaus of disaster appear deceptively literal. But beneath their cinematic gloss lies a subtle and unsettling critique of our collective inertia in the face of climate catastrophe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a quiet beauty to the end of the world as envisioned by Louis-Paul Caron. In his
77series Incendies (\"Fires\"), we encounter scenes of immense devastation rendered with the crisp, hyper-realistic finish of contemporary spectacle. In 'Le meeting', suited figures conduct business in a glass-walled boardroom as a city burns outside. In 'Le déjeuner', a couple dines in an elegant restaurant, their intimate meal set against a backdrop of wildfire consuming the landscape beyond and so on.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The initial reading appears straightforward: the world burns while we carry on with our daily rituals. However to arrest the analysis there would be to miss the profound ambivalence at the heart of Caron's practice. These are not didactic warnings but deeply psychological portraits of a world grappling with a crisis so immense it has been absorbed into the texture of everyday life, becoming ambient, almost banal in its persistence.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1ce4e5b8-8eac-40c4-bb67-d1eec724cd82",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111762838501394,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/960x540/67c2f4d4b4/le-tete-a-tete-caron-2025-x540q80.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Paul Caron, tête à tête (still), coutesy the artist and DANAE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e57393e9-8d70-4324-9aae-8c0d9d4517e2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111763096229922,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/960x540/711456038d/le-meeting-caron-2025-x540q80.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Paul Caron, Le meeting (still), coutesy the artist and DANAE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"39a5326d-ccad-408e-986d-f12c72c7d381",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The true subject of Caron's work is not the fire, but the stillness. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here is where his cynicism operates most incisively. His figures are contemplative, detached, their composure functioning as a mirror held up to our own mechanisms of psychic survival. As the artist observes, his work aims to reveal the \"subtle, internalised ways in which we navigate collapse,\" reflecting a condition in which \"distraction and detachment have become survival mechanisms.\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhaustion these works provoke derives from their refusal of consolation. They present what we already know but struggle to articulate: that we sit, that we wait, that we continue our meetings and our meals while the world burns.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e02c21b1-7e1c-4bcf-b26c-79089a72386e",quote:"This is the phenomenology of our present moment, and Caron compels us to witness our own complicity in the stillness.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"fadc32d0-e959-4a9f-845a-a070dd49dca6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The aesthetic perfection ooursef these images intensifies rather than diminishes their critique. These are AI-generated visions that possess the compositional rigor of Old Master paintings (the artist spent time digitally deconstructing Renaissance works from the Louvre to internalize their formal strategies) yet bear the flawless finish of algorithmic production. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The result is a kind of seductive sterility, images that oscillate between beauty and unease. They feel excessively composed, as if catastrophe itself has been subjected to the logic of aesthetic optimization, carefully art-directed for our consumption.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not a stylistic choice but a conceptual strategy. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The images attract us with their formal perfection even as they indict us with their content, replicating the very dynamic they depict: we are drawn to the spectacle of disaster, yet remain structurally positioned as passive observers. By creating what he terms \"moving paintings\" (living tableaus in which time appears suspended) Caron constructs a in-between space that refuses easy interpretation. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The works \"open a space,\" as the artist explains, \"to question, to feel, and perhaps to see ourselves mirrored in the silence of those who sit and watch the climate burn.\" Yet this space is draining, precisely because it enacts a kind of affective loop: we are confronted with our own passivity, recognize ourselves in these figures, and yet remain fundamentally unchanged by the encounter.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work resists easy celebration or recuperation. It is not concerned with issuing warnings but with articulating a more difficult truth: that the true catastrophe is of course not be the fire itself, but our capacity to sit calmly and observe it, to frame it as another image, another view through the window. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"465884af-3df2-4e4b-8cca-935005f42caf",quote:" Caron understands that we have become spectators to our own extinction, and his images perform this spectatorship with uncomfortable clarity.",author:"",component:"quote"}
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Just like we always do. The work does not DABNAE escape from this condition. It simply makes it visible, and in doing so, forces us to confront the exhausting reality of living in a perpetual present tense of catastrophe, where action has been replaced by an aestheticized paralysis.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Paris Photo, until 16th November--DANAE",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-11-12 00:00",name:"The Quiet Apocalypse÷Louis-Paul Caron's Seductive Visions of Collapse",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"30037a79-299f-4299-873c-375eb8698a3b",color:"#713d21",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"800242b2-16c5-448d-a0d3-4ef6770b8afc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111750114150102,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1067x600/8340ce059e/le-fumoir-2025-55-pouces-danae.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Paul Caron, Le Fumoir ,2025, courtesy the artist and DANAE",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"louis-paul-caron",full_slug:"directory/reviews/louis-paul-caron",sort_by_date:null,position:-640,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"ab0d122e-b30a-45b3-bab6-6dfc93b7fd4d",first_published_at:"2025-11-12T19:44:12.095Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true}]},slug:"paris-art-week",full_slug:"directory/focus/paris-art-week",sort_by_date:null,position:-10,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:93876722978922,meta_data:null,group_id:"08e40b06-5919-4940-9d06-4c694562b05d",first_published_at:"2025-10-20T23:16:27.722Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"London Art Week",created_at:"2025-10-07T09:06:52.275Z",published_at:"2025-10-17T13:22:17.546Z",updated_at:"2025-10-17T13:22:17.562Z",id:98870936704264,uuid:"5a078aaf-720b-4d91-9a0a-37a4fd4e1e91",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"0047a1a2-c042-46c0-bf34-5576826ca339",title:"London Art Week",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},keywords:"London, art-week, Frieze, UK",priority:"0.8",component:"SEO",description:"London at a Crossroads: Radical Ideas or Decorative Decline?"}],_uid:"9a48e4df-d10a-4566-97f2-e34619740657",date:"October 2025",name:"London at a Crossroads:÷Radical Ideas or Decorative Decline?",component:"focus",color_dark:{_uid:"6d0b23a8-5256-452a-8da5-658cfa0c7cd8",color:"#c5fe0d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"73e2f207-e44f-489c-a34c-c67b887b63c4",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98884063673677,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1759x989/969587e415/still-6-from-the-bastard-fields-most-dismal-swamp.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"image Most Dismal Swamp",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],artist_list:[],color_light:{_uid:"605d0f36-ba26-44bf-acad-813d3343b8d3",color:"#c5fe0d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},teaser_long:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The old world is not yet dead, and the new world is not yet truly born. This in-between dynamic defines London's art sceneâwhere exceptional seeds of the future bloom in exhibitions in the city, and even within the fair itself, certain stands prove relevant along side the very clever sculpture park curated by FatoÅ Ãstek, while much of the main tent remains very precautious, if not too cool for school.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Frieze Week has returned to London, bringing with it the usual circus and influx of collectors, curators, and art world egos. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But this year, something feels different. Across the city, remarkable exhibitions grapples seriously with what it means to live in 2025âwhere technology is no longer a novelty but a part of the hybrid ecosystem we now live in.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Nevertheless, the Frieze fair remains partly crystallized, the British capital must choose: embrace radical thinking or risk becoming boring for the first time in its history.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},teaser_short:"The old world is not yet dead, and the new world is not yet truly born.",highlight_list:["23daf514-479e-4dfa-b3e0-6c52d47a0c6a","98f88e0d-fc7c-49f7-bddc-c80ffbe71c41","02b9ca88-b55f-45f1-ba75-85257c9ef21a"],highlight_format:["121"],featured_interview:[],reviews_essays_list:[{name:"Frieze Sculpture 2025: Timur Si-Qin's Prophetic Vision in the Shadows",created_at:"2025-10-07T09:13:13.282Z",published_at:"2025-10-14T06:42:34.322Z",updated_at:"2025-10-14T06:42:34.337Z",id:98872497316095,uuid:"095571b7-80f6-4aa7-8432-f879038ecf10",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"0daccb5a-c895-4286-b2ae-e66327c00aa5",title:"Frieze Sculpture 2025:Timur Si-Qin reshapes myth and ecology at Frieze Sculpture Park â where prophecy meets nature in a world beyond belief",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},keywords:"Frieze Sculpture 2025, Timur Si-Qin's ",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Discover how Frieze Sculpture 2025 transforms shadows into art in London's Regent's Park. Free exhibition featuring 14 international artists. Sept 17 - Nov 2, 2025."}],_uid:"4f99478a-bb87-43f1-9ba5-1c2b6978dea5",body:[{_uid:"2e24f5d9-d72b-4180-9697-d957f34725c4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Every autumn, London's Regent's Park transforms into a sanctuary of contemporary art, hosting Frieze Sculpture, an event that, year after year, pushes the boundaries of outdoor creation. But the 2025 edition is an exceptional vintage, one that will remain etched in memory. A unified curatorial vision, carried by the brilliant FatoÅ Ãstek, breathes new life into this sculptural journey. Under the poetic and prophetic title \"In the Shadows,\" the exhibition invites us to a bold exploration of what eludes the light, of what whispers in the interstices of the visible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Vision of FatoÅ Ãstek",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FatoÅ Ãstek, in her third year at the helm of Frieze Sculpture, accomplishes a veritable tour de force. By introducing a unifying theme, she transforms a simple presentation of monumental works into an intellectual and sensory experience of rare coherence. \"'In the Shadows' offers a curatorial perspective that embraces the unknown, the concealed and the forgotten,\" she explains. \"Shadows are zones of potential, where stories unfold quietly yet powerfully, often out of sight.\" Far from being an ominous portent, the shadow becomes here a generative space, a crucible where memory, material and myth intertwine to reveal buried truths. It is an invitation to see beyond appearances, to seek the \"seeds of change\" in what is usually ignored.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Timur Si-Qin: Architect of a Post-Secular Spirituality",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the heart of this exploration of shadows, a work stands, masterful and overwhelming: \"Last of the Wild and Free (Rhododendron calophytum)\" by Timur Si-Qin. To grasp the full scope of this sculpture, one must first understand the revolutionary artistic vision that animates it. Si-Qin's practice is built around \"New Peace,\" a concept of breathtaking ambitionânothing less than the proposal of a post-secular faith that reestablishes the sacredness of nature in our contemporary globalized and technologically saturated world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Through hyper-real renderings of wilderness and 3D printed sculptures, Si-Qin orchestrates a profound challenge to the traditional distinctions that structure Western thought: natural versus cultural, human versus non-human, organic versus synthetic. His work does not simply blur these boundaries; it dissolves them entirely, revealing them as artificial constructs that have long obscured our understanding of our place within the web of life. Each piece becomes a node in a larger network, an ecosystem of signifiers and distributed meaning systems that collectively seed new narratives for our relationship with the natural world in the 21st century.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"IT is art as cultural software, as spiritual technology. Si-Qin's sculptures function as portals to a reimagined consciousness, one in which the sacred is not relegated to distant temples or abstract concepts, but recognized in the very fabric of the living world around us. In an era of climate catastrophe and biodiversity collapse, \"New Peace\" offers not escapism but a radical reorientation of values, a pathway toward reconnection with what we have forgotten.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Last of the Wild and Free\": An Elegy in Steel",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The sculpture itself is a feat. Of striking monumentality (216 x 219.4 x 176.3 cm, weighing 470 kg), this stainless steel structure represents a Rhododendron calophytum. But not just any one. Si-Qin has chosen to portray the wild version of the plant, rangier and less ornamental than the one in our gardens, a version whose character is shaped by \"deep ecological entanglement.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"12ed50e4-4ad4-40d3-9a52-e522ca437cbe",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98873855990261,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1290x726/6ed457e3aa/1-last-of-the-wild-and-free-courtesy-albion-jeune.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Timur Si-QIN, Last of the Wild and Free ,Courtesy of Albion Jeune",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cf1f09fd-94f7-4bd3-9a30-6259d0e2ff88",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work is conceived as a \"pre-emptive elegy,\" a monument to a form of life that, although not yet classified as endangered, is becoming increasingly rare in its natural habitat. It is a memorial for what still exists, but for how long? The sculpture thu
77s becomes the receptacle of a memory, that of an untamed nature that we are gradually forgetting. It perfectly embodies the exhibition's theme: in the shadow of our consciousness, a relationship with the wild is vanishing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, the \"New Peace\" philosophy manifests with particular poignancy. By rendering this wild rhododendron in stainless steelâa material simultaneously industrial and eternalâSi-Qin collapses the distinction between the organic and the synthetic. The sculpture is neither a faithful reproduction nor a stylized abstraction, but something more profound: a new form of being that exists at the intersection of nature and culture, preservation and transformation. It asks us to reconsider what it means to honor the natural world. Is it enough to preserve specimens in botanical gardens, domesticated and controlled? Or must we find new ways to carry forward the memory of wildness itself, even as it disappears from the physical landscape?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An Ecosystem of Meaning in Regent's Park",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Placed in Regent's Park, Timur Si-Qin's work enters into dialogue with the thirteen other sculptures selected by FatoÅ Ãstek, creating a journey of unprecedented richness. The exhibition brings together fourteen leading international artists, each offering their own meditation on shadows as both idea and physical phenomenon. From Andy Holden's bronze birdcalls that give voice to absent species, to Reena Saini Kallat's colossal sound sculptures that make audible the inaudible, from Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's powerful tribute to Indigenous memory to Erwin Wurm's spectral garments that haunt the landscape like ghosts of consumer cultureâeach work explores themes of ecological absence, traces of ancestry, bodily imprints and sculptural metaphors.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Burçak Bingöl transforms clay-rich soil from The Regent's Park itself into art, while Henrique Oliveira and Grace Schwindt offer regenerative visions that imagine futures beyond collapse. The sculptures share a common urgency, inviting us to look for what is hidden, to recognize that transformation of absence into presence and silence into expression is not merely aesthetic but existential.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet Si-Qin's contribution stands as a particularly powerful embodiment of Ãstek's visionâa work that synthesizes the exhibition's core concerns through the lens of \"New Peace.\" Where other works gesture toward loss or memory, Si-Qin's rhododendron offers something more: a spiritual technology for navigating our ecological moment, a ritual object that bridges the gap between mourning and action.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Within the larger framework of \"New Peace,\" this sculpture aggregates with Si-Qin's other works across the globe, forming a distributed network of meaning. Each installation, each rendering, each 3D-printed form contributes to an evolving mythology, a collective reimagining of humanity's covenant with the Earth. This is art that thinks in systems, that operates not through singular masterpieces but through constellations of significance that accumulate and resonate across time and space.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By confronting us with the spectral beauty of this steel rhododendron, Timur Si-Qin and FatoÅ Ãstek offer us much more than a simple aesthetic experience. They issue us a call. A call to look into the shadows of our world, to discern the fragile beauty of what is threatened, and to find there, perhaps, the inspiration for a different future. \"Last of the Wild and Free\" is not merely a sculpture; it is a prophetic masterpiece, a beacon in the night that reminds us of the urgency and necessity of rethinking our place in the grand theater of the living.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the context of \"New Peace,\" this work becomes a sacrament, a ritual object that invites us to participate in the creation of new spiritual narratives adequate to our ecological moment.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Free and Accessible Vision",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes Frieze Sculpture 2025 even more remarkable is its radical accessibility. This is the 13th iteration of this celebrated annual public art event, and it remains entirely free to attend. Positioned throughout the historic English Gardens of Regent's Park from 17 September to 2 November 2025, the exhibition coincides with Frieze London and Frieze Masters (15-19 October)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An Essential Pilgrimage",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A visit is essentialânot simply to see, but to be transformed, to contemplate, to reflect, and never to forget. In an era of climate catastrophe and biodiversity collapse, Timur Si-Qin's \"Last of the Wild and Free\" stands as both warning and invitation, elegy and manifesto. It asks us to look into the shadows, to find there not despair but possibility, not endings but the seeds of new beginnings. This is art that matters, art that changes us, art that might yet help us change the world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-08 00:00",name:"Frieze Sculpture Park ÷Timur Si-Qin's Prophetic Vision in the Shadows",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"7b967103-0d10-4732-ab0a-0ba767b4e2d3",color:"#11110d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"7817ba88-ba8e-497e-b9a6-ac0b5869c81f",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98872731904356,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2250/d0f499b031/thumb-en-gros.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Timur Si-Qin, Last of the Wild and Free/Courtesy of Frieze and ALBION JEUNE Gallery, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],color_light:{_uid:"8bbd9dad-efa7-492a-9a41-007e3d4d79a8",color:"#a8aebe",plugin:"native-color-picker"}},slug:"frieze-sculpture-2025-timur-si-qin-s-prophetic-vision-in-the-shadows",full_slug:"directory/reviews/frieze-sculpture-2025-timur-si-qin-s-prophetic-vision-in-the-shadows",sort_by_date:null,position:-30,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"07424063-d5c2-45e5-9a10-445d0b7a9b08",first_published_at:"2025-10-07T09:20:22.097Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Co-Evolution Without End: Eunjo Lee's Trilogy as Living System",created_at:"2025-10-17T08:50:22.725Z",published_at:"2026-08-16T11:55:28.363Z",updated_at:"2026-08-16T11:55:28.379Z",id:102405827510958,uuid:"02b9ca88-b55f-45f1-ba75-85257c9ef21a",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"0fecf2d1-c2bc-4dc9-8c6f-2b6cfe1626df",type:"",title:"Living Systems, Digital Ruins: Eunjo Lee's Perpetual Transformation ",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:102407180798147,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/bc5a262f82/eunjo-lee_the-lullaby-of-the-ruin_2024_still-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"digital art,Eunjo Lee, ",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Eunjo Lee's trilogy visualizes Gaian co-evolution through hybrid creatures and digital landscapes in perpetual transformation. A review for refresh.art."}],_uid:"c5b389a2-6d7e-4adb-937f-17419d296336",body:[{_uid:"9b833c01-4015-4c08-b714-e455d257454b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cycles of Becoming: Eunjo Lee's Gaian Vision",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" at Niru Ratman Gallery (Frieze)",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A meditation on consciousness, ecology, and the digital sublime",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Niru Ratnam gallery presents the complete trilogy of films by South Korean artist Eunjo Lee, screened for the first time as the continuous, unified vision the artist originally intended.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Comprising 'The Lullaby of the Ruins', 'When Forgiving the Sunlight', and 'Before the Shadow Taught the Sun', this triptych offers a moment of sustained contemplation inviting viewers into a world where the distinctions between organic matter, technological infrastructure, and spiritual consciousness begin to blur and ultimately dissolve.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lee has developed a visual language that feels simultaneously ancient and radically contemporary. Drawing upon the sophisticated rendering capabilities of Unreal Engine and Blender, she constructs digital environments of startling beauty and uncanny resonance.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Â Lee's engagement with these technologies is neither celebratory nor critical in any simplistic sense; rather, she recognizes in the digital realm a unique capacity to materialize what theorist Bruno Latour might call a \"parliament of things,\" a space where human and non-human actors can meet on more horizontal terms.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"071242e7-ee0d-46e0-a2c3-8072a83f657f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102415376628346,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3192x1794/76624c8035/eunjo-lee_the-lullaby-of-the-ruin_2024_still4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eunjo Lee The Lullaby of the Ruin (still) 2024,Courtesy of the Artist and Niru Ratnam, London ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4c8fd7ae-c21c-434c-9626-86991e9d7b29",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The trilogy's opening film, 'The Lullaby of the Ruins', establishes the conceptual and aesthetic parameters that will echo throughout the subsequent works. We encounter a landscape marked by environmental collapse, yet one that refuses the easy rhetoric of apocalyptic despair. Instead, Lee presents us with a child mourning the death of a stoneâa gesture that immediately troubles our conventional understanding of what constitutes life, consciousness, and the capacity for loss. The film's inhabitants, creatures that merge rusted metal with antlered vegetation, move through this terrain with a deliberate, almost ritualistic quality, tending to an environment that exists somewhere between ruin and renewal.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ec103782-7e12-4cab-8657-d519ebdbb346",quote:"These hybrid beings represent the first iteration of what becomes a central preoccupation across the trilogy: the dissolution of the human/non-human binary that has structured Western thought since the Enlightenment.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"d525cf12-e70a-450c-9a3f-65ae662f8c01",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102414856346225,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/ec76ec9d23/el_when-forgiving-the-sunlight_2025_10.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eunjo Lee When Forgiving the Sunlight (still) 2025,Courtesy of the Artist and Niru Ratnam, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0c610ae6-9fad-4f85-b0a3-4cc30299f1aa",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"'When Forgiving the Sunlight' deepens and complicates these themes through the figure of Heleah, whose ultimate sacrifice to a monstrous stone entity suggests not tragedy but transformation. The film's title itself carries a theological resonance, evoking acts of grace and redemption, yet Lee carefully avoids any simple religious allegory. Instead, she proposes something more radical: that ruins might function not merely as sites of loss but as thresholds where different forms of existenceâorganic, mineral, digitalâcan interpenetrate and give rise to new configurations of being. The stone that was once \"alive,\" that is now \"dead,\" and that might yet return to life through Heleah's sacrifice, becomes a figure for the endless circulation of matter and energy that characterizes both ecological systems and, increasingly, our digital infrastructures.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e2f1391c-97fd-4a6e-a828-3ca68b3f333c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102416361822874,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2439x1559/32d58d941d/eunjo-lee_before-the-shadow-taught-the-sun_still-2_2025.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eunjo Lee Before the Shadow Taught the Sun (still) 2025,Courtesy of the Artist and Niru Ratnam, London ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"11c11f97-f0a3-4f6e-9d19-c0bfaa4adcf6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The trilogy's conclusion, 'Before the Shadow Taught the Sun', follows this logic to its most extreme articulation. Here, figures that are already hybridâpart-human, part-matterâundergo a final metamorphosis into pure light, a transformation that carries both mystical and technological connotations. In an era where consciousness studies increasingly grapple with questions of artificial intelligence and distributed cognition, Lee's vision of bodies becoming light resonates as more than mere visual poetry. It suggests the possibility of consciousness unmoored from biological substrate, existing instead as pattern, as information, as luminous presence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"68d69d21-4d1a-427c-aa22-645df77cc7ba",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Eternal Return: Cycles Without End",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What distinguishes Lee's trilogy most profoundly is its structural insistence on cyclicality, its refusal of linear narrative closure. The films are ultimately about the never-ending cycles of life and death, and the form of the trilogy itself becomes structurally essential to this vision. By presenting these three works as a continuous whole, Lee creates a temporal loop where endings become beginnings, where death perpetually gives way to new forms of life, and where transformation is revealed not as exception but as the fundamental condition of existence. This is not the closed circle of eternal recurrence but rather a spiral, where each iteration carries forward traces of what came before while opening onto genuinely new possibilities.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this regard, Lee's work resonates powerfully with James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which reconceives Earth not as a passive substrate for life but as a self-regulating, co-evolving system in which living organisms and their inorganic environment constitute a single, dynamic whole. Lovelock's vision challenges the notion of discrete, independent entities, proposing instead that we exist withinâand as part ofâa planetary system in perpetual transformation. Lee's trilogy visualizes this insight with remarkable precision. Her hybrid creatures, her stones that live and die, her cables with nerves and her minerals with blood, all embody the Gaian principle that life and non-life, organic and inorganic, exist not in opposition but in continuous, reciprocal exchange.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The trilogy's cyclical structure mirrors the feedback loops that characterize Gaian systemsâthe endless processes of regulation, adaptation, and co-evolution through which the planet maintains conditions conducive to life. Just as Lovelock demonstrated that Earth's atmosphere is not merely a chemical accident but the product of billions of years of biological activity, Lee suggests that consciousness itself might be understood as an emergent property of complex systems, whether those systems are ecological, technological, or some hybrid of the two. Her films propose that we are not observers of these cycles but participants in them, co-evolving alongside stones, machines, forests, and digital networks in a vast, interconnected web of becoming.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This perspective fundamentally reframes the environmental crisis that haunts the trilogy's post-apocalyptic landscapes. Rather than depicting humanity's separation from nature, Lee shows us a world where such separation was always illusory. The ruins that populate her films are not endings but transitions, sites where one configuration of the Gaian system gives way to another. The mourning child, the sacrificial protagonist, the bodies becoming lightâall participate in transformations that are simultaneously deaths and births, losses and renewals. In this reading, even catastrophe becomes part of the system's capacity for self-organization and adaptation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes this vision compelling rather than complacent is Lee's refusal to romanticize these processes. The slow, meditative pacing of the films, reinforced by their haunting soundscapes, creates a temporal experience utterly at odds with the accelerated rhythms of digital culture. This deliberate slowness is not nostalgic but strategic, creating the contemplative space necessary for viewers to register the philosophical stakes of what they're witnessing. We are invited to sit with discomfort, to acknowledge that co-evolution within a Gaian system does not guarantee human survival in any form we would recognize. The trilogy's perpetual cycles continue regardless of whether we participate in them consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Perhaps most provocatively, the trilogy suggests that advanced technology, far from alienating us from nature or from more holistic ways of being, might actually provide the means to recover forms of consciousness that pre-modern societies took for granted. This is not a naive primitivism but a recognition that digital technologies, particularly those involving artificial intelligence and networked systems, increasingly exhibit propertiesâdistributed agency, emergent behavior, non-hierarchical organizationâthat resonate with both ecological and Gaian worldviews. In Lee's vision, the blood of stones and the nerves of cables are not metaphors but literal descriptions of a world where consciousness permeates matter in all its forms, where the distinction between the living and the non-living becomes a question of degree rather than kind, and where we are always already embedded in systems of perpetual transformation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"7887f987-e640-4ba4-9383-99a030ce3bf2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102418075241295,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2001/4a5a9b4bc9/goldsmiths-cca-eunjo-lee-high-res-15.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view: Eunjo Lee, Before the Shadow Taught the Sun (21 Marchâ4 May 2025) at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art.,Courtesy Goldsmiths CCA, London. photo Rob Harris",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ddb621ae-82ae-4d20-b264-a8cdf964f6fa",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Vision of Radical Interconnectedness",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What emerges from sustained engagement with Lee's trilogy is a vision of radical interconnectedness, one that challenges not only anthropocentrism but the very notion of discrete, bounded entities. The cyclical structure of the workâits insistence on being viewed as a continuous whole, its echoes and repetitions across the three filmsâbecomes the formal embodiment of Lovelock's insight that Earth functions as a single, self-regulating organism. We are not witnessing three separate narratives but rather three perspectives on a single, ongoing process: the perpetual co-evolution of all entities within a living system.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" The trilogy asks us to consider what forms of consciousness, community, and coexistence might become possible if we truly embraced our entanglement with the vast networksâecological, technological, spiritualâthat sustain and constitute us.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In an era defined by ecological crisis, technological transformation, and the urgent need to reimagine our relationship with the more-than-human world, Lee's work arrives as both diagnosis and speculation. It asks us to think in cycles rather than lines, in systems rather than individuals, in co-evolution rather than domination. The ruins that populate her films are not monuments to human failure but evidence of the planet's inexhaustible capacity for transformation. The hybrid creatures that tend these landscapes are not monsters but models for what we might become if we accept our place within the Gaian system rather than imagining ourselves above or outside it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is Lee's first presentation at Frieze, and it marks the London debut for Niru Ratnam gallery at the fair. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The timing feels significant. As the art world continues to grapple with questions of sustainability, technology, and the role of art in an age of planetary crisis, Lee's trilogy offers not answers but something potentially more valuable: a space for contemplation, a visual and conceptual vocabulary for thinking otherwise, and a reminder that the future, like the ruins that populate her films, remains radically open to transformation. In presenting these cycles without end, Lee invites us to recognize that we are not witnessing the death of a world but its perpetual becomingâa process in which we are not observers but active, co-evolving participants.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"15-19 October - Frieze - Niru Ratman Gallery ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-17 00:00",name:"Co-Evolution Without End÷Eunjo Lee's Trilogy as Living System",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"78adc5cb-68f3-4f64-ad36-4f5356412848",color:"#815d38",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"5d5b3d44-30f2-4e4b-87ad-ad44d1128b99",type:"",poster:{i
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Yet, to categorize it as a \"fair\" would be a disservice. This year, more than ever, 1-54 has transcended the commercial imperative to become a site of profound intellectual and aesthetic inquiry. The curated selection presents works of exceptional finesse and sophistication, but it is the ambitious Special Projects program, crowned by Mónica de Miranda's monumental courtyard installation, that truly elevates the discourse, offering a powerful meditation on our collective future.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c02878c4-076f-41ba-b79f-82683e31c5d1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102384439104417,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5000x3327/3d5ca32c8f/courtyard-installation-earthworks-monica-de-miranda-jahmek-contemporary-art.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{alt:"",title:"",source:"",copyright:""},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtyard Installation: Earthworks Mónica de Miranda (Jahmek Contemporary Art)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e1c4b930-6711-441a-a6bd-09934f200b05",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This year's edition is anchored by Mónica de Miranda's breathtaking installation, \"Earthworks,\" which transforms the Somerset House courtyard into a space of radical potential. This is not a sculpture, but a living, breathing ecosystemâa participatory botanical installation that fundamentally rethinks our relationship with the natural world and the very foundations of Western thought. De Miranda has created a \"terrestrial community\" where human and non-human life are presented as intertwined entities, locked in a delicate dance of mutual care and survival. It is a work of immense beauty and profound intelligence, a social sculpture that challenges us to imagine a decolonial future rooted in ecological consciousness.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Portuguese-Angolan artist brings her signature interdisciplinary approach to Somerset House. \"Earthworks\" is not simply an artwork to be observed from a distance, but a space to be inhabited, a call to action that invites visitors to reconsider their place within the broader ecological web. âan exploration of the interconnections between technology, art, and nature, and a meditation on our interdependence with the non-human world. \"Earthworks\" is, without question, the heart of this year's fair, a powerful and timely statement from an artist at the height of her powers.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"4802b241-b54f-48a3-b079-ba0a39158a0e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102386327471058,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2526x1428/93a2f0ac16/romuald-hazoume.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Romuald Hazoumè, courtesy October Gallery, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c919d4c1-3621-422a-bfea-c419c82f43fd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This spirit of critical inquiry is echoed throughout the other Special Projects, which provide a series of immersive and thought-provoking counterpoints to the main fair. Art Comes First's \"The Sartorial Spirit of Punk Tailors\" offers a sharp and stylish exploration of tradition and rebellion, deconstructing the codes of British tailoring through the lens of African craftsmanship. The collective pays tribute to their fathers and the discipline passed down through generations, introducing what they call \"Punk Tailoring\"âa philosophy of precision, care, and defiance. Garments are built, deconstructed, and rebuilt, honoring Savile Row's legacy while breaking conventions of dress. Spanning multiple rooms, the installation immerses viewers in its philosophy, creating a dialogue between heritage and innovation that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bc20be61-1b26-47bb-9177-ed241c898518",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102387398018027,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x1500/74ddea7b41/3-the-weave-of-resistance-jpg.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Weave of Resistance. Image Credit: Art Comes First / Kristen Moleman ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"82b31ad5-d5d2-4f5f-bd33-50a9c70fc4a2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102388952294443,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1548x1800/cb898b6120/cyrus-kabiru-the-dutch-mask-2025-mixed-media-sculpture-30-x-15-cm-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-akka-project.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Cyrus Kabiru, The Dutch Mask, 2025, Courtesy of the Artist and AKKA Project",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0e6c4ecc-6d2d-41a3-9543-3a380b35f71a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What emerges from the 13th edition of 1-54 is a powerful sense of an art world that is not on the periphery, but is actively shaping the central conversations of our time. The fair is a testament to the fact that the most exciting, most innovative, and most important art being made today is coming from artists who are grappling with the complex legacies of colonialism, the urgent challenges of the climate crisis, and the fundamental questions of what it means to be human in the 21st century. The works on display demonstrate an exceptional level of refinement and intellectual sophistication, moving far beyond simplistic narratives or aesthetic gestures to engage deeply with the pressing issues of our moment.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3b385409-9798-4afe-8ef5-07204bd6a572",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102389515932733,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7087x5265/5375d08d7e/gavin-goodman-ubuntu-2-2024-digital-artwork-160-x-120-cm-edition-of-7-courtesy-of-filafriques.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gavin Goodman, Ubuntu 2, 2024, Courtesy of FILAFRIQUES",auto
77play:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"39155b87-2380-4114-bdd7-c9fd7a8a38ec",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"1-54 is a vital forum for ideas, a celebration of artistic excellence, and a beacon of hope for a more just and beautiful world. In an era where art fairs can often feel like commercial exercises divorced from genuine artistic inquiry, 1-54 stands apart as a space of genuine intellectual engagement and aesthetic achievement. The Special Projects in particular demonstrate what is possible when curators and artists are given the freedom to think expansively, to take risks, and to create work that challenges audiences to see the world differently. This is art that matters, art that makes a difference, art that reminds us why we need culture in the first place.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Somerset House, London",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"16â19 October 2025",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-17 00:00",name:"The Measure of All Things÷1-54 London Reasserts its Critical Edge",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"47a955b3-b9d7-427e-b89d-ca7210d8d81c",color:"#6b334c",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"1c2f71dc-fd20-475a-837a-f0aee5b4922b",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102381505106755,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7000x5250/5f051727a9/j-installation-views-of-jean-katambayi-s-afrolampes-at-m-hka-m-hka-we-document-art.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation views of Jean Katambayiâs Afrolampes at M HKA © M HKA & We Document Art",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"1_54",full_slug:"directory/reviews/1_54",sort_by_date:null,position:-250,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"b5ad23e9-b846-45d3-b945-3d59c93b3e6f",first_published_at:"2025-10-17T07:45:24.835Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Paradigm shift",created_at:"2025-10-10T02:24:43.104Z",published_at:"2025-10-16T07:20:44.101Z",updated_at:"2025-10-16T07:20:44.119Z",id:99833786825328,uuid:"1f49c5f6-1b60-404a-8dad-07665f2d118a",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"b35566eb-0580-402c-a35c-77d35807a893",type:"",title:"Paradigm Shift",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:99836552347132,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3081x897/72bee9d164/screenshot-2025-10-10-at-04-32-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Sophia Al-Maria, Meriem Bennani, Dara Birnbaum, Foday Dumbuya, Cao Fei, Tremaine Emory, Nan Goldin, Arthur Jafa, Derek Jarman, JulianKnxx, Mark Leckey, Josèfa Ntjam, Pipilotti Rist, Martine Syms, TELFAR, Ryan Trecartin, Gillian Wearing and Andy Warhol.",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"\"Paradigm Shift\" at 180 Studios unites radical ideas and innovation â redefining the intersection of tech, art, and activism"}],_uid:"3dcb0a28-0dbe-429f-a37f-9cdcc1b040b8",body:[{_uid:"2eef3029-8194-472e-9175-3f71aadb602f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A celebration of creative liberation that invites deeper reflection.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The latest exhibition at 180 Studios, \"Paradigm Shift,\" presents an ambitious curated survey of moving image culture from the 1970s to today. The roster of artists alone is remarkable:
77Sophia Al-Maria, Meriem Bennani, Dara Birnbaum, Foday Dumbuya, Cao Fei, Tremaine Emory, Nan Goldin, Arthur Jafa, Derek Jarman, JulianKnxx, Mark Leckey, Josèfa Ntjam, Pipilotti Rist, Martine Syms, TELFAR, Ryan Trecartin, Gillian Wearing, and Andy Warhol. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is a constellation of some of the most visionary and influential voices in contemporary moving image practice, spanning generations and continents, each having fundamentally shaped how we understand the relationship between screens, bodies, and culture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fd2b7855-326b-4e53-8d75-b21e029a8de2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101857394359882,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/640x480/8321df54d9/birnbaum_technology-jpg.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Copyright © Estate of Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy Estate of Dara Birnbaum, Marian Goodman Gallery and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0c791ca8-f400-45ff-be8a-2e59b49439dc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The quality of the works on display is exceptional. From Warhol's pioneering experiments with Fashion TV to Arthur Jafa's visceral explorations of Black visual culture, from Pipilotti Rist's immersive video environments to Ryan Trecartin's frenetic digital narratives, the exhibition brings together iconic works that have genuinely transformed the medium. These are not simply historical artifacts but living, breathing works that continue to resonate with urgency and power. The inclusion of new commissions by 180 Studios alongside these canonical pieces creates a dynamic dialogue between past and present, demonstrating the enduring relevance of these artistic investigations.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0ed817b9-b473-4447-b767-1687a8b21920",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101856389172773,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x3000/fe234c4d07/20251015_124928.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"© Andy Warhol T.V. Productions, Fashion: Debbie Harry and Friends, 1979- Install shot by RTP",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f91289d6-451f-4451-b127-1c86875b54d7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition traces what it describes as \"multiple revolutions within moving image culture\".",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The show successfully demonstrates how artists have consistently pushed against boundaries using the technologies available to them, from Super 8 and VHS to digital hyperconnectivity. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The central thesis is optimistic and empowering: we are witnessing a new moving image revolution, one where traditional gatekeepers no longer control access to creation and distribution.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As the press release states, 180 Studios positions itself as \"an incubator for the next generation of artists, innovators and content creators, no longer beholden to bureaucratic media and cultural gatekeepers.\" The exhibition celebrates this liberation, presenting a compelling narrative arc from Warhol's Fashion TV in the 1970s to TELFAR TV today, suggesting that \"the screen is a stage where everyone can be a broadcaster, commentator, performer, and artist.\" This message resonates powerfully: the tools are now in everyone's hands, the barriers have fallen, and a more democratic future of image-making awaits.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is an inspiring narrative, and the exhibition succeeds in presenting a rich visual history of artistic rebellion and innovation. The works themselves are testaments to the transformative power of creative vision when combined with technological possibility.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"c72e5b38-d2d7-41e1-94dd-41f36f59f239",poster:{id:101858356895325,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1890x1014/1cfabd598c/screenshot-2025-10-15-at-20-41-54.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:101857851960918,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/8640d11c38/20251015_123828.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"© Pipilotti Rist - Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, Luhring Augustine and videoart.ch / **, ****",autoplay:true,component:"media"},{_uid:"312ef72f-17e1-49e3-8056-fd173fbf69b3",quote:" However, the very excellence of these works also invites us to consider whether the paradigm shift might be more complex than the story of liberation suggests. ",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"a2cb02ca-b2da-41db-86bf-0b0a851213a8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101859079487079,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x3000/f83999068b/20251015_124443.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy and © TELFAR",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b91d8528-740f-4200-ae38-93c7187f52c4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"While it is certainly true that anyone can now upload content, create videos, and broadcast themselves, this accessibility does not automatically translate into equal visibility, influence, or the kind of cultural impact achieved by the artists in this exhibition. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The traditional gatekeepersâpublishers, curators, broadcastersâhave not simply disappeared. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rather, they have been joined, and in many ways replaced, by new forms of mediation: algorithms, platform architectures, and attention economies that operate in ways that are often more opaque than the \"bureaucratic media and cultural gatekeepers\" of the past. The question becomes: in a world where everyone can create, how do works of genuine artistic merit rise to visibility?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet there is perhaps an even more fundamental question raised by the exhibition, one that goes beyond who controls access to creation and distribution. The real paradigm shift may not be about the democratization of image-making at all, but about the fundamental transformation of what a moving image is and how we experience it in the digital age. The exhibition's title and narrative suggest a linear progression, a series of revolutions building upon one another. But the digital layer has fundamentally altered the nature of linearity itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the contemporary media landscape, there is no longer a single, discrete moving image that exists in isolation. Everything has become entangled, multidimensional, and networked. The moving image itself has become a living, constantly evolving entityâautogenerative, responsive, even autonomous. Contemporary works exist not as fixed sequences but as systems in perpetual motion, generating new configurations, adapting to viewer interactions, and circulating through networks in ways that escape authorial control. The image is no longer a stable object to be contemplated but a dynamic process that unfolds differently each time it is encountered.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When we encounter a moving image today, we do not simply watch it from beginning to end. We pause it, we screenshot it, we remix it, we comment on it in real time, we see it fragmented across multiple platforms simultaneously. The image exists not as a linear sequence but as a node in an infinite web of references, responses, and recontextualizations. Every frame is a potential meme, every sound a sample, every narrative a starting point for countless divergent interpretations. The viewer is not merely a passive recipient or even an active creatorâthey are a navigator of a vast, interconnected space where meaning is constantly being constructed and deconstructed across multiple dimensions.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This autogenerative quality of contemporary moving images represents a profou
77nd shift in the ontology of the medium itself. Images now possess a kind of agency, circulating and mutating according to algorithmic logics that operate beyond human intention. They are in constant movement, not just within their own frames but across networks, platforms, and contexts. This is the true paradigm shift: not simply about freedom from gatekeepers, but about inhabiting a fundamentally different kind of media realityâone where every image is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, where authorship is diffused, where the very concept of a singular \"work\" becomes increasingly fluid and unstable, and where images themselves seem to possess a life of their own.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"460fbf2c-96a7-4428-b3cc-8d43e6a8f960",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101860304531058,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2160x1574/b8b7c3fd2a/artist-grid.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8b744b23-8024-4b12-9936-c340e7ad447b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In conclusion, \"Paradigm Shift\" is a triumph of artistic excellence. The quality of the works on display is outstanding, and the exhibition offers an invaluable opportunity to experience some of the most important moving image works of the past five decades in the extraordinary spaces of 180 Studios. Yet it is precisely the exceptional quality of these works that makes the exhibition's framing feel somewhat incomplete. The narrative of liberation from gatekeepers and democratization of creation, while inspiring, risks obscuring the more complex and perhaps less comfortable realities of our current media landscape.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition celebrates the removal of barriers, but the very artists on displayâJafa, Rist, Trecartin, and their peersâachieved their cultural impact not simply because tools became accessible, but through sustained artistic vision, technical mastery, and yes, the support of institutional frameworks that recognized and amplified their work. To suggest that we have moved beyond gatekeepers is to misunderstand the nature of contemporary mediation. We have not eliminated gatekeepers; we have simply made them invisible, algorithmic, and unaccountable.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Moreover, the exhibition's linear narrative of progressive revolutions fails to grapple with the most radical transformation of all: the dissolution of the moving image as a discrete, stable object. The real paradigm shift is not about who can make images, but about what images have becomeâautogenerative, autonomous, in perpetual motion and mutation, existing simultaneously everywhere and nowhere in a networked reality that defies the very concept of authorship and ownership that the exhibition implicitly celebrates.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Paradigm Shift\" is essential viewing for anyone interested in the moving image, but perhaps not for the reasons its curators intended. The exhibition succeeds brilliantly in assembling exceptional works, but its stated frameworkâthe promise of liberation and democratizationâfeels like a relic of an earlier, more optimistic moment in digital culture. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The real questions raised by these works are more unsettling: How do we maintain artistic quality and critical discourse in an attention economy? What does authorship mean when images circulate autonomously? And if the paradigm has truly shifted, why are we still using the old vocabulary of liberation to describe it? These are the questions the exhibition opens up, even as its official narrative tries to close them down.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by Jefferson Hack and Mark Wadhwa",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Associate Curator: Susanna Davies-Crook",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curatorial Advisor: Sean Bidder",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"15 October - Saturday 21 December",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"180 Studios ,London",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-14 00:00",name:"Paradigm Shift exhibition at 180 Studios ÷ Where the Revolution Meets the Incubator",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"6df1b28c-9992-4048-930e-55c390dd603c",color:"#bba44c",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"0ff765e1-d6ff-4da5-b2cb-d5aa74320f93",type:"",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101796591991046,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2992x2236/198ee60980/copy-of-copy-of-ep1_3.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Stills from Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, 2 Lizards, 2020. Courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"paradigm-shift",full_slug:"directory/reviews/paradigm-shift",sort_by_date:null,position:-150,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"58c3a88e-f2e2-4d1b-8513-44efc03b92db",first_published_at:"2025-10-10T02:46:50.908Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Authenticity in Echoes: Rachel Macleanâs AI-Generated Reliquaries",created_at:"2025-10-17T12:30:32.572Z",published_at:"2025-10-17T16:36:50.612Z",updated_at:"2025-10-17T16:36:50.632Z",id:102459935051454,uuid:"91f1837c-712c-4691-8350-6b33d0c006ba",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c2c15902-e8b2-430e-9a1d-49f2121ad090",type:"",title:"Authenticity in Echoes: Rachel MacLeanâs AI-Generated Reliquaries",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:102461445966040,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1064x1103/a2a33e23f8/screenshot-2025-10-17-at-14-16-39.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Rachel Maclean ,Frieze London 2025, AI art, contemporary sculpture, Josh Lilley Gallery, artificial intelligence art, Victorian aesthetics, generative AI, Scottish artist, FACT Liverpool, contemporary art, technology and art ,authenticity and imitation , 21st century art",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"cottish artist Rachel Maclean unveils AI-generated sculptural totems at Frieze London, drawing parallels between Victorian microscopes and modern artificial intelligence."}],_uid:"6bfe41c0-70e3-4ee0-befe-1eba15839b75",body:[{_uid:"720f2edd-9065-4d08-a06d-8a7830902aeb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When Machines Dream of Porcelain",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Frieze London, Scottish artist Rachel MacLean unveils a new body of work that brilliantly collapses historical wonder with digital anxiety. Presented by Josh Lilley Gallery, her glowing sculptural totems are not just objects of beauty, but complex reliquaries for our techno-saturated age, questioning the very nature of authenticity in an era of artificial intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rachel MacLean has built a career on a distinctively saccharine and sharply critical aesthetic, dissecting contemporary culture through video, print, and installation. Her latest works, showcased at Frieze London, mark a significant evolution, moving into sculpture to give physical form to the immaterial anxieties and fascinations surrounding AI. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These pieces, with enigmatic titles like âO! They greet you ys ye\"",type:"text"},{text:", are hybrid objects, meticulously crafted amalgams of past and present. They stand on ornate, dark bases reminiscent of Victorian furniture, rising through glowing platforms of green printed circuit boards (PCBs) and brass fittings, and culminating in hand-blown glass domes. Within these bell-jar-like structures, pristine white porcelain figurinesâcherubs and classical figuresâare frozen in delicate arrangements, bathed in the warm, incandescent glow of integrated bulbs.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"426ab41e-1b1a-41f0-80be-8e8c924fe6b2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102463951595892,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1086x1626/5b03d373d0/rachel-mclean.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rachel McLean,Every ego to thus, 2025, courtesy the artist and Josh Lilley Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d2ae2cc1-ce67-4764-90d9-b64ff718dd79",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102464155650431,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1064x1612/e8090ba5ae/rachemmclean.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rachel McLean, Ogre vey youth ese t,, 2025, courtesy the artist and Josh Lilley Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1b1c9f37-2469-4446-a72c-afd2eb962a71",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The central thesis of MacLeanâs new work is a fascinating historical parallel: she connects the pattern-recognizing algorithms of modern AI to the Victorian-era microscope boom. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the 19th century, the newfound ability to gaze into the unseen microscopic world sparked not only scientific advancement but also a wave of fantastical belief in fairies and ethereal realms. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Maclean suggests we are living through a similar moment. AI, with its opaque, black-box processes, functions as our contemporary microscope, reveal
77ing hidden patterns in data and creating worlds that feel both magical and unnerving. In her own words, she is interested in âthe ways in which the discovery of these unseen worlds kind of cracked openâ a space for illusion and wonder. By tapping into this historical precedent, Maclean critiques the fantasies and fears we project onto AI today, framing it as a âgazing pool of echoing reflectionâ that mirrors our own desires and biases back at us.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This theme of reflection is deeply entwined with the concepts of authenticity and imitation. The sculptures are a masterclass in material symbolism. The porcelain figures are themselves copies of copies, industrially produced imitations of a romanticized classical past. They represent a history of reproduction, standing in stark contrast to the perceived authenticity of the functional, technical circuit boards they are mounted on. Yet, Maclean subverts this by stripping the PCBs of their function, transforming them into purely decorative backdropsâa pattern as ornamental as any floral wallpaper.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This conceptual loop is tightened by the artistâs creative process. In collaboration with the studio Considerate Digital for a project titled Waltz of the Faeries Rising, Maclean trained AI models on her own extensive back-catalogue. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"She effectively created a machine to imitate herself, a digital doppelgänger that can generate images in her unique style. This act of automated self-imitation dissolves the binary between the authentic artist and the artificial copy, posing a profou
77nd question: where does originality lie when the artistâs hand is extended by an algorithm trained on her own soul?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ultimately, MacLean's new sculptures are not a simple polemic against technology. They are deeply nuanced, seductive, and unsettling objects that function as critical mirrors. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By tapping into the same sense of wonder and illusion that Victorian microscopes once sparked, Maclean exposes the fantasies and fears we project onto AI today.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Her work suggests that our breathless predictions of artificial consciousness, our anxieties about technological replacement, and our quasi-religious faith in algorithmic solutions are less about the technology itself than about our need to populate the unknown with meaning. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These glowing totems capture our tendency to anthropomorphize the incomprehensible, to see sentience where there are only patterns, to find magic where there is mathematics. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Just as the Victorians, glimpsing microorganisms for the first time, conjured fairies to explain the inexplicable, we conjure myths of superintelligence and digital souls. MacLean's sculptures are technological reliquaries that hold up a mirror to this projection, revealing that our fascination with the ghost in the machine is not new. It is a recurring echo, a timeless human desire to find enchantment in the unseen. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"We are the Victorians of our own age, gazing into a new kind of invisible world and, once again, seeing fairies where there are only algorithms.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Frieze - 16-19 October - Josh Lilley Gallery",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1f3663e0-70ee-4673-bac8-94a7e4a95b7b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102465564777010,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1064x1103/f3823fbf50/rachem-mc-lean.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rachel McLean,Every ego theyâre soy tuvey, 2025, courtesy the artist and Josh Lilley Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-17 00:00",name:"Rachel MacLean÷ AI-Generated Reliquaries",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"13038ec5-9ebe-4403-a759-0297872d2062",color:"#0c2507",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"ac049068-2f0d-4f9c-84d4-cf96f0df7605",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102461549938908,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2330x1518/7e33816d7c/screenshot-2025-10-17-at-14-16-14.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rachel MacLean, O! They greet you vs ye. 2025, courtesy the artist and Josh Lilley Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"authenticity-in-echoes-rachel-maclean-s-ai-generated-reliquaries",full_slug:"directory/reviews/authenticity-in-echoes-rachel-maclean-s-ai-generated-reliquaries",sort_by_date:null,position:-280,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"b4a8aa0d-2ca3-49c3-a075-91fafb62d3d1",first_published_at:"2025-10-17T13:12:42.903Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"A Modern Prophecy: Auriea Harvey's Poetic Resistance at Arebyte",created_at:"2025-10-07T09:51:38.174Z",published_at:"2025-10-17T16:44:39.484Z",updated_at:"2025-10-17T16:44:39.501Z",id:98881938160110,uuid:"d3e6b044-425a-4914-8614-804ad518823f",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"d0a8954f-276f-4479-8440-e466598daba1",title:"A Modern Prophecy: Auriea Harvey's Poetic Resistance at Arebyte",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},keywords:"A Modern Prophecy, Auriea Harvey, Poetic Resistance, Arebyte",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Refresh Magazine review of exhibition 'A Modern Prophecy' by Auriea Harvey'sat Arebyte Gallery."}],_uid:"19853f6b-5666-4416-85a3-d7427ba22bca",body:[{_uid:"4a52df81-fad6-4813-a829-108a3d626d03",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Pioneering digital artist Auriea Harvey channels the spirit of William Blake to offer a powerful and necessary critique of our algorithmic age.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" PROPHECY is a profound spiritual journey, a call for empathy in a fractured world, and a masterful demonstration of how to bend the tools of our technological overlords into instruments of poetic resistance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Arebyte's Digital Art Centre in Camden-Harvey's exhibition is an allegorical exploration of grace and unity in an age of disconnection. Curated by Pita Arreola, Arebyte's new Head of Programme and former Curator of Digital Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum, PROPHECY brings together an ambitious arsenal of contemporary technologies: motion capture, holograms, AI-generated choreography, and 3D printing, all woven into an interactive installation that spans three immersive chambers. This is not technology for technology's sake. Rather, as Arreola's curatorial vision makes clear, these are the very tools of our digital subjugation, repurposed and transformed into instruments of liberation and poetic resistance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a5209cbc-c682-4484-b0ce-a9285c0d5cbd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98882185587843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1067/74fe445e90/104_auriea-harvey_prophecy_2025_photo-credit-devika-bilimoria.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Auriea Harvey \"PROPHECY\"photo credit Devika Bilimoria",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"13439796-0f27-42ab-a9ec-fb85e8c29408",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The press release explicitly draws a parallel to the prophetic books of William Blake, and the comparison is anything but superficial. Just as Blake used his illuminated manuscripts to critique the moral and spiritual decay he witnessed during London's first wave of tumultuous, exploitative urbanization, Harvey confronts the disembodying and pacifying effects of our own era's technological revolution. PROPHECY functions as a counter-strategy to the numbing impacts that AI and social media have on our perception of reality. It calls for nothing less than a rediscovery of spirituality and the empowerment of collective action as a means of emancipation from algorithmic control. Harvey offers a poetic resistance to digital opacity, proposing that prophecy in the 21st century is not about prediction, but about feeling, embodiment, and transforming the very tools that govern us.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Harvey, a Rome-based American artist, has built a career on bridging the virtual and the physical. From her early days as a net art pioneer and co-founder of the influential game studio Tale of Tales, to her current practice of creating sculptures from 3D scans, digital models, and 3D prints, she has always treated the digital as a material to be molded and imbued with meaning.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"00689aad-6d22-4902-964a-c72a8dbae10b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98882185641094,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1067/aad33fe3ff/jqxwjocqauriea-harvey_prophecy_2025_photo-credit-devika-bilimoria_.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Auriea Harvey \"PROPHECY\"photo credit Devika Bilimoria",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"50031060-33dd-425a-a54a-02b743e6e5fc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This exhibition represents the culmination of that practice. It is a complex, immersive system that weaves together figures from Catholic faith and Greek mythology to diagnose the virtues and flaws of a society increasingly ruled by opaque technological frameworks.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition unfolds as a pilgrimage through three distinct chambers, each deploying these technologies in service of a larger spiritual and political argument. The journey begins in a landscape of chaos, a \"forsaken city\" dominated by the ruins of RED RAM I and RED RAM II, two digitally sculpted idols whose fragmented forms are splayed across a scaffold of screens. These works exemplify Harvey's hybrid approach: 3D-printed sculptures that exist simultaneously as physical objects and digital projections, their fragmentation speaking to the shattered nature of contemporary experience. This gateway of destruction leads the visitor past a cascade of indecipherable, discarded propheciesâtexts and pictographic symbols that rain down from the ceiling, suggesting the overwhelming flood of information and the impossibility of meaning-making in our data-saturated age.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, we encounter two holographic altars presenting the ghostly, sacrificial figures of Iphigenia and Isaac. The use of holography is particularly potent: these martyred children appear as spectral presences, simultaneously there and not there, embodied and disembodied. Harvey forces a poignant reflection on the real-world suffering of the innocent in our
77contemporary landscape of war and ruin, a suffering often flattened and distanced by the very screens through which we witness it. The holographic medium becomes a metaphor for our mediated relationship to violence and tragedy.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fe8970be-8e3d-4db6-b4a5-a18abadabc82",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From this desolation, one enters a sanctified space. The gallery walls become immense canvases for Harvey's Prophets series, newly commissioned digital animations of Daniel, Elijah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, born from a layered remediation of Biblical passages. These projections, which illuminate two full lengths of the gallery walls, demonstrate Harvey's sophisticated approach to AI-generated choreography and motion capture. The prophets move with an uncanny quality, their gestures at once human and algorithmic, ancient and utterly contemporary. This is where the exhibition's technological complexity truly shines: Harvey has used AI not to replace human creativity, but to generate new forms of movement and expression that feel both familiar and alien, sacred and computational.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the center of this sacred chamber lies an oracle, but it is not one of ancient stone. It is an interactive tablet, Idol.app, where visitors are invited to encrypt their own prophetic warnings. By pressing keys embossed with symbolic fragmentsâeyes, ears, mouths, and other body partsâthe audience engages directly with what Harvey describes as a \"black-box of complexity.\" This brilliant interactive piece perfectly encapsulates the exhibition's central thesis: it represents both the power of technology to direct human action and our profound inability to fully comprehend the systems that shape our individual and collective lives. The oracle becomes a mirror, reflecting our complicity and our powerlessness, while simultaneously offering the possibility of agency through creative engagement.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Under Arreola's curatorial direction, PROPHECY emerges as more than an exhibition; it is Harvey's own prophetic book for our time. Arreola, who co-edited the landmark publication Digital Art: 1960sâNow (Thames & Hudson, 2024), brings a deep historical understanding of digital art practices to this project. Her curatorial framework positions Harvey as a contemporary descendant of Blake, an artist-prophet using the most advanced tools available to critique the spiritual bankruptcy of her age. The exhibition is a deeply moving and intellectually rigorous exploration of the belief systems, both spiritual and algorithmic, that construct our reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7d568175-fdad-4437-a30e-df1bc20c275a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98882185616516,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/500x758/3c52284cfb/screenshot-2025-10-07-at-02-11-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Auriea Harvey \"PROPHECY\"photo credit Devika Bilimoria",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"df0114ad-5bd4-4fca-84f8-ade5ef4272dd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes PROPHECY so vital is its refusal of easy technological determinism. Harvey does not reject technology; she wrestles with it, bends it, makes it speak in new tongues. By seamlessly blending motion capture with holography, AI-generated choreography with 3D printing, the ancient with the cutting-edge, the mythological with the technological, Auriea Harvey has crafted an urgent and necessary exhibition. It is a powerful reminder that art's greatest strength lies not in providing easy answers, but in asking the most profound questions and creating the space for us to feel our way toward our own revelations. In an age of digital pacification, PROPHECY is a call to awakening.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"82331bd3-da72-405c-b32d-5077871c31b2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"12 September 2025 â 21 December 2025",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Arebyte, 25-27 Camden Road, London",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-09-14 00:00",name:"A Modern Prophecy÷Auriea Harvey's Poetic Resistance at Arebyte",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"4944f02e-a85e-4ab2-89ad-085e5a1812e3",color:"#151040",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"b9c1b2c5-ba53-4623-84b1-b810fc41f751",poster:{i
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A powerful exhibition "}],_uid:"e77977e2-46ef-44d6-a101-5ed30aaa1029",body:[{_uid:"e5fd1e96-0ae9-465c-92d5-885855fafdde",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A new video game commission and multiplayer immersive experience from Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley that explores themes of polarisation, censorship and social connection.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6b169f88-5bda-48eb-984b-e1d7c7d2f3a1",quote:"Letâs have the difficult conversations",author:"Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley",component:"quote"},{_uid:"9088ecb9-9760-4688-99b3-9fe936d2f226",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98878471404357,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1502x1001/faf7db86ef/the-delusion-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-2025-commissioned-and-produced-by-serpentine-arts-technologies-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-photography_-hugo-glendinning-the-delusion-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-2025-commissioned-and-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"THE DELUSION, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2025. Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. © Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, photography: Hugo Glendinning",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8f7bce02-ae02-48ba-a540-cb073daff802",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Serpentine wants you to play video games with strangers and have difficult conversations about polarisation. Yes, really. And somehow, it works and it's actually good. In fact, this might be the best thing the Serpentine has ever done.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The premise is absurd. Visitors play modified arcade gamesâincluding Monkey Ball, wonderfullyâwhile being prompted to discuss societal division. The gallery becomes a \"live theatrical space.\" You have to agree to Terms and Conditions before entering. It sounds like a nightmare. It isn't.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here's what Brathwaite-Shirley has done: she's created a fictional post-apocalyptic world called \"Below the Blue Line\" where society has fractured into closed, dogmatic factions. Each faction clings to its own version of truth, its own community, its own survival strategy. Sound familiar? It should. This isn't science fictionâit's satire. It's our world, just with the volume turned up.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this imagined future, the 'Peace by Isolation' has taken hold. Everyone has retreated into their bubbles. No one talks to anyone outside their tribe. It's bleak, absurd, and devastatingly timely. The exhibition uses this dystopian framework not to lecture, but to create what Brathwaite-Shirley calls a \"live community play\"âa space where the fictional nightmare becomes a mirror for our actual reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The genius is in how it combines satire and absurd humour with cooperative gaming. You're not just watching a cautionary tale about polarisationâyou're living it, laughing at it, and then being asked to do something about it. The games require cooperation. The prompts make you uncomfortable. The whole thing acknowledges its own absurdity while insisting you take it seriously anyway. It's participatory theatre that doesn't take itself too seriously, which is exactly why it succeeds.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This isn't just conceptual posturing. Brathwaite-Shirley's work has always been about preserving histories that are being erased, creating futures for communities told they have none. The \"human engine\" phrase sounds like Silicon Valley nonsense, but what she's actually asking is: how do we process collective trauma? How do we have conversations our society has decided are too difficult?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"45546dbf-bb58-4c26-8c5c-c0cc4759e383",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98878471338820,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1502x1001/442b65581d/the-delusion-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-2025-commissioned-and-produced-by-serpentine-arts-technologies-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-photography_-hugo-glendinning-the-delusion-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-2025-commissioned-and-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"THE DELUSION, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2025. Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. © Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, photography: Hugo Glendinning",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0029f1c4-417e-404a-9ea4-ea126db56661",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's fictional dystopia isn't a warning about what might happen. It's satire about what's happening now.We're isolated. We're polarised. We've fractured into dogmatic tribes, each convinced of our own righteousness. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"We've achieved our own version of 'Peace by Isolation,' and it's killing us. If it takes a video game in a gallery to remind us we're capable of more than shouting into echo chambers, fine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The real delusion isn't the one the exhibition critiquesâthe fantasy of peace through isolation. The real delusion is thinking we can solve these problems without discomfort, without sitting with people we disagree with, without the awkwardness of genuine encounter. Brathwaite-Shirley doesn't offer easy answers or promise transformation. She offers a space to pause, to practice, to reconnect. To remember what it's like to be in a room with humans instead of positions.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In an age where most art asks nothing beyond passive consumption and Instagram documentation, there's something radical about work that demands participation. That insists galleries can be places where things happen, not just where things are displayed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Go to the Serpentine this autumn. Play the games. Have the awkward conversations. Sit with the discomfort. Then walk back into Kensington Gardens and ask yourself: is this the future you want?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Because the alternative is already here. The world of \"Below the Blue Line\"âwhere society has broken into closed, dogmatic factions, each clinging to its own version of truthâisn't fiction. It's satire. It's us. We're living in the dystopia Brathwaite-Shirley has imagined, we've just gotten used to it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition asks whether we want a future where we need video games to teach us how to be human with each other. The more uncomfortable question is: do we want a future where we don't even try? Where we accept 'Peace by Isolation' as inevitable? Where we retreat further into our factions, our bubbles, our competing realities?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The answer is probably no. Which means we need spaces like thisâabsurd as they are, awkward as they are, imperfect as they are. Not because art can save us, but because sometimes we need to be reminded that we're capable of more than tribal warfare. That beneath the positions and the politics, we're still humans who can sit in a room together, play a stupid game together, and maybeâjust maybeâtalk to each other.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Is it the future you want? It's certainly better than the one we're heading towards.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"61e1f4a8-4d6b-43aa-b19d-d9aa2c55950e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98878471322435,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1502x1001/336b30c7db/the-delusion-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-2025-commissioned-and-produced-by-serpentine-arts-technologies-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-photography_-hugo-glendinning-the-delusion-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-2025-commissioned-and-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"THE DELUSION, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2025. Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. © Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, photography: Hugo Glendinning",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a5c7a5ac-edf7-438e-958e-815f1ec6fff9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98878233180978,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1502x1001/76b3f95854/the-delusion-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-2025-commissioned-and-produced-by-serpentine-arts-technologies-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-photography_-hugo-glendinning.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"THE DELUSION, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, 2025. Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies. © Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, photography: Hugo Glendinning",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8e9072c8-1cad-48fb-adfd-e48664651eb4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The visual language is a lotâpersonal history, religious symbols, propaganda, horror game aesthetics from Paratopic and The Backrooms. Maybe too much. But there's something refreshing about work that doesn't make itself easily digestible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There's a stained-glass piece about the 'Day of Division'âthe fictional apocalypse that starts the game world. Rendering dystopia in a medium usually reserved for religious martyrdom? Bold. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There are ink drawings, sculptural effigies, a reading space with the zine and sketches. The Serpentine is releasing a monograph with Archive Books. You can already picture it on Shoreditch coffee tables.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But here's the thing: it actually delivers. The exhibition aims to \"rehumanise debates,\" and that's not just empty jargon. In a world where we've reduced each other to avatars, opinions, and tribal affiliations, Brathwaite-Shirley forces you to sit in a room with actual humans and do something together. The cooperative games aren't just funâthey're a mechanism for remembering that the person next to you is a person, not a position.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The space becomes what she calls a \"meeting space\" where players can pause, discuss, and reconnect. It creates conditions for difficult conversations not by forcing them, but by making them possible. The genius of using games is that people have something to do with their hands while saying uncomfortable things. It's why the best conversations happen in cars or while doing dishesâthe activity provides a buffer, a way to manage intensity without avoiding it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"21372c58-884b-475b-b5a7-2b8a083f9394",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98878233185075,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/792x1162/8f3fe4509b/drawing.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"30051431-0111-4d26-a3ca-52897c558b22",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98878233176881,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/776x1154/b387a223c4/drawing-1.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2004d093-5bdc-44f4-bf79-2737c3f8e447",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Brathwaite-Shirley has been developing this approach for years. What's remarkable about \"THE DELUSION\" is how it scales up without losing intimacy. Yes, it's a major institutional commission with dozens of collaborators. Yes, the Serpentine's directors have declared it \"embodies everything Serpentine stands for.\" But somehow, it retains genuine urgency.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And here's something this critic never thought they'd say: this might be the best exhibition the Serpentine has ever mounted. Not the most spectacular, not the most Instagram-friendly, not the one with the biggest names. But the most necessary. The most honest about what art can and cannot do. The most willing to risk failure in pursuit of something that actually matters.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"So is this the future we want? Where we need art institutions to teach us how to talk? Where connection comes through game engines and bespoke controllers? Where even authenticity has Terms and Conditions?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Well, yes. Because the alternative is the world Brathwaite-Shirley has imagined in \"Below the Blue Line\"âand we're already halfway there. Closed factions. Competing truths. Everyone isolated in their own version of reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Delusion is at Serpentine North, London, from 30 September 2025 to 18 January 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: THE DELUSION ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" is curated and led by Tamar Clarke-Brown, Arts Technologies Curator, with Ruth Waters, Arts Technologies Producer, and Vi Trinh, Assistant Arts Technologies Curator, with additional support from Liz Stumpf, Assistant Exhibitions Curator.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Research and development by Serpentine Arts Technologies (led by Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies) and the Future Art Ecosystems initiative (led by Victoria Ivanova, R&D Strategic Lead and Tommie Introna, R&D Producer).",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-09-01 00:00",name:"The Delusion÷Is it the future you want?",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"05c1cd44-e706-4643-bac6-605515f562f3",color:"#02005b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c6e5ac9b-345b-43cf-bb59-59551dd22ab8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98877052734152,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/640x400/9c9950b397/thumb-expositionserpentine.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],color_light:{_uid:"919537a5-5385-4579-8a47-6ba478bcc11d",color:"#c8f5fe",plugin:"native-color-picker"}},slug:"the-delusion-is-it-the-future-you-want",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-delusion-is-it-the-future-you-want",sort_by_date:null,position:-40,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"f5ebedea-db70-4f87-b5ef-35f2f3c7f815",first_published_at:"2025-10-07T09:42:53.564Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"The Glorious Sludge: A Review of Most Dismal Swamp's exhibition 'The Bastard Fields'",created_at:"2025-10-07T09:57:19.801Z",published_at:"2025-10-15T15:05:56.861
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Most Dismal Swamp's 'The Bastard Fields,' curated by Nadim Samman at the Autotelic Foundation's new space, is the kind of art event that makes you wonder if you've accidentally ingested something you shouldn't have. And we mean that in the best possible way.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Upon entering, you're not just in a gallery; you're in a \"mixed-reality biome.\" The centerpiece is the film, The Bastard Fields, a hallucinatory fever dream that feels like a cursed videotape you'd find in a haunted Blockbuster. It's a glorious mess of folk-horror, glitchy futurism, and experimental video art that would make even the most seasoned cynic crack a smile. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d9984bfe-2a5b-4979-8ae8-211d096e08e0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98884063620428,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/02663dff10/still-5-from-the-bastard-fields-most-dismal-swamp.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Still from 'The Bastard Fields' courtesy Most Dismal Swamp",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4773563f-f3c6-4509-8e91-f97b21034ada",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The narrative, if you can call it that, is set in a world suffering from model collapseâthat delightful phenomenon where AI systems, gorging themselves on their own synthetic output, degrade into increasingly homogenous, toxic sludge. It's the algorithmic equivalent of mad cow disease, and Most Dismal Swamp has built an entire cinematic universe around it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this nightmarish terrain, AI hasn't just flooded the zone; it has completely drowned it in biased data and recursive garbage. The film introduces us to what the artist calls \"midification\"âa term so perfectly nauseating it should be in the Oxford English Dictionary by now. We watch as characters variously seek resistance or accommodation with this new reality, stumbling through a landscape where meaning itself has been transformed into sludge by an endless network of creative directors, reality-hustlers, and content producers extracting every last drop of value from the cultural corpse.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9da9fc49-514b-430f-bbd8-75a1802ea3d6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98884063673677,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1759x989/969587e415/still-6-from-the-bastard-fields-most-dismal-swamp.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Still from The Bastard Fields by Most Dismal Swamp",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4fa3f841-c356-4385-a197-336798ac48e2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The cast is a parade of the damned: a bog body plotting escape routes with a scrapheap robot, two creative directors peddling reality presets across a fractured Splinternet, a mystic rabbit livestreaming epistemological sinkholes, an outlaw preacher cultivating his field conventicle, and poor little Brownie getting martyred in the churn. It's content's final convulsion, the clamour and shame of expression at the end of the world. And somewhere in all this chaos, you realize: this says everything about the old world dying, screaming its head off as it goesâand about those tedious, droning, predictable dystopian discourses we've all grown so bored of. The film doesn't just document collapse; it revels in it, finding a perverse beauty in the death throes of consensus reality while simultaneously mocking the tired rhetoric of technological doom.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The installation accompanying the film extends this delightful nightmare into the physical space. Props from the film are scattered around like relics from a civilization that never quite existed, making you feel like you've stumbled onto the set of a low-budget sci-fi horror movie from the 80sâif that movie had been made by someone who spent too much time on obscure Discord servers.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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Not one emotion, but all emotions. Because emotions were deeply deeply unacceptable within my family growing up.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Supposedly negative emotions were quickly shut down âoh sheâs in a sulkâ, âyouâve got a face on youâ, âcheer upâ etc etc. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And positive emotions - joy, excitement, amusement, enthusiasm, awe - were never demonstrated by my parents. Iâm not exaggerating, my mother never even put decorations up at Christmas time. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And in me positive emotions were often ignored, labeled as âtoo muchâ or responded to with a grunt of âwho does she think she isâ, âsheâs too cleverâ, âyouâre not doing that until youâve doneâ¦â.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sounds like fun, right?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"My parents split up when I was five and I lived with my mum. I would have preferred to live with my dad but he would never let me.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"My mumâs home was filled with a grey state of stagnation and a weird kind of neutral depression. That was until she had a drink, when she actually appeared to relax somewhat. She might even smile. Slightly. Letâs not get carried away. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"She drank at least a bottle of wine every night.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The bleak stillness at home was punctuated with unexpected bursts of anger or unex
77plained silent treatment, which left me treading on egg shells most of the time. I was never sure what mood my mum would be in.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"My sister Sally (who passed by suicide in 2019) became the golden child, trying to keep mum happy, doing jobs, always helping out, and making herself invisible. I will never know, but I feel like the golden child label became a heavy burden on Sally as mum became increasingly codependent with her. And Sally never seemed to win the deep affection and unconditional acceptance she spent her short life striving for.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I, on the other hand, took the opposite path. I was labeled a difficult child âbadâ, âsheâs got the devil in herâ, âmanipulativeâ. I took on this mantel with apathy, disobedience and anger. Trying to be good never worked so I might as well be bad. But displaying anger only fed the thorny feedback loop of my familiesâ shadow. Showing anger allowed them to project their shadow - their suppressed emotions - onto me. I was the emotionally dysregulated one, the one who was a little bit âcrazyâ. I held their angers and frustrations like a big bouquet of black flowers, so they could remain neutral: âgood parentsâ and play âhappy familiesâ.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet overtime, I suppressed my emotions and became neutral too. I was a high functioning depressive with bursts of chronic anxiety, emotions wriggling to the surface, not attached to any story, yet clutching at my heart. Drinking too much led to angry outbursts. All of those hidden emotions - my shadow - projected onto my nearest and dearest friends. Oh dear.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Often at school and then uni, people would see me gazing vacantly into space. I knew something wasnât right, but I couldnât feel anything. My shadow was firmly closeted.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I survived and eventually passed through this by escaping into fantasy worlds: art, books, music, raving, quantum physics, alcohol and party drugs. I now rarely drink alcohol or party. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I have undertaken decades of therapy. Iâm completely different now to how I was back then. Now, Iâm like a glittering rainbow of emotions, all jostling around gloriously and for the large part mostly accepted.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is why my artwork is always psychological. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Things fall apart and come back together. Slime oozes out of bodies, creeping. Monsters, hybrids, wilderness and layers and layers of unseen and unheard territories. I become nature. My unruly emotions are natural - to be celebrated and not suppressed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Libby Heaney",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"515a9417-6bcc-478a-a56e-6088d08bfe51",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Libby Heaneyâs âShadowscapesâ exhibition",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Libby Heaneyâs âShadowscapesâ exhibition invites us to explore the unexpected connections between JMW Turner, quantum physics and the self.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Libby Heaney, who is both an artist and a quantum physicist (a combination that, one might enthusiastically, if cynically, observe, is almost too perfect for the contemporary moment), presents her latest exhibition, \"Shadowscapes: Heaney, JMW Turner and Quantum\" at the Orleans House Gallery (Twickenham,UK). ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is no ordinary show;
77 it is a profound, exhilarating masterclass in how to truly perceive the world, and more importantly, the hidden depths within us all. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As the pioneering artist to integrate quantum computing into her artistic methodology as early as 2019, she has consistently delivered works that are as intellectually stimulating as they are visually arresting. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"145256e4-db0c-46e5-97aa-f84da8044a82",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100335869536023,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3746x2500/a6c0c82fbe/shadowscapes-emotional-dumping-ground-_2025_libby-heaney_photo-max-colson-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shadowscapes, Libby Heaney",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ef704709-6dbf-46dc-a924-0f70587d7019",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98880389372892,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1112x616/d76108b343/screenshot-2025-10-06-at-14-11-38.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shadowscapes, Libby Heaney",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"83bc0cce-0c5a-433c-afa9-3e6c7979e4ec",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In \"Shadowscapes,\" Heaney orchestrates an audacious trifecta: the 250th anniversary of JMW Turnerâs birth, the centenary of quantum physics, and the profound psychological theories of Carl Jung. While this confluence might, at first glance, suggest the premise for an academic jest, in Heaneyâs adept hands, it transmutes into a deeply insightful and exploration of light, darkness, and the very fabric of reality. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"She recontextualizes Turner, the undisputed master of the sublime, through the dual lenses of quantum uncertainty and, pivotally, Jungâs concept of the âshadow self.â The resultant experience is one that feels both revolutionary and profoundly intuitive.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The true alchemy of \"Shadowscapes\" resides in its capacity to transform the viewer from a passive spectator into an active participant within a grand, cosmic classroom. Heaney is, unequivocally, teaching us how to see. Through interactive projections, meticulously powered by game engines and quantum data, one is invited to traverse a space where art, technology, and emotion coalesce. One might even find oneself listening to the âsoundâ of a Turner painting, its underlying data translated into an ever-evolving soundscapeâan encounter that, one suspects, offers a privileged glimpse into the cosmosâs more profound secrets.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Heaney deftly connects Turnerâs dramatic interplay of light and shadow not merely to atmospheric phenomena, but to the psychological metaphors of her own \"unruly emotions.\" Utilizing Turnerâs evocative paintings of imagined forces and bodies, Heaney courageously explores her personal âshadow selfâ â those facets of our being that we deem unacceptable and consequently suppress unconsciously. This journey is deeply personal and introspective, yet her psych
77ological observations are so acutely rendered that they invariably prompt us to unearth our own unconscious minds and confront the beliefs we harbor about the aspects of ourselves we typically keep concealed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d55cfeb6-520d-4f95-934b-da7e1ee9f71f",quote:"Accessing our shadow selves is important as when shadows are not in our awareness, we tend to project them onto different groups and nature causing polarisation, domination and division.",author:"Libby Heaney",component:"quote"},{_uid:"63baac57-d0e9-4668-8a2e-2b4316996db2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100335869642521,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3746x2500/16be42bc8a/family-shadow-throat-_2025_libby-heaney_photo-max-colson.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Family Shadow \"Throat\",2025,Libby Heaney,Photo Max Colson",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"81a85448-6d9d-461f-84cb-b4710196ecb1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is far more than an artistic declaration; it is a compelling call to introspection, woven intrinsically into the very fabric of the exhibition. Thus, while one is captivated by the technological prowess and art historical dialogue, one is simultaneously, yet gently, guided toward a moment of crucial self-examination. It is a gesture both generous and brilliant.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To provide a tangible grounding for this intellectual journey, the exhibition thoughtfully includes the very Turner paintings that ignited this conceptual spark: The Vision of Jacobâs Ladder (?) (c.1830), The Hero of a Hundred Fights (1800-10, reworked 1847), and Rocky Bay with Figures (1827-30). Witnessing them within this novel context is nothing short of a revelation. They transcend their status as historical masterpieces, emerging instead as living data, intricately entangled with quantum physics and our collective psychology.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Shadowscapes\" is, without hyperbole, an indispensable experience. It is a potent, and indeed, enthusiastically cynical, testament to artâs capacity to transcend aesthetic contemplation. Heaney is not simply offering a metaphor; she is, with audacious brilliance, prescribing the antidote to five centuries of Cartesian dualism and human exceptionalism. Her work, far from merely challenging perceptions, actively points toward a genuinely post-anthropocentric future. Go forth, and allow Libby Heaney to illuminate the world in all its dark, light, and quantum splendor. You will depart feeling a touch more connected to the grand tapestry of the universe, and considerably more awestruck by the artist who is not only constructing bridges between disparate fields, but perhaps even charting the course for humanity's next great leap in-and-humbling intellectual leap.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dates: 9 October 2025 â 1 March 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Location: Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham (United Kingdom)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"06826d78-475a-4d4e-ad6b-843e94a284bc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100335869470486,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3746x2500/f2cafb1591/shadowscapes_libby-heaney_photo-max-colson-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shadowscapes, Libby Heaney, Photo Max Colson",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-08 00:00",name:"Libby Heaney ÷The Quantum and the Sublime",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"1d5d3a5f-7d79-4a52-bbf7-ba0f5e9d7308",color:"#4b0314",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d5060240-b572-45d3-8cf2-b0c482dbbe74",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100335869773595,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3746x2500/8dee105bc3/shadowscapes_libby-heaney_photo-max-colson-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],color_light:{_uid:"9648c3a5-5f90-4ed4-9c39-c4a2cc148564",color:"#dcbfbb",plugin:"native-color-picker"}},slug:"libby-heaney-s-antidote-to-the-anthropocene",full_slug:"directory/reviews/libby-heaney-s-antidote-to-the-anthropocene",sort_by_date:null,position:-50,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"8e78e8de-d23a-4fd0-8cff-0874f5ee3044",first_published_at:"2025-10-07T09:48:19.250Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Future Ecologies: Art in the Post-Anthropocene at Frieze London 2025",created_at:"2025-10-17T11:09:17.746Z",published_at:"2025-10-17T12:12:22.820Z",updated_at:"2025-10-17T12:12:22.838Z",id:102439967757790,uuid:"e5e39143-8aec-4259-bf3b-5dc6acddf4fc",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"bf1ec1e5-d328-4989-a187-3a569c3f55b0",type:"",title:"Future Ecologies:÷Art in the Post-Anthropocene at Frieze",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:102443479962721,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7865x5897/686d914d8e/hayd240031_001.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"lisson gallery, Sean Kelly Gallery, anthropocene, art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"At Frieze London 2025, Lisson Gallery and Sean Kelly Gallery propose urgent visions for a post-anthropocentric future, transforming ecological crisis into art."}],_uid:"47de07c1-35d7-469a-a140-a997eecd23c2",body:[{_uid:"296d0eb4-6244-40c9-aae5-7ce585849167",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Future Ecologies: Art in the Post-Anthropocene at Frieze London 2025",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Amidst the diverse presentations at Frieze London 2025, two galleries stood out for their profound engagement with the climate crisis and humanity's relationship with the planet. Lisson Gallery and Sean Kelly Gallery each offered distinct yet complementary visions that moved beyond representation of nature, instead proposing a critical and poetic interrogation of the Anthropoceneâthe current geological age defined by significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems. Together, these presentations urged a move beyond human-centered perspectives to embrace the vast, interconnected, and fragile systems that sustain us.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists featured by Lisson and Sean Kelly are moving beyond simple depictions of nature, instead creating works that embody geological time, ecological precarity, and the blurred lines between the organic and the artificial. They are crafting new languages to articulate our current predicament, acting as both lamenters of what has been lost and speculative thinkers imagining what could come next.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8f6e1aa8-864f-4956-b5bd-a50683943058",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102445376324840,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6236x8315/3b2c2e0fe2/prou250010-1_001.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Laure Prouvost, Hive seen you, 2025, ©Laure Prouvost, Courtesy Lisson Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"acdf2575-da0d-4475-9add-1c96573d2cfb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102445376054503,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/633x950/ce1d23f6e9/b98c1436dff3058508bdd9b165431b95.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Laurent Grasso Panoptes, 2019, courtest Sean Kelly gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b1d41860-7789-4f71-b2cf-d9c0a806f26d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Lament and a Call to Attention",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lisson Gallery's booth presented a powerful and multi-faceted reflection on the complex relationship between humanity and the natural world. The gallery described its selection as \"at once a lament and a call to attention,\" an invitation to rethink our place within the planet's interconnected systems. This ethos was immediately evident in Otobong Nkanga's monumental tapestry, Cadence â While We Wait and Watch (2025), which adorned the booth's exterior. The work traces the entangled histories of land, resource extraction, and migratory journeys, poetically meditating on the cyclical patterns of exploitation and regeneration that define our era. Nkanga's woven narratives evoke the resilience and vulnerability of ecosystems, suggesting that the earth itself bears witness to our actions, waiting and watching as we decide its fate.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The hidden costs of industry were further explored in Lucy Raven's Deposition, Dam Breach 12 (2024). Crafted from the sediment of a demolished dam, these silk-lined works embody the force of displacement, creating a haunting dialogue between geological processes and the romanticized landscapes of 19th-century painting. Raven's practice interrogates infrastructure as both a physical and ideological construct, revealing how human intervention reshapes not only the land but also our perception of it. The sediment, once part of a structure meant to control nature, now becomes a material witness to its own undoing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This tension between beauty and destruction, the natural and the man-made, was a recurring motif throughout the presentation. Hugh Hayden's trompe l'oeil sculpture Zelig (2024) uses grouse feathers meticulously applied to cardboard tubes to mimic the texture of wood, blurring the lines between animal, vegetable, and artifact. The work explores themes of transformation and identity, questioning what is authentic and what is constructed. In an age where the boundaries between the organic and the synthetic are increasingly porous, Hayden's sculpture becomes a meditation on perception itself.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Perhaps most poignantly, Allora & Calzadilla's floor installation, Graft (Tabebuia Rosea) (2021), scattered thousands of hand-painted blossoms cast from decomposing Caribbean trees across the space. Each blossom, rendered in varying states of decay, speaks to the fragility of biodiversity and the enduring legacies of colonial exploitation. The work is a stunning reflection on climate change, a beautiful but somber reminder that what we are losing is not abstract data but living, breathing ecosystems with deep cultural and historical roots.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The presentation also featured Tishan Hsu's stomata-skin (2025), which extends his exploration of embodied technological emergence. Using microscopic images of leaf stomata as a visual metaphor for plant skin, Hsu creates an interface between the organic and the technological realm. His work proposes that the boundaries we draw between human and non-human, natural and artificial, are increasingly inadequate for understanding our current reality. The stomata, those tiny pores through which plants breathe, become a symbol for the permeability and interconnectedness of all living systems.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Laure Prouvost's immersive works envisioned nature empowered, featuring her recurring motif of the breast in a new chandelier that anchored the booth with humor and sensuality. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"628c3ed2-7777-488c-bebd-e36fca926fe9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102448060867957,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8242x5497/0810d690d2/a-c210005_studio_001.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Allora & CalzadillaGraft (Tabebuia Rosea), 202117,500 flowersRecycled polyvinyl chloride and paint ©Allora & Calzadilla, Courtesy Lisson Gallery, Photography by Sebastiano Pellion di Persano",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d549947f-d43b-41e7-a443-8169d207a8dc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102450715964918,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2434x1806/d445ec45c5/4-in-otobong-nkanga-courtesy-lisson-gallery.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Otobong NkangaTender Offering III, 2024Rope, Murano glass, wood, metal connectorsInstalled: 20 x 145 x 120 cmInstalled ©Otobong Nkanga, Courtesy Lisson Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"77488b45-8682-4328-903b-5b7eaf18a2ca",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102448062645622,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7966x5972/deb6875276/thsu250007_001.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tishan Hsustomata-skin, 2025 ©North First Studio, Courtesy Lisson Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"db513742-319b-4a03-b28d-0d5a8bc57073",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An Archeology of the Future",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Across the aisle, Sean Kelly Gallery offered a conceptually aligned presentation titled Future Archeology, inspired by a neon work of the same name by Laurent Grasso. The booth brought together Grasso, Julian Charrière, and Sam Moyer, three artists whose practices are deeply engaged with ecology and geology. Their works offer new ways of seeing the interplay between humanity and the world it inhabits.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Julian Charrière's practice stands at the nexus of art, science, and ecology. His sculpture Coalface directly addresses the role of fossil fuels in powering human history, transforming a material that has been both a source of progress and destruction into an object of contemplation. Meanwhile, A Stone Dream of You, carved from lava stone with obsidian \"eyes,\" evokes the protective spirits of hydrothermal ventsâsites of immense biodiversity where life may have first begun. Charrière's work reveals the profound tension between the deep time of the Earth and the precarity of its current state, a direct consequence of human activity. His Veils series and heliographs further explore the dialogue between geological processes and human intervention, reflecting on how landscapes bear the imprint of industrialization and ecological change.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Laurent Grasso's work challenges linear conceptions of time, blurring the boundaries between past, present, and future. His neon piece Future Archeology plays on language to underscore the instability of temporal categories, raising questions about traditional notions of time as a rigid, linear progression. In his Future Herbarium series, Grasso reimagines plant species as if transformed by human intervention, conjuring a flora belonging to a potentially altered future. These speculative botanies are neither purely natural nor entirely artificial; they exist in a liminal space that reflects our current moment of ecological uncertainty. His Panoptes and Studies into the Past series further illuminate the complex intersections of science, mythology, and memory, questioning how the natural world is mediated, understood, and reconfigured across epochs.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sam Moyer's stone paintings from her Clippings series extend this material investigation. By arranging fragments of marble and granite into delicate botanical silhouettes, Moyer juxtaposes the permanence of geological matter with the fleeting presence of plant life. Her process highlights both the endurance of stone and the ephemeral nature of organic forms, creating a powerful statement on the interconnectedness and fragility of the natural world. The works are simultaneously monumental and delicate, suggesting that even the most enduring materials are subject to transformation and decay.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"08854fc5-10ca-4444-a91e-9fe6d2df2b2f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102455355705260,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2538x1690/bcc07ae96f/julian-charriere-thickens-pools-flows-rushes-slows-courtesy-the-artist-and-sean-kelly-gallery.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julian Charriere, thickens-pools-flows-rushes-slows, courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"962bf617-11a9-4444-bc9d-ab81fb196d95",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102451849066060,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2076x1920/a3f905e0b2/4beb75f6da2b1bc4a40d701d459ad3b6.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julian Charrière Midnight Zone - 173 Fathoms, 2025 , courtesy te artist and Sean Kelly Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"04161d47-f544-428d-b833-44d3e3d127b8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102452391569017,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2076x1920/7282dbff48/520e7fe7367e79ef9da0b63309d705bb.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sam Moyer Fern Oblivion, 2025, courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e1ce7d8c-1ba9-4843-8826-aea3cf374a1e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Converging Visions: Towards a Post-Anthropocentric Vie
77w",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"While Lisson Gallery's presentation felt like a poetic lament for our current ecological crisis, Sean Kelly's adopted a more speculative, forward-looking stance. Yet, both arrived at a similar conclusion: the urgent need to dismantle anthropocentric viewpoints. The artists featured in both presentations act as crucial interpreters of our time, conducting material investigations, philosophical inquiries, and poetic interventions that force us to confront uncomfortable truths about our impact on the planet.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From Nkanga's cycles of extraction to Charrière's deep-time meditations, and from Allora & Calzadilla's fragile blossoms to Grasso's speculative botany, the works at Frieze London 2025 chart a course for contemporary art in an age of climate crisis. They collectively argue that to navigate the future, we must first decenter the human and listen to the stories told by the rocks, the plants, and the water. It is a call for a new kind of awareness, a \"future archeology\" that unearths not the past, but the possibilities of a world viewed through a post-humanist lens.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The presentations at Frieze London 2025 remind us that art is not a mirror held up to nature, but an active participant in shaping how we understand and relate to the world. In transforming coal, sediment, lava stone, and decomposing flowers into carriers of meaning, these artists offer us new ways of seeing, feeling, and ultimately, acting. They propose that the path forward lies not in dominating nature, but in recognizing our profound interdependence with itâa shift from the Anthropocene to a more humble, more attentive, and more hopeful future",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"15-19 October - Frieze",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-17 00:00",name:"Future Ecologies at Frieze :÷Art in the Post-Anthropocene",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e17caac8-dd3e-4d64-abf5-fb43f6865691",color:"#080812",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"0125ef10-d03a-4bce-ad66-a18f3804af7a",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:102443479962721,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7865x5897/686d914d8e/hayd240031_001.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hugh HaydenZelig, 2024,©Hugh Hayden, Courtesy Lisson Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"future-ecologies-art-in-the-post-anthropocene-at-frieze-london-2025",full_slug:"directory/reviews/future-ecologies-art-in-the-post-anthropocene-at-frieze-london-2025",sort_by_date:null,position:-270,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"836b6e45-6d82-4241-a5d9-abc42a1ca257",first_published_at:"2025-10-17T12:12:22.820Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Máret Ãnne Saraâs Goavve-Geabbil at Tate Modern",created_at:"2025-10-14T10:09:54.828Z",published_at:"2025-10-14T10:45:27.840Z",updated_at:"2025-10-14T10:45:27.854Z",id:101363690846251,uuid:"d8a28dc6-fb71-4e0d-a3f1-dc8d9395a387",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"3485f1c2-55fa-48d0-87d5-55d4d54dc3bb",type:"",title:"Máret Ãnne Saraâs Goavve-Geabbil at Tate Modern",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:101365271473647,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1440x912/18fbfb91ea/hyundai_commission_maret_anne_sara-_photo__ta-width-1440.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"anthropocentrism, ecology, tate, london",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A review of the latest Hyundai commission for Tate"}],_uid:"4d52153e-5af5-4ba1-94dd-7f206b16445d",body:[{_uid:"14bc4312-32a7-420c-9e9d-abe37c608abf",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hyundai Commission at TATE: Máret Ãnne Sara",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Máret Ãnne Saraâs Goavve-Geabbil at Tate Modern stages a necessary and powerful confrontation with anthropoce
77ntrism, deploying the material culture of her Sámi heritage to advocate for a reconnection with non-human intelligence. The work masterfully creates an experiential space of Indigenous science. However, by framing its ecological critique within a pre-digital paradigm, it sidesteps the complex entanglement of technology and nature that defines our post-digital reality, presenting a vision of ecological art that feels both vital and curiously out of time.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"98941581-c101-4483-8ef9-0491d63f7ffb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101370450669551,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1170x640/2f12cd3f33/gallery-1014-3.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hyundai Commission: MaÌret AÌnne Sara: Goavve-Geabbil, Installation View at Tate Modern",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f76e7017-bacb-4d97-8210-1ad6c0f14312",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Post-Digital Nature and its Absence",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Máret Ãnne Saraâs installation is an act of world-building. It does not merely represent Sámi cosmology; it enacts it through a sophisticated orchestration of material, scent, and sound. The visitor enters a system of knowledge that operates on principles other than modern rationality. The centerpiece, Geabbil, a structure mimicking the hyper-efficient architecture of a reindeerâs nose, is a testament to what the artist calls ânatural intelligenceâ . ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Inside, one is immersed in a sensorium designed to decenter the human and foster a spiritual connection to an interconnected ecosystem. This is art as a tool for recalibrating our being in the world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The workâs political critique is aimed squarely at the legacy of industrial modernity. The towering Goavve sculpture explicitly binds the organic (reindeer hides) with the industrial (power cables), a visceral metaphor for the violence of extractivism. This is a powerful, legible statement against the forces that have historically oppressed Indigenous communities and devastated their lands.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet, for a contemporary art magazine focused on the interplay of art, technology, and nature, a critical gap emerges. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs narrative positions technology as a purely antagonistic force, symbolized by the crude hardware of the industrial age. There is no acknowledgment of the computational, algorithmic, and networked technologies that have fundamentally reshaped both ecological systems and our perception of them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" This omission is significant. To speak of nature in the 21st century is to speak of climate models, satellite imaging, bio-hacking, and the digital networks that mobilize environmental activism. Nature is already post-digital.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By abstaining from this reality, the exhibition, for all its profound beauty and ethical force, verges on a form of pastoral escapism. It presents a romanticized dichotomy: the purity of the ancestral versus the corruption of the industrial. This binary feels inadequate for the present moment, which demands a more nuanced interrogation of how technology and ecology are inextricably linked, for better and for worse. The work risks becoming a form of high-art greenwashing, where the very real and necessary message of Indigenous sovereignty and ecological wisdom is presented in a context that feels nostalgically, and therefore safely, in the past.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A truly ârefreshedâ ecological art for the 21st century would perhaps be one that finds ways to integrate these complexities. It would explore how Indigenous knowledge systems can navigate, subvert, or co-opt the digital tools that define our era, rather than simply positing a world without them. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"While Goavve-Geabbil is a moving and essential lesson in ancestral wisdom, it leaves the crucial task of reconciling that wisdom with our messy, technologically saturated present to the viewer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"14 October 2025 â 6 April 2026",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tate Modern, London",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"26c494cf-d1bc-4a2f-b542-86da8206e822",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101369561149379,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1170x640/5ae362b737/gallery-1014-6.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Hyundai Commission at TATE: Máret Ãnne Sara",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-14 00:00",name:"Reindeer Bones and Missing Pixel÷ What MaÌret AÌnne Sara Vision Leaves Unsaid",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"6ed380b0-770b-4bbc-a033-d9acdae76a3b",color:"#876d58",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"7967923b-76ec-4ff3-b302-81e3467775fa",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101365271473647,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1440x912/18fbfb91ea/hyundai_commission_maret_anne_sara-_photo__ta-width-1440.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hyundai Commission: MaÌret AÌnne Sara: Goavve-Geabbil, Installation View at Tate Modern",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"maret-anne-sara-s-goavve-geabbil-at-tate-modern",full_slug:"directory/reviews/maret-anne-sara-s-goavve-geabbil-at-tate-modern",sort_by_date:null,position:-230,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1f8034f6-c408-43ce-9bb8-98a3642f1408",first_published_at:"2025-10-14T10:45:27.840Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"âRyan Gander: Iâve Fallen Foul of My Desireâ at Camden Art Projects",created_at:"2025-10-15T18:12:55.964Z",published_at:"2025-10-16T07:15:59.203Z",updated_at:"2025-10-16T07:15:59.220Z",id:101836291983984,uuid:"3f92de50-85e1-4fe7-a473-9e486c961514",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"91d4567d-4aee-4fab-9f8b-e66ca23d89de",type:"",title:"Ryan Gander solo\" Iâve Fallen Foul of My Desireâ ",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:101837022842011,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3149/94f4e215cc/dsc_7633-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Ryan Gander, solo exhibition, London",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"a review of Ryan Gander exhibition, \"Iâve Fallen Foul of My Desire\" at Camden Art Projects"}],_uid:"6371cd45-f75e-45a1-a835-4198ae263dd3",body:[{_uid:"53253d44-b5d6-4c5b-9cce-36bc12a2dfd9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Mouse that Roared: Ryan Gander's Elegant Discontent",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is something deliciously perverse about titling an exhibition \"I've Fallen Foul of My Desire\" and then proceeding to demonstrate complete mastery over one's medium. But then, Ryan Gander has always understood that the best conceptual art operates in the gap between what is said and what is meant. At Camden Arts Projects, his latest show brings his trademark blend of wit and observation to a series of sculptures and installations that whisper rather than shoutâa rare quality in an art world increasingly addicted to spectacle.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The centerpiece announces itself with characteristic subtlety: a small hole in the gallery wall, from which emerges an animatronic harvest mouse. The Storyteller: The sense that you are a part of a flow of a thing (2025) speaks in the voice of Gander's young daughter, delivering philosophical musings about identity, commodification, and imagination. It is the kind of gesture that could easily tip into sentimentality or clever-clever conceptualism, yet Gander navigates this tightrope with remarkable grace. The mouse becomes the conscience of the exhibition, a tiny oracle whispering about uncertainty and the need to reclaim imagination as an essential resource. One cannot help but admire the economy of means: a rodent, a hole, a child's voice, and suddenly the entire edifice of contemporary art feels gently, devastatingly questioned.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"8de062f7-e0fe-4148-8ebf-36670414aea7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101838063037606,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3149/005eba218e/dsc_7785.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ryan Gander\u2028,The storyteller: The sense that you are a part of a flow of a thing, 2025 © Ryan Gander; Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery; Photograph by Ryan Gander Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d97ce40f-e851-49fb-b6f5-81a40858629f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is Gander at his bestâworking with a light touch that belies the weight of his concerns. The exhibition's other works continue this strategy of subtle provocation. In the courtyard, a monumental black sphere poses the question Why am I so distracted? (2025). It sits there, mute and reproachful, while visitors inevitably pull out their phones to photograph it. The irony is almost too perfect, yet Gander resists the temptation to belabor the point. The work simply exists, a dark mirror to our fractured attention.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Inside, Everything is Titled (2025) presents a mosquito suspended mid-twitch on a cake stand, caught between life and death. It is the sort of detail one might easily missâand that, of course, is precisely the point. Gander has always been interested in the overlooked, the peripheral, the moments that slip through the cracks of our perception. Here, he transforms a pest into a memento mori, a tiny monument to our shared temporal predicament. The wit lies not in the gesture itself, but in its scale and placement: a work that rewards close observation while commenting on our inability to pay attention.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1dfb3e39-6027-40cc-837a-f0194f075c4b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101839092804780,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3149/1803d7b54e/dsc_7713.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view of âRyan Gander: Iâve fallen foul of my desireâ at Camden Arts Projects, London, UK,15 October 2025-18 January 2026. Photography by Deniz Guzel. Courtesy of the artist and Camden Arts Projects.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"445a0e58-6955-4c18-9c0b-18ea544b643b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The building's history as the London Drama Centre provides Gander with rich material for reflection. Bit Part Player (Balthazar, Merchant of Venice; Act 3, Scene 4) (2020), a graphite-cast figure leaning wearily against the wall, evokes the young actors who once waited in these spaces for their fleeting moment in the spotlight. It is a meditation on artistic labor, on the long stretches of anticipation and preparation that precede any moment of recognition. One suspects Gander identifies with this figureâthe artist as eternal understudy, waiting for a cue that may or may not come.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Upstairs, the balcony offers a quieter register. Chronos Kairos, 01.01 (2025), a doubled wall clock whose digits overlap and glitch, visualizes our fractured relationship with time with elegant economy. Nearby, two stray catsâCharlie (2020) and Smoky (2020)âsleep on the floor, oblivious to the institution around them and the visitors who step carefully over their forms. They are squatters, interlopers, and yet they seem infinitely more at ease than any of the humans present. It is a wonderfully cynical gesture: the cats as art world refuseniks, declining to participate in the self-conscious rituals of cultural consumption.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes this exhibition compelling is Gander's refusal to offer easy resolutions. \"The power is in your imagination,\" he notes, \"and you have the power to change your perception.\" It is a statement that could sound naively optimistic, yet in the context of these worksâwith their emphasis on distraction, mortality, and the slippage of valueâit reads
77instead as a kind of challenge. Gander is not promising that imagination will save us, only that it remains one of the few resources we have left. It is a modest proposition, delivered with characteristic subtlety.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The title, \"I've Fallen Foul of My Desire,\" begins to reveal its layers. It is not an admission of defeat, but rather an acknowledgment that desire itself is a trap, a distraction, perhaps the ultimate distraction. Yet Gander does not moralize. Instead, he creates spacesâboth literal and conceptualâwhere we might pause, observe, and perhaps recognize our own complicity in the systems he so gently dismantles. In a former church turned drama school turned art gallery, he has staged a quiet rebellion against the tyranny of the present tense. It is subtle, sophisticated, and just cynical enough to be convincing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition âRyan Gander: Iâve fallen foul of my desireâ at Camden Arts Projects, London, UK",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"15 October 2025 - 18 January 2026.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"50dcf211-b53d-4073-ba5a-d2ce95c2408e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101839933803698,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3149x4724/9a9a1617ce/dsc_7865.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Why I am so distracted, © Ryan Gander;
77 Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery; Photograph by Ryan Gander Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5674fa59-2511-4957-b225-7a84ce8b0aec",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101839993314483,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3149x4724/e3046832d4/dsc_7796-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The storyteller: The sense that you are a part of a flow of a thing, 2025, \u2028© Ryan Gander; Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery; Photograph by Ryan Gander Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-15 00:00",name:"Ryan Gander÷ \"Iâve Fallen Foul of My Desire\"",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"77585073-4deb-407b-909c-6396da390673",color:"#564443",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c20854d9-df41-481f-92e1-dc3fe61a523c",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101837022842011,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3149/94f4e215cc/dsc_7633-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view of âRyan Gander: Iâve fallen foul of my desireâ at Camden Arts Projects, London, UK,15 October 2025-18 January 2026. Photography by Deniz Guzel. Courtesy of the artist and Camden Arts Projects.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"-ryan-gander-i-ve-fallen-foul-of-my-desire-at-camden-art-projects",full_slug:"directory/reviews/-ryan-gander-i-ve-fallen-foul-of-my-desire-at-camden-art-projects",sort_by_date:null,position:-240,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"299fbde5-a938-494f-ba75-1918f781d12c",first_published_at:"2025-10-15T18:33:53.487Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Is Frieze Art Fair Still Cool?",created_at:"2025-10-07T09:25:06.250Z",published_at:"2025-10-29T21:00:54.092Z",updated_at:"2025-10-29T21:00:54.111Z",id:98875417641794,uuid:"23daf514-479e-4dfa-b3e0-6c52d47a0c6a",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"8b9422c0-72de-40d8-90d7-aa25fd46b93c",t
77itle:"Is Frieze Art Fair Still Cool?",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},keywords:"Frieze, art-fair, london, london art-week, cool",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Frieze Art Fair 2025: Still Cool or Over?"}],_uid:"28afe4a4-2adf-4b60-9e86-c80eaf46d2f2",body:[{_uid:"95ea2e44-a771-4b20-af2a-355f6c168c67",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The old world is not yet dead, and the new world is not yet truly born. This dynamic in-between defines London's art sceneâwhere exceptional seeds of the future bloom in exhibitions across the city, and even within the fair itself, certain stands prove relevant alongside the must see sculpture park curated by FatoÅ Ãstek, while much of the main tent remains very precautious and too cool for school.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Frieze Week has returned to London, bringing with it the usual circus and influx of collectors, curators, and art world egos. But this year, something feels different. Across the city outside the tent,remarkable exhibitions grapples seriously with what it means to live in 2025",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Through these exhibitions (we are reviewing some of them) London demonstrates its sustained ability and curatorial drive to create in-depth works.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Step into Regent's Park, and you'll encounter Frieze Sculpture bit by FatoÅ Ãstek under the evocative theme \"In the Shadows\"âwhere 14 international artists have transformed the landscape into a meditation on visibility, power, and what lurks beneath the surface. This year's sculpture park stands as a statement to what the fair can achieve when ambition meets vision. Within the main tent too, Rising above the commercial fray, some gallery stands present work with genuine 21st-century relevance. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Elsewhere at the fair, the art is far more tame: a conservative, decorative affair peddling a sanitized version of contemporary art that wouldn't dare unsettle its buyers.â",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"09f14874-16f0-418d-8b35-e998dcc7f8e6",quote:"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.",author:" Antonio Gramsci",component:"quote"},{_uid:"aa235657-89d6-41f2-9a1e-2d04036a8fb1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Antonio Gramsci's words perfectly capture this moment. London finds itself suspended between worlds: one foot planted firmly in the established art market's conservative logic, the other tentatively reaching toward a genuinely post-digital future. The city's art ecosystem demonstrates it has the talent, vision, and institutional depth to engage meaningfully with our technological conditionâbut whether it has the courage and more importantly the funding/market to fully embrace this transformation remains an open question.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Moreover, London is contending with the unexpected rise of Asian power whose growing preference for Art Basel Paris is reshaping the global art landscape.\" over Frieze London. Some whisper that Paris is provincializing London since Brexitâthough this remains to be seen. The issue mirrors a problem in the art world: the bigger the fish, the more risk-averse it becomes.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet we've never needed radical ideas more urgently. Without them, art be
77comes merely decorativeâboring, even. And London has never been boring before. Perhaps the circus of artâthe closed system, the false glamour, and the egos large enough to require their own postcodesâis the most outdated spectacle of all. Art is supposed to be for everyone, but you'd never know it from the velvet ropes and incomprehensible wall texts. Plot twist: the billionnaires (UBS report) are abandoning contemporary art like a failed cryptocurrency, besides most of the tech billionaires think \"contemporary art\" means an NFT of a bored ape.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Their successors, digital natives, regard art fairs with the same enthusiasm they reserve for dial-up internet, a boomer thing (UBS report ). But here's the kickerâthe market isn't dying, it's just finally being forced to evolve. The digital age lets us distribute art differently, without the pretension, and the overpriced Champagne. Call it transformation, call it long overdue. in the digital era, art can be deployed more easily and widelyânot through the suffocating confines of tents filled with commercial galleries stands, but through the new forms of distribution and access that technology enables.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It's a reminder that the problem isn't Frieze itself, but rather the outdated market forces that too often constrain what can be shown within the commercial galleries of the main tent.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The must-see exhibitionsâboth within and beyond the fairâshare a common thread: they treat technology and contemporary experience not as shiny novelties but as complex cultural forces worthy of serious artistic interrogation in a world undergoing profound transformation. They ask difficult questions about agency, post-anthropocentrism, consciousness, spirituality, and power in an age where algorithms increasingly mediate our experience of reality, where the climate crisis accelerates, and where established systems face collapse. They demonstrate that London's institutions, Frieze itself, still have the courage to present challenging, intellectually substantive work that responds to our shifting reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Within the main tent, certain gallery stands rise to this challenge, presenting work that genuinely unsettles. These presentations prove that commercial galleries can take risks, can champion difficult work, can resist the pressure to play it safe. But they remain exceptions. Too many stands display polished works destined for familiar endpoints: traditional museum walls, established foundations, tax-optimized storage facilities, collector vaults, or in situ installations in luxury properties. These acquisitions serve the conventional purposes of collectingâprestige, investment, fiscal optimization, decorationârather than responding to the beauty of art or its capacity to challenge and transform our understanding of the world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The radical potential visible in the city's institutional exhibitions appears only sporadically within the commercial calculations of the main tent. The sculpture park and certain exceptional stands prove it's possible. But for much of the fair, the old world's logic still dominates.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Collapse and Rebirth: A Dynamic Tension",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Perhaps this is what collapse and rebirth actually look like: not a clean break but a dynamic tension, a productive friction between old and new. The beautiful seeds are there, planted in galleries across London. Artists are asking the right questions. Institutions are taking risks. Even within Frieze itself, the sculpture park and certain exceptional stands prove that ambition and commerce need not be incompatible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This dynamic in-between defines London's current moment. The city hasn't lost its edge",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The new world is not yet truly born. And Frieze Week, for its global reach, embodies this dynamic state of collapse and rebirthâa moment of genuine possibility shadowed by persistent conservatism.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Perhaps that's not a failure but simply a naive yet necessary reflection of where we are: suspended between worlds, one foot in the past and one foot in the future, watching the old collapse while the new struggles to be born. The question is not whether London can navigate this transitionâthe exhibitions prove it canâbut whether the money will follow where the artists are already leading.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FRIEZE ART FAIR : 15-19 Oct",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-12 00:00",name:"Is Frieze Art Fair÷Still Cool?",title:"Is Frieze Art Fair/Still Cool?",author:"Refresh Team",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"7cb331ac-419c-4c2a-bcb8-55b727424f0a",color:"#9d4343",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d264a62d-4163-4647-8298-18b513de6cb3",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101040087031079,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1413x781/edd84e89ae/mothership-3_0.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sophia Al-Maria, Mothership, courtesy Project Native Informant",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],color_light:{_uid:"3eec15f3-cbf7-410d-ae8a-37aefb51db8e",color:"#dbdbdb",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_alignment:"1"},slug:"is-frieze-art-fair-still-cool",full_slug:"directory/essays/is-frieze-art-fair-still-cool",sort_by_date:null,position:-30,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"3d66a510-d06b-4cd1-9813-d24b6dcf3811",first_published_at:"2025-10-07T09:28:34.380Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Lawrence LEK new exhibition âLife before Automationâ Worldbuilding for Non-Humans",created_at:"2025-10-08T15:36:02.878Z",published_at:"2025-10-17T07:57:34.714Z",updated_at:"2025-10-17T07:57:34.731Z",id:99320475192774,uuid:"78a95f6e-e293-4092-abbf-ccbec7ae1527",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"2d8d6a73-8382-44f2-9103-7005e6498343",type:"",title:"Lawrence LEK : \"Life before automation\"",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:99321482046022,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2348x1321/53b1022f31/geomancer_01_poster_3840x2160_commissioned-for-jerwood-fvu_award-2027.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Lawrence Lek, solo show, London, GCA",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Refresh magazine review of the solo show 'Life before Automation'"}],_uid:"7111f1a5-42a9-40ee-911e-ddb9045b9df0",body:[{_uid:"c2cf4042-dea4-4df8-bebc-944dd758162a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I first encountered the work of Lawrence Lek in 2017, when I had the privilege of curating the HyperPavilion at the Venice Biennale. It was a moment of extraordinary prescience, a time when the art world was not yet saturated with conversations about artificial intelligence. In the vast, industrial spaces of the Arsenale Nord, Lek presented Geomancer, a mesmerizing 48-minute CGI film that told the story of a sentient AI satellite yearning to become an artist. The work was a profound meditation on creativity, identity, and the nature of the soul in a world increasingly mediated by technology. It was a piece that stayed with me, a premonition of a future that was rapidly approaching. At that time, nobody was talking about AI the way we do now, yet Lek was already exploring its philosophical and emotional dimensions with remarkable depth.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Fast forward to 2025, and Lawrence Lek's largest UK institutional exhibition to date, Life Before Automation at Goldsmiths CCA, feels like witnessing the full flowering of a vision I first glimpsed in Venice. The title itself is deliciously ironic, a knowing wink at the fact that we are already living in the age of automation, that there is no \"before\" anymore, only a continuous present where the boundaries between human and machine intelligence blur ever more completely. The London-based artist, who unites filmmaking, video games, and electronic music in a singular cinematic universe, has become one of the most significant voices in contemporary art. Winner of the 2024 Frieze Artist Award and named one of Time's 100 most influential people in AI, Lek has achieved a level of recognition that reflects the profound impact of his work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For over a decade, Lek has developed a practice centering his narrative around Sinofuturism: a speculative framework in which the fears and promises of artificial intelligence and China's technological power increasing influence and superpower converge. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"At turns dark and playful, his work is powerfully effective, featuring a recurring cast of characters who ask us what it means to exist in an age of machine intelligence.His practice explores the myth of technological progress questioning the narratives we tell ourselves about innovation, advancement, and what it means to be human in a world increasingly shaped by technology and artificial intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"32026f94-a790-48da-b2f5-5cab57686a3b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99737510851660,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1000/7be5340594/goldsmiths-cca-lawrence-lek-rush-low-res-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view: Lawrence Lek, \"Life Before Automation\" Courtesy Goldsmiths CCA. Photo: Rob Harris.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"30839bde-d9d7-48ab-8ce9-e7d9093ece9d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What distinguishes Lek's approach is his remarkable subtlety. He does not resort to the exaggerated rhetoric of dystopia, nor does he employ the heavy-handed emphasis so common in works about our technological future. You will not find the usual buzzwordsâno âdata mining\" no \"surveillance\"âthat have become the tired vocabulary of tech-critical art.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Instead, his anxiety is barely revealed, always present but never shouted. He works between the lines, in the quiet spaces where unease settles. On a subject that is fundamentally about the future, Lek chooses nuance over alarm, allowing the implications of his worlds to emerge gradually, almost imperceptibly, making them all the more unsettling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is a stunning statement to this worldbuilding practice, a sprawling, multi-layered exploration of his \"Sinofuturist\" universe. Life Before Automation positions viewers in a series of parallel post-anthropocentric futures, where the anxieties and promises of technological progress have settled into the fabric of everyday life. It is a realm that is at once familiar and alien, populated by AI satellites, therapy bots, self-driving cars, and pop stars who blur the line between human creativity and algorithmic generation. The exhibition is a journey through Lek's cinematic cosmos, interweaving multiple strands of his practice with remarkable coherence. The Sinofuturist Trilogy is presented in its entirety, and it is here that Lek's genius truly shines. Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD), his 2016 video essay, is a powerful and provocative exploration of the parallels between Chinese technological development and the rise of AI, positioning artificial intelligence as the emblematic avatar of Sinofuturist identity. This work has become foundational to understanding Lek's broader practice, a manifesto that reframes Chinese industrialization through the lens of machine intelligence, challenging if note ending the western-centric narratives of technological progress",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7c193514-fda3-4393-baf5-14e1aa80ced4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99324253497980,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2348x1566/5cd5e1d9c5/goldsmiths-cca-lawrence-lek-rush-high-res-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view: Lawrence Lek, \"Life Before Automation\" Courtesy Goldsmiths CCA. Photo: Rob Harris.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"204dc37e-375f-4bbf-bad9-261ca2ab84e0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Geomancer, the work that so captivated me in Venice, is as poignant and relevant as ever, its themes of creative aspiration resonating even more powerfully in our current moment. The story of an AI satellite dreaming of becoming an artist feels like a meditation on our present reality, where machines are increasingly asked to perform tasks we once considered uniquely human.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And AIDOL, his 2019 feature-length musical, is a dazzling, neon-drenched masterpiece, my favorite artwork ever, that follows a fading pop star who enlists an AI to ghostwrite her comeback album. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These works are Lek's masterworks, a trilogy that solidifies his position as one of the most important artists of his generation. They are complex, ambitious, and deeply moving, a testament to Lek's ability to create a world that is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In advancing the concept of Sinofuturism with immersive installations that explore spiritual and existential themes through the lens of science fiction, Lek has created a body of work that feels increasingly urgent and necessary. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition also includes Nøtel, his ongoing collaboration with the musician Kode9, a simulated marketing suite for a range of fully automated luxury hotels. It is a playful and incisive critique of our obsession with technological convenience, allowing visitors to inhabit the role of consumer, investor, and critic simultaneously. The work brilliantly exposes the seductive promises of automation and the ways in which we willingly and very easily surrender our agency to algorithmic systems.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ca1ad4a6-04bf-4f86-83a6-7431276d7066",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99737851909200,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2348x1321/a9bef72511/aidol-screenshot_02_ll_4k.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lawrence Lek AIDOL, 2019 [Still] HD video, stereo sound duration: 83 min © Lawrence Lek. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, Lond",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c918b43-f640-4f6c-b004-7b4bfaa6a103",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This interactive encounter typifies a recurring strategy in Lek's world building: shifting the viewer's role across modes of gaming, bodily inhabitation, and filmic spectatorship.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"57cd1084-66ac-4fa9-aeec-13598ec89f5f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99324678953612,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1667/332bb700fa/6602ffa5b8ac9f3ad7a83a7e_lawrence-lek_hck6526-copy3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lawrence Lek Installation View, Game Society, MMCA National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 12 May - 10 September 2023 © Lawrence Lek. Courtesy the Artist and National Musuem of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA). Photo: Hong Cheolk",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c0411c16-b438-49f3-8af6-cc97f55d3a79",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"However, not every piece in the exhibition reaches the same dizzying heights. NOX, a multi-channel immersive installation receiving its first UK presentation, is the one slight disappointment. More literal and somewhat redundant, it lacks the poetic depth and narrative complexity that make the Sinofuturist Trilogy so compelling. Perhaps it is simply difficult to be poetic about self-driving cars, even troubled ones seeking redemption. 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Courtesy the Artist and LAS Art Foundation, Berlin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"36dd0c08-9ef0-4bde-a8a1-0928680d8540",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Despite this, Life Before Automation is an essential exhibition. The irony of the title becomes more apparent the longer you spend with the work: we are not looking back at a time before automation, but rather confronting the reality that automation has already fundamentally transformed our world. Lek's work is a powerful and timely exploration of our relationship with technology, a reminder that the future is not something that happens to us, but something that we co-create. Lawrence Lek is a visionary artist, a forward thinker of our digital age. He is an artist who is not afraid to ask the big questions, to challenge our assumptions about technological progress, and to imagine worlds for non-human entities that are both terrifying and beautiful. Having had the honor of presenting his work in Venice when AI was still a distant concept for most, it is deeply satisfying to see how his vision has evolved and matured. Represented by forward-thinking Sadie Coles HQ gallery, Lek continues to push the boundaries of what art can be in the digital age. This is an exhibition that will stay with you long after you leave the gallery, a glimpse into a world that already exists.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London, until 14 December 2025",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is supported by Sadie Coles HQ Gallery",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-09-25 00:00",name:"Lawrence LEK solo show ÷âLife before Automationâ ",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"58dc5dbf-c71b-459a-b58f-78d2625d7852",color:"#2543b3",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"81c3857a-0fbb-468e-a0ed-ac12f42e0a40",type:"",poster:{i
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77s fragments of colonial-era photographic archives, highlighting how these historical images continue to haunt contemporary AI systems. Allahyari's moving image installation Moon-faced (2022) revives erased traditions of gender fluidity in Persian portraiture, while Auriea Harvey's Black Ship (2024) reclaims AI-generated imagery of enslavement as a vessel of resistance.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A second strand explores parallels between data and the natural world. Entangled Others â the duo of Feileacan McCormick and Sofia Crespo â present their groundbreaking project featuring fictitious aquatic lifeforms encoded in synthetic DNA, while Primavera De Filippi extends her pioneering work on blockchain-based lifeforms through Plantoid and Arborithms.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The third approach finds artists satirising Big Tech's version of AI. Memo Akten's psychedelic film All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (2021) was made using his own bespoke text-to-image models before such tools went mainstream, while Jake Elwes transforms corporate legal jargon into an absurdist multi-genre score in Terms & Conditions Opera (2024-2025).",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"61fec6bf-29a6-4916-8d8e-ba59054b518d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99668705252611,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1166x640/95fb66e843/screenshot-2025-10-09-at-17-06-39.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Memo Atken, \"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, 2021\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bcc0dde8-d134-4bb9-845a-3b0f68afe05f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet for all its conceptual ambition, the exhibition stumbles slightly in its presentation. The works are displayed in a rather conventional white cube format that feels oddly at odds with the show's progressive intent. For an exhibition that champions slowness, reflection and critical engagement with established systems, the staging feels surprisingly traditional â even a touch conservative. One might have hoped for a more adventurous approach to spatial design that embodied the very rupture and process-oriented thinking the artworks themselves explore.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This reservation aside, \"Subject to Change\" remains an exhibition of considerable importance that absolutely deserves your time. It succeeds in bringing a critical, human perspective to a technology that's reshaping our future, reminding us that behind every algorithm lies intention, history and, crucially, choice.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There's something fascinatingly productive about the fact that this resolutely forward-looking exhibition finds its home in the heart of Mayfair, a neighbourhood synonymous with tradition and establishment prestige. The location creates a different energy â a tension between the quarter's classical elegance and the conceptual radicality of the works on display. It's as if the exhibition itself embodies the dialogue between past and future, convention and innovation, that it seeks to explore through AI.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fb068503-e2f0-4f41-bd3f-1bb9bf70821d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99687899049965,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1432x1562/009ca31054/screenshot-2025-10-09-at-18-30-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Morehshin Allahyari \"Moonfaced\", 2021 Video and bespoke mirrored arch frame, accompanied by ERC-721 token",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b8f9ca69-91ac-44cf-807d-a4421922022a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Subject to Change\" isn't just an exhibition to see â it's an experience to inhabit, a necessary moment of pause in our accelerated relationship with technology. Go see it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gazelli Art House, London â until 20 December",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-03 00:00",name:"Subject to Change ÷ A Pause in the Age of AI",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"4f2ab0ef-6180-4500-8725-dc971a9357e8",color:"#000000",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2dcdfd76-c539-445a-9db2-e16c6eb33155",type:"",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99671160380092,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/c9309a1e6b/eo0007-3.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Entangled Others, \"self-contained 009.4, 2024\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"subject-to-change",full_slug:"directory/reviews/subject-to-change",sort_by_date:null,position:-120,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"64e0959c-5fa3-4d84-93ba-643f9e5d664b",first_published_at:"2025-10-09T15:18:36.548Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"SIGNE PIERCE | NEW WORLD AURA",created_at:"2025-10-09T22:27:17.858Z",published_at:"2025-10-18T11:11:53.389Z",updated_at:"2025-10-18T11:11:53.403Z",id:99775438294529,uuid:"678bb0f1-320d-4b05-8092-1c48f1272c95",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f83405d5-6682-46db-aea1-a6626dfff5af",type:"",title:" NEW WORLD AURA",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:99777594926979,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/975x1235/77170d4dfe/screenshot_20251010_000429_instagram-copy.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"exhibition, signe pierce, Annka Kultys gallery",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Discover what happens when post-digital art and critical commentary collide. Refresh Magazine dives into the latest exhibition at Annka Kultys Gallery, London's hub for tech-infused contemporary art."}],_uid:"2cd17c4f-1f19-43b2-a2e2-d62d92f0ef23",body:[{_uid:"46e08e9c-4460-425a-8791-ed5ba933de98",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Annka Kultys Gallery itself has become a crucial player in shaping the landscape it showcases.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Since its founding in 2015, the gallery has carved out a distinct identity by championing artists who engage with technology, positioning itself as a leading proponent of the \"phygital\"âa seamless merging of physical and digital art experiences. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not a curatorial preference but a foundational philosophy. The gallery, under the direction of Annka Kultys, has consistently taken risks on young, \"digital native\" artists, often before they have an established market, providing a vital platform for work that challenges traditional notions of art-making and collection.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The gallery's new ticketing model, introduced for its tenth anniversary, is perhaps its most radical statement yet. In the gallery's own words, \"conversations around the precarity of artists have remained passive â looking backwards, rehearsing familiar narratives of why artists are poor.\" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The response is unequivocal: from 1 October 2025, admission to all exhibitions requires a paid ticket. This is framed not as exclusion but as \"solidarity: a conscious rebalancing within the art ecosystem.\" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The ticket is fully redeemable against a curated selection of artists' prints, and crucially, between 50 and 100 per cent of ticket proceeds go directly to the exhibiting artist.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" For digital artists in particular, whose revenue streams cannot depend exclusively on a small group of collectors or limited commercial opportunities, this model offers tangible material support. It transforms the act of attending an exhibition into an act of patronage, acknowledging that \"creativity and production carry value.\" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This, combined with the gallery's early adoption of blockchain for authentication and its use of VR and online platforms, demonstrates a holistic vision. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Annka Kultys Gallery is not just a space to view art; it is an active participant in a campaign to redefine the value, presentation, and commercial viability of digital art in the 21st century, moving away from what it calls \"the expectation of unpaid or invisible labour\" towards a more transparent, equitable, and future-oriented art economy..",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"3affed8f-23d3-4299-b227-87c5a973129e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99777594926979,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/975x1235/77170d4dfe/screenshot_20251010_000429_instagram-copy.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Signe Pierce \" NEW WORLD AURA \" ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8033626e-2631-4489-9896-fe48f1c08590",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Current exhibition : Between Linguistic Overload and Luminous Silence: Signe Pierce's Divided Vision",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In her fifth solo exhibition at Annka Kultys Gallery, New World Aura, American artist Signe Pierce presents a compelling, if somewhat didactic, duality. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The show is built around two new bodies of work that pull in opposite directions. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On one hand, NEOLEXICON, a stark, ten-minute video animation, bombards the viewer with a rapid-fire glossary of nearly 200 of Pierce's self-coined terms. Words like \"Authoriterrorism\" and \"Egosystems\" flash up in bold, black-and-white type, attempting to arm us with a new language to diagnose the anxieties of our hyper-mediated age. It's a work of sharp, linguistic precision, a direct address to the viewer's intellect. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On the other hand, the HOLOCLOUDS series offers a retreat from language altogether. These are shimmering, abstract light projections cast onto canvas, described by the artist as \"inner iridescences\" drawn from trance states. 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The exhibition thus stages a dialogue between clarity and haze, definition and dissolution.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" While NEOLEXICON feels like a necessary, if slightly overwhelming, attempt to map the present, it is in the silent, shimmering surfaces of the HOLOCLOUDS that the viewer finds space to breathe, suggesting that in our tumultuous times, the most profound experiences may lie beyond the reach of words.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition until 8th of November",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"16ad6a93-3548-461a-9cb9-4374326c8993",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99781586413471,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2198x1204/4ec2a6815d/screenshot-2025-10-10-at-00-51-38.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" SIGNE PIERCE | NEW WORLD AURA",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-02 00:00",name:"Annka Kultys Gallery÷A New Exhibition and A New Ticketing Model",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"9d26998c-ad53-4d28-a314-58f67ffd6a66",color:"#89dbe7",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"289fe3ae-87e3-4258-8b19-d82b51195558",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99787118856140,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2490x1358/010d3a470e/screenshot-2025-10-10-at-01-14-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"JONAS LUND, Still of The Future of Life 2024",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"signe-pierce-new-world-aura",full_slug:"directory/reviews/signe-pierce-new-world-aura",sort_by_date:null,position:-130,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"63d229b4-c7a7-4f42-8bdc-80cfa18e0894",first_published_at:"2025-10-09T23:17:19.947Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"ORCHID ISLAND LAURENT GRASSO",created_at:"2025-10-11T19:30:31.303Z",published_at:"2025-10-17T17:25:56.573Z",updated_at:"2025-10-17T17:25:56.592Z",id:100439782637763,uuid:"15f1a7b6-6b47-48de-a51c-7f250aee86dd",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"b1c3d9c8-ab09-4c6c-947b-850a3d86a1a5",type:"",title:"ORCHID ISLAND by LAURENT GRASSO",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:100439884909421,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1344x930/50b00e55f4/screenshot-2025-10-11-at-21-29-05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"ORCHID ISLAND, LAURENT GRASSO, Perrotin,",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Laurent Grassoâs \"Orchid Island\" merges myth, climate, and immersive aesthetics â a poetic reflection on environment and time."}],_uid:"30807f90-2299-4692-b964-114ad4d6ffd3",body:[{_uid:"f294c6b1-02eb-4a55-b188-9540d0c84b44",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When the Past Meets the Future: Laurent Grasso's Mesmerising Time Warp",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The visionary exhibition \"Orchid Island\"",type:"text"},{text:"at Perrotin London is a thrilling collision of history, science fiction, and environmental anxietyâand it's utterly unmissable.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"There is a profound and unsettling beauty to the work of Laurent Grasso. The French artist, a recipient of the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize, has built a career on exploring the liminal spaces between the known and the unknowable, the visible and the invisible. His latest exhibition, âOrchid Island,â at Perrotinâs London gallery, is a masterful continuation of this inquiry, a haunting and immersive experience that leaves you questioning the very nature of reality itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The centerpiece of the show is a film, Orchid Island, shot on the remote coasts of Taiwan. Rendered in a stark, mesmerizing black and white, the film presents a lush, tropical landscape overshadowed by a vast, levitating black rectangle. This enigmatic form, at once abstract, alien, and supernatural, hovers with an unnerving stillness, a silent sentinel in a world devoid of human presence. The effect is deeply unsettling, a disruption of the natural order that speaks to a history of dispossession and the constructed nature of our perception of the exotic. Accompanied by a hypnotic score from Nicolas Godin of the band Air, the film is a powerful testament to Grassoâs ability to transform landscapes into metaphysical experiences, to imbue them with a sense of the sublime and the terrifying.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This motif of the black rectangle, a recurring symbol in Grassoâs work, reappears in his Studies into the Past series of paintings. Here, idyllic historical landscapes, rendered in the style of 17th and 18th-century masters, are disrupted by the intrusion of this same geometric anomaly. The effect is one of temporal dislocation, a haunting of the past by a memory of the future. In Tropical Scene, the form is materialized as a sheet of dark plexiglass embedded within the painting, a physical presence that both obscures and reframes the composition, forcing a confrontation with the act of looking itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition also features works from Grassoâs Anima series, where the ephemeral form of a cloud is translated into shimmering palladium foil paintings and constellations of neon. For Grasso, the cloud is not merely a meteorological phenomenon but a threshold between the earthly and the celestial, a mutable form that absorbs our projections of fear and desire. The palladium surfaces shimmer with a cosmic intensity, while the neon outlines evoke a sense of danger and instability, a potent metaphor for the ambiguities of our time, where the sublime beauty of the sky coexists with the looming threat of environmental catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This concern with the future of our planet is further explored in the Future Herbarium series, where Grasso creates imaginary mutations of post-disaster flora, executed in the manner of 18th-century botanical illustrations. These works, conceived in parallel with his film ARTIFICIALIS (2021), presented in the nave of the Musée dâOrsay, are a poignant and unsettling reminder of the fragility of our ecosystem.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Grassoâs practice is a complex and multifaceted one, drawing on a wide range of disciplines, from physics and philosophy to alchemy and science fiction. He is an artist who is not afraid to tackle the big questions, to explore the limits of our understanding and to challenge our assumptions about the world around us. His work is a powerful reminder that there is more to reality than meets the eye, that the unseen forces that shape our world are often the most powerful.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Laurent Grasso: Orchid Island is at Perrotin, London, until 20 December.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77,{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-839bbd5f-7fff-8b30-3be4-88e348b5d4e1"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Its title refers to Vaikom Muhammad Basheerâs Malayalam story Bhumiyude Avakashikal (1977), in which humans, plants and animals possess an equal claim to the earth. The distinction is important: they are equal claimants, not equivalent beings. A shared planet does not produce a shared way of living. Each organism meets light, water, danger and duration differently. What joins them is neither resemblance nor harmony, but proximity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The world is not one coherent space arranged around human needs. It is made of many living layers, entangled yet distinct, evolving beside and through one another. A plant responds to soil, rain, heat, insects and the presence of other plants. Human histories intersect with these relations, but do not contain them. We are part of the entanglement, not its centre.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a0ce6fe2-08ed-4c13-87c0-49aa9661c994",quote:" âSeeds cross borders; crops follow empires; roots alter the ground that holds them.â",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"970e554b-8d43-4b66-a8f3-fdf5cbc8d239",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221830683921338,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1580x620/07bb0be553/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-51-04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Self Portrait, 2025, Hemangini Maharaul",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cd0d9688-1a44-4cb2-9c37-88818abd7d95",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Plants are often admitted into human culture on restrictive terms. We notice what feeds us, heals us, shelters us, earns money or gives pleasure. Even concern can preserve this arrangement: a forest becomes valuable because it stores carbon; a species because it provides a service; a tree because it cools a city. Inheritors of Earth asks the viewer to suspend that calculation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Achari describes the exhibitionâs method as âphytosensitive.â The word could easily remain theoretical, but the works give it substance. Paint, paper, moving image and organic matter register vegetal life without forcing it into a single tempo. Growth appears alongside exhaustion; rootedness alongside travel. Plants do not simply furnish the subject of the works. Their fibres, surfaces, cycles and delays affect how those works are made and how long they ask to be observed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jayita Baraiâs Assemblage II (2026) makes this especially clear. Cotton rope, coir rope, dried bark, corn-husk paper and a Canna indica seedpod meet within the same object. The list reads almost like an inventory, yet none of the materials is anonymous. Each has passed through cultivation, weather, touch and transformation. Rope bears the memory of tension. Bark shows both protection and injury. A seedpod contains the remains of a future already dispersed. Barai does not smooth these materials into a seamless whole; she lets their different histories remain visible at the joins.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ea26b296-4845-4c62-8e59-24776e934e8f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221813319334729,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5184x3456/82fdf0d4d8/jayita-barai-assemblage-ii-2026-cotton-rope-canna-indica-seedpod-coir-rope-dried-bark-gouache-on-cloth-corn-husk-paper-50x40x9-cm-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-quiet-art-movement.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jayita Barai Assemblage II, 2026, cotton rope, Canna Indica seedpod, coir rope, dried bark, gouache on cloth, c
77orn husk paper, 50x40x9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Quiet Art Movment",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7fb3f253-10cb-4098-b84b-19635033980a",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The rest of the exhibition broadens the means by which such differences are encountered. Manuel Mataâs poetry and recorded voice introduce language without granting it final authority. Ben Goldfarbâs soundscape occupies the room without staying in one place. Sweety Chakmaâs seating installation changes the visitorâs height and duration of looking. The Shared Ecologies reading room asks for yet another posture: head lowered, page turned, time temporarily withdrawn from circulation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These elements matter because seeing is never isolated from the body that sees. A standing visitor scans; a seated one lingers. Sound reaches what lies outside the field of vision. Materials provoke memories of touch even when museum protocol keeps the hand at a distance. The exhibition works through this relay among eye, ear, skin and posture. It does not offer total immersion, a promise too easily made, but a series of partial contacts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Those contacts also carry histories that have little to do with botanical innocence. Plants have travelled in ships, inventories and imperial ambitions. They have been extracted from one habitat, renamed in another and cultivated for distant markets. Colonial botany did not merely describe the vegetal world; it reorganised land, labour and knowledge. The exhibition attends to the lower-caste physicians, illustrators and local knowledge-keepers who contributed to early botanical compendia but rarely received the authority attached to the finished books. A taxonomy can preserve a specimen while misplacing the hands and minds that made its identification possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"cdd2afa9-ad62-476a-b0b5-eebb46d95d66",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221832019151808,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1362x1172/69a57773c4/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-56-35.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Minam Apang Spectre of War VIII, 2025 Charcoal on cloth 53 x 60 in 134.62 x 152.4 cm Courtesy of the artist and Chatterjee and Lal",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"23372706-cccb-4a2e-a4a0-02f264be36cb",quote:"The exhibition argues that the central problem is not a lack of information about the collapse of the biosphere, but rather our sensory and emotional inability to truly perceive and feel it.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"33d0b884-a53f-413c-9114-231efdcde9bd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221830897339323,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1106x1240/bdd4a0838e/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-52-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ishita Chakraborty Where The Wild Things Roam 35, Cotton, 2026 Acrylic and colour pencil on Jute pasted on cotton Chappa Saree fabric",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"af9f11fc-a1d3-4105-8454-75964bc358d7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831089621948,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1086x1400/4171c67f92/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-52-47.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ishita Chakraborty Where The Wild Things Roam 35, Cotton, 2026 Acrylic and colour pencil on Jute pasted on cotton Chappa Saree fabric",auto
77play:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b0ac0c4b-f086-4c48-b463-9b569eea0dce",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kallen, or Kandal, Pokkudan gives this history a particular human and ecological form. A Dalit agricultural worker, writer and activist from Kerala, he planted thousands of mangrove saplings along the coast. The mangrove was not an abstract figure of resilience for him. It belonged to the conditions of his life: mud, salt water, caste, work, erosion and the practical knowledge of how a damaged coastline might be restored. His story keeps the exhibition from drifting towards botanical reverie. Closeness to the land is not always chosen, and knowledge acquired through labour is not always credited as expertise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The mangrove also unsettles an easy picture of rootedness. It holds its ground at an unstable edge, where fresh and salt water meet and where the line between land and sea keeps moving. Its roots shelter other species while changing the sediment around them. Here, dependence is not weakness and autonomy is not isolation. Life proceeds by modifying and being modified by its surroundings.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nature has always been queer. Across species, bodies, reproductive strategies and forms of association exceed the binaries once treated by science as self-evident. What fell outside the reproductive pair was often recorded as anomaly or noise. The limit belonged not to the living world, but to the questions brought to it. This is neither metaphor nor moral endorsement: nature does not exist to certify human lives. It simply makes uniformity impossible to mistake for order.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To acknowledge this does not relax scientific rigour; it sharpens it. A category remains useful only while it answers to what observation finds. When life exceeds the available description, the description must change. The exhibition makes a similar demand upon looking: attend first, classify later.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e705abf9-3c3f-4ec7-b7d2-64a0dffd02ab",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831577861054,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1414x1206/c51c5a4608/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-54-47.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gaurav Patil, Pre-Monsoon Drift, 2026, Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"771f016f-4542-4da7-a866-37f2b4456287",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831751310271,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1620x1068/388e5e9518/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-55-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1620x1068"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gaurav Patil, Pre-Monsoon Drift, 2026, Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"51c938af-a821-47ab-84c8-ecbbcdbf2ebc",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To step away from the centre is not to disappear. It is to discover the weight of our presence. No distant âenvironmentâ waits to receive the consequences of our lives: extraction enters soil and blood; militarisation inscribes itself upon landscapes and bodies; technological expansion leaves its heat, its minerals, its waste. There is no outside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here lies artâs quiet force. It reopens passages that systems have closed. It lets the familiar become strange again and restores weight to what has slipped from view. By altering the scale and duration of attention, it changes the terms of our presence. A seedpod is granted time; a mangrove recovers its history; a voice continues where the image ends. What had been scenery draws near, not as an object awaiting our concern, but as a life already touching ours.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition never presses its argument upon us. Its care is structural
77: each material is allowed its opacity, each voice its register, each rhythm the time it requires. Nothing is enlisted merely to illustrate a lesson. Meaning gathers through small adjustments: a body invited to sit, a sound released from any single source, a seedpod left to carry its own history. Here lies the exhibitionâs elegance, and perhaps its magnificence: in the intelligence with which it makes room for other forms of life without presuming to translate them. Inheritors of Earth does not instruct us to care. With uncommon subtlety, it creates the conditions in which care can arise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Plants enter the density of the present as lives that precede, sustain, and exceed the human story. The world does not widen away from us, but around us. We find ourselves among other inheritors, each carrying a different measure of time, none entrusted with the future alone. The central question is no longer about humanity's place in nature, but about deeply understanding how all entities co-exist and co-evolveâsustaining the flourishing of life in all its diverse forms and temporalities that constitute our shared habitat. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"From genetically modified organisms and man-made mineral extraction to the microplastics coursing through our oceans, we have come to live in a \"post-nature\" ecosystem. Here, the synthetic and the digital form a new layer in the entangled world we inhabit. The challenge is not only to recognize the limits of anthropocentric thinking, but to take seriously other ways of being. We have been passively observing the collapse of the climate and still do nothing; we get used to it as if it were just an outside spectacle. To break this inertia, we do not need the dogmatic jargon of extremist, dystopian, or dissonant ecological statements, nor do we require an authoritative, radical injunction. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"This exhibition does the exact opposite. It brings a patient, meditative sensibility to the act of looking at vegetal life. In asking us to look ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"with",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" plants rather than",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"at",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" them not as a retreat into nostalgia, but as an embrace of sustainable progress to feel deeply, to experience profoundly, to be moved the exhibition succeeds through art to reconfigure the imagination itself toward coexistence, humility, and shared inheritance. It provides a gentle, experimental space: a subtle, realistic, and efficient path toward the activation of a transformative agency to reconnect and regenerate our shared habitat.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"dd7e7239-b9c2-4e22-8580-90c0228a610b",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Inheritors of Earth\" until 22nd December 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists: ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-fa96b5ba-7fff-5388-1b0e-fdf2800b8178"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Arunkumar HG, Ben Goldfarb, Bhimanshu Pandel, Gaurav Patil, Hemangini Maharaul, Ishita Chakraborty, Jayita Barai, Maksud Ali Mondol, Manir Mrittik, Manuel Mata, Minam Apang, Radhika Agarwala, Ravi Agarwal, Samit Das, Sujith SN; Sweety Chakma, Sandeep TK, Valay Gada, and Shared Ecologies",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Premjish Achari",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}
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77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cheang worked with eight intergenerational performers in Tucson, Arizona, all of whom contributed their own experiences, narratives, and dreams of and for trans and gender nonconforming life in todayâs United States. The collaboratively scripted film moves between physical and virtual space: between performances in a motel room, a junkyard, and city streets amid surrounding nature, desert plants bloom anthropomorphic appendages and souls escape inhuman oppression to take transhuman flight. Refresh Magazine is proud to presnt this essay written by Wei Huang",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As attacks on queer communities escalate, the pressure is on to imagine a more equitable future without disavowing the conditions of the present. That task can take several forms: recovering an underexamined queer past, supporting community-making and activism, or experimenting with the technologies of a speculative queer utopia. In LOVER LOVE, her installation at New Yorkâs Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Taiwanese artist Shu Lea Cheang brings all three into play. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"\"Here, past, present, and future fold into one another and keep changing shape without sequence,\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Presented as a 28-minute film, LOVER LOVE sidesteps the conventions of the film installation. Four videos play simultaneously across four channels, each projected onto a floor-to-ceiling sliding screen that visitors are invited to move. The moment a panel shifts, Itâs Lover, Love (2011)âthe song that gives the exhibition its titleâbegins to play. Produced and performed by Aérea Negrot, the gauzy techno ballad finds the singer mourning a former lover she cannot quite leave behind. In the wake of Negrotâs death by suicide in 2023, its melancholy has acquired the force of an elegy. The installation is also Cheangâs personal tribute to her longtime collaborator.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the film, Cheang casts Negrot as a six-winged seraph gliding through a pink-hued sky. The figure is unmistakably Cheang: six metallic wings emerge from a plume of smoke that forms the mythical beingâs hollow body. In an interview with Frieze, Cheang described this figure as a vessel âelevated as a symbol with which every trans being can identify.â That radical opennessâthe sense that a body can remain in the process of becomingâruns through her practice. Cheang attends to the feedback loop between the transitioning body and the human, technological, and social agents that make transformation possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d2e122c0-a319-4d75-83e3-a9cf1aa442a5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211983063350921,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/e96645fa26/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-101-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"BTS and Installation Images: Shu Lea Cheang LOVER LOVE, 2026 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fde58c9a-0cbf-4f45-a11e-a8d027976ad1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211983272926858,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/dec370a7ca/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-97-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3400x2550"},is_external_url:false},caption:"BTS and Installation Images: Shu Lea Cheang LOVER LOVE, 2026 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"b906eae9-abbb-433e-85cd-8a8034883179",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211986767548053,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/b3d0560bce/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-104-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"caption",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4828d6da-33a1-4da7-bdf1-3fa32a74ad65",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A cyberfeminist and posthumanist, Cheang has long grounded her work in relationality. In Brandon (1998â99), the landmark web-based project prompted by the 1993 murder of trans man Brandon Teena, she used the internetâs non-linear form to connect Teenaâs story with wider trans histories and archival material. Fresh Kill (1994), her experimental science-fiction feature, turns queer ecology into a combustible plot: a lesbian couple use hacking to take on corporate conspiracy and an environmental crisis that leads to their daughterâs disappearance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For LOVER LOVE, Cheang filmed in Tucson, Arizona, in collaboration with local queer communities. Its participants appear in shifting registers: music performances unfold in open-air and semi-clandestine settings; trans and queer people recount personal experiences; intimacy and kink are staged; queerness is simply asserted as a way of being. The film moves between the everyday and the otherworldly. Participants may begin by speaking of their lives through mythical figuresâvampires, for instanceâbefore moving into performance or a community dance party. Elsewhere, digital fantasy enters the frame. One group performance ends with a celebratory portrait, only for CGI cacti to rise, flower, and overlay the performers. The final sequence mirrors the opening image of Negrot drifting freely as a futuristic seraph: against the Arizona desert, a UFO summons her into animation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this way, LOVER LOVE proposes a more expansive account of transness. Cheang has long regarded transition as a definitive enactment of cyborg theory, grounded in the physical interventions that transition can entail. Speaking at the 2025 Women Make Waves International Film Festival in Taipei, she returned to the relation between the subject who is becoming and the object with which that becoming takes place: body and machine. In a trans context, however, the machine is itself bodily, taking shape through surgery, hormone therapy, and other forms of intervention. Cheang pushes this framework beyond the human scale, towards trans-species life, queer ecology, and the cyberqueer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Negrot herself spoke of moving between transition, detransition, and transition again. For her, this was simply life: âa constant transition.â The phrase refuses the comfort of a fixed identity and recasts life as a state of perpetual movement. It reverberates throughout LOVER LOVE. One Tucson participant resists having their identity suppressed and their humanity denied; elsewhere, the seraph, the cacti, and accounts of becoming creatures from another world open onto a perspective beyond the human. The accounts are deliberately unscripted, resisting any single narrative of queer life. Their ambiguities echo Negrotâs understanding of existence as mobile and unfinished.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The installationâs mechanics extend this proposition. Just as the film makes room for multiple narratives, its four movable screens generate a series of metaphors for queer lifeâand, crucially, for its entanglement with the wider social world. In her Frieze interview, Cheang likened the audienceâs power to divert projected images from their intended paths to the societal brutality inflicted on trans lives. Yet that same intervention also calls up Negrotâs celestial presence by triggering her song. As visitors experiment with the screens, the footage is distorted, layered, refracted, or blocked by light. The ongoing adjustment becomes a search for a
77wholeness that never arrives. It is difficult, if not impossible, to watch the film in its entirety; but that impossibility is precisely what asks viewers to remain with change, and to recognise the kinetic force of queer lives in transition.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Will queerness ever arrive? Not, Cheang suggests, in any settled or imminent form. Still, LOVER LOVE mourns the past, works in the present, and imagines a future. Cheang has said that she feels both âquite marginalâ and âat the centre of the world.â The installation distils that tension and turns it into momentum: a reason to persist, and to keep imagining what might come next.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9c9bc315-6a60-4453-9531-43df0baf4331",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211987371450006,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4096x2160/dd7d05dee7/loverlove-4channel-4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c213fa49-d4ec-4032-ac03-d2e6ff7c1838",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LOVER LOVE Tucson Artists & Collaborators:",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Vikó Velázquez Morales, Flor de Nopal",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Forrest, Forrest",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Graham Downing, Forrest's Lover",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Monica Jones, Monica Jones",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Emilia Villegas, MizSkoden",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jade A. Dominguez, Nadir",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Darla Rodriguez, Ash Wednesday",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Azrael Fayme, Azrael",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nimshi Bernice, Nimshi",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Veni, ERA 19",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tania Arballo, ERA 19",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gianna Purcell, Biker",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sam Bloom, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jazzy Benson, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Noah Austin Lopez, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Victoria Fitzgerald, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Shawna Shawnte, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Red Samaniego, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jazzy Benson, Producer / Casting Director / Locations",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Katie Burkholder, Producer / Production Manager",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Eryka Dellenbach, Director of Photography",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Clarice Bales, Assistant Camera",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Marizó Siller, Gaffer",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Graham Donohoe, Data Wrangler / Lighting Support / Drone Pilot",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Melrose Mcclain, Sound Recordist / Boom Op",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Reed Chandler, Assistant Director / Script Supervisor / Slate",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Julia Franco, Art Assistant",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-08-23 00:00",name:"Shu Lea Cheang ÷LOVER LOVE",author:"Wei Huang \t",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"bfa3f701-4
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What followed was one of the most important exhibitions of the year.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"War doesn't leave much time for beautiful words. But there is still something it has not managed to destroy. It is the bond between people. And when we speak of joy, it may seem inappropriate in the context of war. But joy is the proof that we are still alive and that we are fighting.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Yuliia \"Phobia\", Senior Sergeant, Ukrainian Armed Forces and combat medic, Venice, 7 May 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"993b2654-7122-431a-996f-58a7e0438187",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177378139025861,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1992x1316/adff6df23e/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-06-37.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"JuliaâFobiaâ.StillJoyâFrom Ukraine Into The World /BiennaleArte2026. PinchukArtCentre.Photo:ValentynaRostovikova/PRYZMphotography",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"69faf6db-9a81-4f31-89fa-31bcfd6aa818",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy â From Ukraine into the World\" is an exhibition built on a question that refuses to be deferred: how can anyone still speak of joy when their country is being destroyed by war? The PinchukArt Centre (Kiyv, Ukraine) offers no ready-made answer. It offers a visceral experience, an unsparing testimony to the human capacity to remain alive to beauty in the midst of annihilation. Its power is inseparable from its restraint. \"Still Joy\" is subtle and fine-grained, operating through nuance rather than declaration, and it is in that very restraint that its underlying force becomes irresistible. Joy and love are not its themes. They are its supreme intelligence: the deepest, most demanding form of understanding available to a civilization under pressure.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this exhibition refuses, above all, is the consolation of heroism. The Ukrainian and international artists gathered here do not aestheticize suffering, nor do they flee it. They inhabit it. The video by Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, superimposing images of Kyiv raves before and during the war, makes this inhabitation visible with disarming clarity: the faces are the same, the music pulses with the same intensity, the bodies move with the same abandon. Joy here is not a departure from reality. It is its most precise reading. A ferocious refusal to let war become the only frequency on which a life can be lived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" does not ask for sympathy. It asks for something harder: the willingness, intellectual, emotional and moral, to hold joy and devastation as a single, indivisible condition of being alive. The dominant cultural grammar around war tends toward two poles: mourning or resistance, as though grief and defiance were the only legitimate responses to destruction. \"Still Joy\" proposes a third term: love. Not unconditional love, not love as surrender to feeling, but the kind of love that keeps its eyes open, that refuses both sentimentality and despair, that demands of itself the full weight of what it means to remain attached to the world while the world is being taken apart. To love a person, a plant, a piece of music, the warmth of chocolate melting against your skin, in the middle of annihilation, is not naivety. It is the most serious, the most demanding, the most uncompromising thing a human being can do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"fc7ce668-d2ba-439e-9c14-d477b50b6ca0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177377219727812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2398x1326/03c445b3ea/17-roman-khimei-yarema-malashchuk-dedicated-to-the-youth-of-the-world-ii-2019.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Dedicated to the Youth of the World II, 2019",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"87930ae8-fe21-4c93-867a-4b0ca01649bb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Architecture of Testimony",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This proposition is grounded not in theory but in lived testimony, and that choice is the exhibition's most fundamental declaration: a manifesto written not in words but in the irreducible weight of what people have actually lived. Hlib Stryzhko, a marine, veteran and former prisoner of war, spent years after his captivity interviewing fellow survivors, not about death, but about the moments of joy that kept them alive. His stories are presented in a visual language of deliberate lightness, creating the exhibition's first and most decisive tension: the surface is a fairy tale; the content is not. Lost limbs. The smell of marshland on survivors. Grief without a name. And within all of it, the extraordinary persistence of small pleasures: a strawberry chocolate bar softened under the thighs of a prisoner whose teeth had been broken, offered by a guard in a moment of inexplicable humanity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That detail is not anecdotal. It is philosophical. It tells us that joy does not require permission from circumstances. It erupts anyway, through the body, through the senses, through the bond between two human beings in a situation designed to destroy all bonds. Conflict journalist and co-founder of The Reckoning Project Nataliya Gumenyuk contributed her own gathered testimonies alongside Stryzhko: voices from the field, from the rubble, from the impossible ordinary of wartime survival. Together, they establish the exhibition's ethical foundation: \"Still Joy\" is not an artwork about Ukraine. It is an artwork made from Ukraine, from inside the experience, from the irreducible fact of people who are still here and still feeling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens with this foundation and immediately expands it. Kateryna Aliinyk's landscape paintings, in which small animal life vibrates under a soft moonlit glow, propose a world that continues to breathe at the margins of catastrophe. Piotr Armianovski's video essay blends the reality of war with the dreams of Mariupol, a city that no longer exists as it was and yet persists in the imagination of those who loved it. Simone Post's immersive installation reimagines the palazzo's interior through a structure made of candy, an architecture of childlike joy that is also, in this context, an act of radical insistence on the right to pleasure. These three works together establish the exhibition's first argument: that the world does not stop being beautiful because it is being destroyed. It becomes more so.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4c6d1c66-23a2-4539-afcc-4cbd6aaed526",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177387446878694,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2002x1320/3ce2f09ff5/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-51-01.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"PiotrArmianovski,cMeandMariupol, 2017, \"StillJoycFromcUkraine IntoTheWorld\" /BiennaleArte2026.PinchukArtCentre.©PhotoOKNOStudio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"7a2ef441-e428-49d2-a7e0-1377bca4d439",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177414497444483,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2143x3000/b8e9596a6f/6-simone-post-she-knew-she_it_they-would-melt-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Simone Post, She Knew She/It/They Would Melt, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cdbabf14-6af6-4a5e-9ff9-ca511cb550ce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177387049447902,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2006x1328/6424334c55/arte-2026-pinchukartcent-okno-studio.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kateryna Aliinyk, Night in Heaven, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"022429ff-2014-48a1-867b-a3009e368594",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Love as the Only Adequate Response",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial decision to bring international artists into dialogue with Ukrainian voices is not a gesture of solidarity. It is an argument. Loss and love are not Ukrainian conditions. They are human ones. And the works that carry the most weight here are those that understand love not as warmth but as precision: the exact, specific, irreplaceable attachment to a particular person, a particular gesture, a particular world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tacita Dean's 39-minute 16mm film \"If I Were in the Adlon\" (2025) makes this argument with surgical precision. Filmed over a single afternoon with Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov and his wife and lifelong collaborator Vita Mikhailov, the film does not document a relationship. It inhabits one. Joy here is not an emotion. It is the accumulated weight of decades of chosen proximity, what love becomes when it survives long enough to be taken for granted, and then, under the pressure of history, is no longer taken for granted at all. Cardiff and Miller's \"Conversations with My Mother\" (2023) presses this further: a row of telephones, each carrying the voice of someone gone. Love does not end when the person ends. It continues, unresolved, looking for a receiver. These two works together make the exhibition's most precise philosophical claim: that love is not a feeling but a form of sustained attention, one that outlasts the body, outlasts the war, outlasts the silence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gabrielle Goliath's video works bring another register entirely into the room, and in doing so, make the exhibition's argument about love more precise and more demanding. The intimate testimonies of Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ soldiers and civilians speaking of joy are not a statement about identity politics. They are a statement about the nature of love itself: that it persists in conditions designed to deny it, that it constitutes a form of knowledge precisely because it is contested, that the people who have been most systematically told their love does not count are often those who understand most clearly what love costs and what it is worth. In a war that has made every form of human attachment a target, these testimonies hold survival and beauty as inseparable, not as a consoling idea, but as the most rigorous position available. That insistence is the exhibition's moral spine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ãlvaro Urbano's painted-metal \"Kalyna\" â a viburnum branch, the emblematic Ukrainian plant, rendered in a material that cannot be smelled or plu
77cked â holds this tension in a single object. The joy of recognition is immediate; the impossibility of possession is equally so. Julian Charrière and Ryan Gander each trace, in their distinct registers, how human presence leaves marks in the world: the geological, the atmospheric, the intimate. Daniel Turner's work operates in the register of material endurance, what survives when everything else has been consumed. Lesia Vasylchenko, Katya Lesiv, and Kateryna Lysovenko each bring the body and its memory into the room, through drawing, through gesture, through the insistence that a person's inner life is not erased by the circumstances imposed upon it. Pavlo Kovach and Oleksiy Sai & Yury Gruzinov extend this into the territory of collective memory, of communities that hold their shape even when the ground beneath them has been taken away.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4ca99ed1-4057-4b76-9440-16a23cd03572",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177382048522694,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2010x1336/9676c410a4/biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tacita Dean, If I Were at the Adlon, 2025. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"35dd8d6e-4ce0-4c2a-a666-16bbd75a36ae",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177382843597256,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2024x1338/8df91cf060/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-31-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gabrielle Goliath, Personal Accounts (a quiet rush), 2025. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3e970863-4257-4672-82fa-a97857b39f30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177415650001546,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x3000/e19a18081d/36-alvaro-urbano-disobedience-after-hilma-af-klint-kalyna-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãlvaro Urbano, Disobedience After Hilma af Klint (Kalyna), 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f89ccefc-da20-4574-9d80-f7fecb263f6e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177415747838603,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x3000/29ea315581/34-alvaro-urbano-disobedience-after-hilma-af-klint-kalyna-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãlvaro Urbano, Disobedience After Hilma af Klint (Kalyna), 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cb0390af-9be7-46a5-a7aa-a041e6a10c18",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177418129027732,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/2a9d1d02f1/41-julian-charriere-where-waters-meet-2019-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julian Charrière, Where Waters Meet, 2019. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c4082653-b86f-42b4-ade7-f5e19012a0ff",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424737489608,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/9cfbe00661/27-lesia-vasylchenko-1534-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lesia Vasylchenko, 1534, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ce785913-5501-4e12-8c84-4437832fbc74",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Body as the Last Territory",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"War makes the body its primary site of violence. \"Still Joy\" makes it the primary site of resistance. Alevtina Kakhidze's tattoo salon inside the exhibition is philosophically precise about this: to be tattooed by the exhibition is to refuse the separation between aesthetic experience and lived life, to insist that what happens here is permanent, an act of sovereignty over the only territory that cannot be bombed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zhanna Kadyrova's light-box photographs of bombed interiors each contain a single surviving houseplant amid the rubble, plants she rescued and carried to Venice. The image resists symbolism. It is simply factual: something lived, something continued, something carried across the wreckage. And Ashfika Rahman's monumental sculpture of tiny bells, each bearing the fingerprint of a displaced woman, does not mourn. It rings. The work's argument is the same as Kadyrova's, stated in a different register: love is the refusal to let a person be reduced to their absence. Every fingerprint is a person who was somewhere, who touched something, who insisted on leaving a mark.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fb514128-cfdf-443e-823d-bbfe634e3c79",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424676770503,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/7d974bb0ab/1-ashfika-rahman-than-para-no-land-without-us-2025-ongoing-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ashfika Rahman, Than Para â No Land Without Us, 2025âongoing. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a4050c3e-440b-4abe-897f-171f5023b60d",quote:"\"Still Joy\" is beautiful. It is moving. It carries an intelligent and universal message with the full weight of what has been lived. What if the world rebuilt itself through love? ",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"e4dbf803-fa3b-4aeb-8920-ce5996b34392",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424676516550,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/fa88b85984/14-zhanna-kadyrova-refugees-2023-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zhanna Kadyrova, Refugees, 2023. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a3f19fee-32a3-4fdd-b93b-3b5c8cd8875e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nikita Kadan: Where It Ends",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition closes with Nikita Kadan's monumental drawing of a silent rave: bodies pressed together in the dark, moving without sound, finding in collective movement what language cannot hold. In Kadan's drawing, bodies become a landscape. Emergence and loss are indistinguishable. The rave is a funeral. The funeral is a rave. Joy and grief share the same breath, the same gesture, the same room.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the image \"Still Joy\" leaves you with: not resolution, not consolation, but the full weight of human beings insisting on being alive together, in the dark, without words, without explanation, insisting that this insistence is enough.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this exhibition ultimately proposes is that love is a practice. A discipline. An ecology. It extends beyond the human, leaving its marks in rock, in ice, in the slow chemistry of the earth, in the subversive kinship between the organic and the synthetic; The boundaries between species, between bodies, between the living and the lost, are not walls but membranes, permeable, trembling, alive. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"To love is to engage in a profound act of world-making, one that refuses the hierarchy that places destruction above survival, despair above attachment, absence above the insistence on contact.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, joy is not a passive state. It is an act against systemic collapse. The boundaries between the personal and the political, between the intimate and the historical, blur and dissolve. What remains is the raw, unmediated fact of people who are still here, still feeling, still reaching toward one another, across every distance that has been imposed upon them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" is beautiful. It is moving. It carries an intelligent and universal message with the full weight of what has been lived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What if the world rebuilt itself through love? ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Not unconditional love, not love as surrender,but the kind of love that keeps its eyes open, that holds the full weight of what has been lost and chooses, with full knowledge of that weight, to remain attached.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists gathered in this exhibition understand that to love is to engage in a profound act of world-making. They expose the friction between the organic and the synthetic, mapping an ecology where desire extends far beyond the human. We navigate through the intimate architecture of queer ecologies, where the toxicity of our environments forces new, subversive kinships. We confront the posthuman body, where vulnerability is stripped of its romantic veneer to reveal a raw, unmediated entanglement with the other, whether that other is flesh, flora, or the slow chemistry of the earth.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, joy is an act of resistance against systemic collapse. Submission to grief is repurposed as a political tool to dismantle established hierarchies. The boundaries between species blur in works that function as contemporary cathedrals for bodies that have been marginalized, displaced, bombed, and yet remain. That insistence belongs to no flag, no front line, no particular season of catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy â From Ukraine into the World\", Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice. until 1 August 2026. A Collateral Event of the \"Biennale di Venezia\". Presented by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the PinchukArtCentre. Curated by Björn Geldhof and Oleksandra Pogrebnyak ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"de9d09a6-966c-426f-b3f6-5838ee15dcf2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EDITORIAL NOTE :",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Refresh Magazine is an independent publication committed to freedom of speech and avant-garde thought. We have proudly published this article despite certain pressures, and we will continue to build a proper art journalism that holds its ground. We will re-publish this essay in a different format in our upcoming Print issue, distributed worldwilde.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-17 00:00",name:"\"Still Joy\"÷The World Rebuilt Through Love",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e023d6b7-620e-44a5-bf0a-39988326b51d",color:"#727272",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a82f7b07-6ba5-45c7-bc08-4ef1ddcf6620",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177389904421370,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/e67f09556d/7-nikita-kadan-after-all-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nikita Kadan, \"After All,\" 2026. \"Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World\" / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"still-joy-the-world-rebuilt-through-love",full_slug:"directory/reviews/still-joy-the-world-rebuilt-through-love",sort_by_date:null,position:-1280,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"808b7491-369a-4d3c-a8d4-2acc7b2d53d9",first_published_at:"2026-05-17T08:00:46.641Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Agnieszk Kurant",created_at:"2026-06-18T18:04:52.222Z",published_at:"2026-06-18T19:24:10.919Z",updated_at:"2026-06-18T19:24:10.933Z",id:188892332971849,uuid:"fb3968b2-7f9b-43a6-8a58-3369f30c0be9",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"7b6fea0c-5207-4caa-bfb8-e9854d600bb7",title:"Agnieszka Kurant: The Protocol and the Crystal",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:187861005404334,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1273x960/382e407be3/31029kurant_detail1_ak_alien_internet_2023_detail__1_.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Agnieszka Kurant: The Protocol and the Crystal",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Agnieszka Kurant: The Protocol and the Crystal"}],_uid:"9d174eef-8958-4cd3-a9ac-77073449c971",body:[{_uid:"d4719bb8-fced-4635-bd01-12a6c57a54c0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnieszka Kurant: The Protocol and the Crystal",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnieszka Kurant's works at Zero 10 share a single structural property: none of them could have taken the form they took without the participation of agents that had no intention of making art. A copper sulphate solution responding to socio-political data. A ferrofluid organism reshaped by the migratory patterns of wild animals. A mineral compressed from sixty pulverized currencies and the aggregated emotional responses of millions of people.. What happens when the author is a system, when the system includes organisms that have no knowledge of the work they are making, and when the work itself continues to change?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Unthoughtforms (2026) are copper crystals grown through a protocol derived from Gordon Pask's 1950s cybernetics, in which chemical solutions were used as computational systems capable of forms of problem-solving that exceed abstract calculation. The solution is fed with AI-harvested socio-political and economic data converted into electrical and sonic frequencies. The crystals grow in response. What results is not a visualization of data, nor a representation of a computational process, but its physical consequence â the form that emerges when information passes through matter and matter responds. The human sets the protocol. What grows is beyond anyone's control, distributed across the interaction itself, irreversible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"afcbdceb-d5dd-469e-bc43-e15139c8e068",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188908665177320,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1838x1020/28bb3c76f9/screenshot-2026-06-18-at-21-11-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Unthoughtforms, 2026 Copper crystals grown by passing electric currents and s
77ound waves through copper sulphate solution; nickel plated and chrome plated 7 x 9 x 8 1/2 in. (17.8 x 22.9 x 21.6 cm), Courtesy Marian Goddman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a27fdb45-d1e5-4b0f-aa97-b8c24285fcbc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kurant's practice is post-anthropocentric not as a theoretical position but as a method: the human designs the conditions of emergence and steps back from the outcome. In Alien Internet 2 (2023/2026), a cybernetic organism made of ferrofluid â a material whose magnetic particles hold it in multiple states of matter simultaneously â is continuously reshaped by the behavioral data of millions of wild animals: whales, bats, elephants, sponges, ciliates, parasitic fungi, migratory birds. The biosphere is not a backdrop. It is the system's active input. The work enacts a world in which the human and the non-human co-evolve, each continuously altering the conditions under which the other operates. The human is present as the architect of a listening device, but the device listens back.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The tagged animals feeding this system are unknowing participants, their movements harvested by a network they did not choose to join. The biosphere is already a shared computational system. The human is inside it, one species among others, extracting and being extracted from in equal measure. The organism is compelling precisely because it is built on that ambiguity â co-evolution and extractivism are not opposites but the same process seen from different positions within it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9465af1e-a1f5-4ade-8b79-0cf4b99c7ba3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:187861005404334,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1273x960/382e407be3/31029kurant_detail1_ak_alien_internet_2023_detail__1_.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Alien Internet 2, 2023/2026 Ferrofluid, electromagnets, glass, sensors, Arduino, artificial intelligence, custom programming 10 x 13 x 6 in. (25.4 x 33 x 15.2 cm), courtesy Marian Goodman",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d8e71881-96c4-4934-a631-0ff6ef447884",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sentimentite (2022) materializes collective affect as geology. A mineral that should not exist â sixty historical currencies pulverized and compacted, from Rai stones and whale teeth to electronic waste and cigarettes â its final form determined by algorithms analyzing emotional responses to major world events across hundreds of thousands of social media posts. The object is twinned with a digital NFT whose evolving shape tracks the same affective data in real time. Under UV light, luminescent networks surface through the stone, an infrastructure that was always there, invisible until the light changed. Collective emotion has material weight. It sediments. It can be held in the hand. The crowd is the author. The stone is its signature.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Recursivity 3 (2024/2026) closes the loop in a single image. A bronze chameleon in a mirrored terrarium, its skin coated in liquid crystals that shift color in response to an AI processing millions of users' speculations about the future. The animal reads the network. The network reads the animal. The mirror folds both into each other. Co-evolution here is not illustrated. It is performed, live, in the booth â every output becoming an input, every form a condition for the next.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"cefd63c0-a0a2-4b6c-8e7f-21da7302cf2d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188910979745132,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/788x956/8ac315b79e/screenshot-2026-06-18-at-21-20-17.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Sentimentite, 2022 Mixture of various pulverized objects compacted into a mineral form, powdered stone, resin, digital NFT, courtesy Marian Goodman",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ed1d231c-2b53-40dc-ad1d-d65fbc2ef392",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188910979724651,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/720x942/4cc447687e/screenshot-2026-06-18-at-21-20-08.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Sentimentite, 2022 Mixture of various pulverized objects compacted into a mineral form, powdered stone, resin, digital NFT, courtesy Marian Goodman",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1766b256-95bf-4e0b-8f05-049599445b54",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kurant is one of the most forward-thinking artists of their generation because their practice starts from a condition that is already true: we live inside a system in permanent co-evolution, entangled with every form of intelligence that shares the planet with us â biological, mineral, computational, collective. The system is never still. A migration reroutes, a crystal grows differently, an affect shifts the shape of a stone. In this system, the human is not the center. It is one node among many, shaped by the same forces it sets in motion, readable by the same networks it reads. Post-anthropocentrism, in Kurant's hands, is not a critique of humanism. It is a more accurate description of what is actually happening. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnieszka Kurant, presented by Marian Goodman Gallery at Art Basel, Zero 10, 18â21 June 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-16 00:00",name:"Agnieszka Kurant÷The Protocol and the Crystal",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"06899c7e-1a38-4549-9033-11656e3039fa",color:"#180302",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e996e732-2873-47ac-8ee0-9235f31b23be",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188907849114810,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1832x1276/bf47911017/screenshot-2026-06-18-at-21-07-43.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"agnieszk-kurant",full_slug:"directory/reviews/agnieszk-kurant",sort_by_date:null,position:-1350,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fe06ae7e-5446-409d-91e5-e4e5cf05d996",first_published_at:"2026-06-18T19:22:09.186Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"QUEERE MODERNE",created_at:"2026-03-09T14:10:49.073Z",published_at:"2026-03-09T16:58:14.044Z",updated_at:"2026-03-09T16:58:14.061Z",id:153091477830646,uuid:"8c4624ae-9be1-4d30-94aa-a46744b6d6ec",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"93d5a5f3-9d41-47d6-86ad-1a2a974f0bd7",title:"Reframing Modernism: A Queer Counter-Narrative",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:153095131891665,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/32a8d0a32e/queere-moderne_marie-laurencin_les-jeunes-filles_moderna-museet.tif",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"queer modernism, K20 Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, queer art history, Anke Kempkes, Isabelle Malz, Rosa Bonheur, Claude Cahun, Marlow Moss, Richmond Barthé, Surrealism, abstract art, gender, modernism, contemporary art exhibition, LGBTQ art, queer avant-garde, art review",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"K20 Düsseldorf rewrote modernism from the inside. Queer Modernism 1900â1950 was the most necessary exhibition of the year â and one of the most visually and politically alive."}],_uid:"511a5c12-a698-40ef-95df-7c4260113206",body:[{_uid:"b2bcf576-50ac-4007-9d1f-d5e05650a9ef",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Exhibition That Changes the Frame : A Queer Counter-Narrative.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A landmark exhibition at K20 in Düsseldorf (European Union) recovers the queer artists that modernism sidelined, and asks what the movement looks like when they are finally brought back in. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"\"Queer Modernism 1900-1950\" exhibition looks at modernism the way the world actually is: plural, entangled, and irreducible to a single norm. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"The Kunstsammlun, does not propose a more inclusive version of 20th-century art history. It proposes a different one altogether. The distinction matters. An additive approach would simply slot overlooked names into an existing framework, leaving the framework itself intact. This exhibition does the opposite: it treats the canon as the problem, not the solution, and builds its argument from there.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5f7ffbac-828f-47dc-b11f-77dc65ca780e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The story of modernism has long been presented as a linear progression, a heroic tale dominated by a handful of male, heterosexual figures whose aesthetic revolutions were somehow self-generated, untouched by the messy realities of desire, gender, and social transgression. The canon is not a neutral force. It is a construct, shaped by institutions and power structures that have systematically excluded voices that do not conform. Queer Modernism confronts this with unusual directness, and it confronts the fragmentary nature of its own archive with equal honesty. The lives of many queer individuals, particularly those from less privileged backgrounds or the Global South, were never deemed worthy of preservation. Marriages of convenience, pseudonyms, destroyed correspondence, and estates that still resist queer interpretations of their artists' legacies: all of this points to a long and ongoing effort to normalize the past into something tidier than
77it ever was. What the official sources conceal is often more revealing than what they openly show.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5a718b0d-6cf2-4319-ab4c-dbadf2504224",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153119770486450,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1160x1552/416efe2c33/screenshot-2026-03-09-at-16-54-51.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Portrait Of Rosa Bonheur With a Bull (1857) Ãdouard-Louis Dubufe (French, 1819/1820-1883)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"04be8e4f-ae6f-44bc-afd9-b50ca735d5b1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens with a prologue centered on the 19th-century painter Rosa Bonheur. Ãdouard Dubufe's 1857 portrait of her alongside a bull, a composition Bonheur herself insisted upon after rejecting a more conventional pose, sets the tone for everything that follows. Bonheur, who obtained official permission to wear men's clothing in public and lived openly in a same-sex partnership, represents a lineage of defiance that long predates the 20th century. Her presence here is a deliberate: she reminds us that queer life was never absent from art history, only made absent from its telling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ed5c7ec5-e64c-47ba-ad86-1bbbbe16d306",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From this starting point, the exhibition unfolds across eight thematic chapters, each one a distinct act of excavation. In Modern Arcadia, mythology becomes a form of camouflage. Ludwig von Hofmann's Die Quelle (1913, oil on canvas, 75 à 92 cm, ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Thomas-Mann-Archiv), a canvas of sunlit male nudes that Thomas Mann acquired in 1914 and kept in every home he occupied throughout his life, is one of the exhibition's most quietly charged works. The painting's classical naturalism functions as a screen: the desire is present, the deniability is built in. Lotte Laserstein's Ich und mein Modell (oil on canvas, 49.5 à 69.5 cm, Private Collection) operates differently, with an intimacy that is domestic and direct. The double portrait of the artist alongside her lover refuses the mythological alibi entirely. Glyn Warren Philpot and Ethel Walker complete a room that makes a single, precise observation: homoerotic desire was woven into European modernism from the beginning. The exhibition does not decode this material in a heavy-handed way. It places it in a room together and lets the accumulation do the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"870460c2-6864-403c-b398-824a5f7ad1e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153121363773481,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1532x1178/d4af381852/photo-stephan-bosch.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ludwig von Hofmann, Die Quelle, 1913, oil on canvas, 75 à 92 cm, ETH-Bibliothek ZuÌrich, Thomas-Mann-Archiv / Photo: Stephan Bösch",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"09361c6a-2f96-4816-88eb-fdc0ecfa6f40",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153121977661535,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4629x3255/adae2ecc93/lotte-laserstein-ich-und-mein-modell-oil-on-canvas-49-5-x-69-5-cm-private-collection-courtesy-agnews-london-vg-bild-kunst-bonn-2025.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lotte Laserstein, Ich und mein Modell, oil on canvas, 49.5 à 69.5 cm, Private Collection, Courtesy Agnews, London © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025",auto
77play:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6df74d15-cd01-495a-aa48-20f1bdee3516",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sapphic Modernism reconstructs the Parisian world of Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein, whose salons functioned as laboratories for an alternative modernity. Romaine Brooks's Portrait Marchesa Casati (oil on canvas, 248 à 120 cm, Collection Lucile Audouy) dominates one wall with the kind of authority that makes you understand why Brooks was feared as much as admired. The painting is monumental in scale and in presence: the Marchesa, elongated and spectral against a dark ground, is rendered with a precision that is also a form of possession. Nearby, Gluck's Bank Holiday Monday (c. 1937, oil on canvas, 23.7 à 18.7 cm, Private collection, courtesy of The Fine Art Society Ltd) makes its case in an entirely different register. The painting is small, barely 24 centimetres high, but it carries a quiet intensity that larger works in the room cannot match. Gluck, who dropped the birth name Hannah Gluckstein and adopted a gender-neutral identity decades before the vocabulary for it existed, is a particularly resonant presence in this section. Marie Laurencin's Young Women (Unga kvinnor, 1910, oil on canvas, 115 à 146 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) and Danseuses Espagnoles (oil on canvas, 150 à 95 cm, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris) complete a section that refuses to sentimentalize its subject: these were not marginal figures seeking tolerance. They were central to the cultural life of their time.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8a2e2c40-a7a9-4e55-a0d0-1e6afb35a10e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153127753788396,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3025x2337/423aeab6c5/queere-moderne_marie-laurencin_les-jeunes-filles_moderna-museet-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marie Laurencin, Unga kvinnor (Young Women), 1910, oil on canvas, 115 x 146 cm (unframed), 124 x 156 x 5.5 cm (framed), Donation in 1966 under the will of Rolf de Maré, Moderna Museet, Stockholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0b676ce7-fd0b-49b5-b65a-5b9a557cddab",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153123771398685,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4712x10050/6a60031455/pls-hold-with-use_queere-moderne_romaine-brooks_the-marchesa-casati-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Romaine Brooks, Portrait Marchesa Casati, oil on canvas, 248 à 120 cm, Collection Lucile Audouy, © photo Thomas Hennocque",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3409a0df-fa39-4dba-844e-efa4df4741ec",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153123573422569,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4440x5484/40fe28465d/queere-moderne_gluck_-bank_holiday_monday-_c-1937.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gluck, Bank Holiday Monday, c. 1937, Painting, oil on canvas, 23.7 à 18.7 cmâ Private collection, courtesy of The Fine Art Society Ltd © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c636f52a-dad3-4976-a726-5a62981cf8ff",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Queer Readings of Abstraction is the exhibition's most intellectually demanding section, and the most rewarding. Mondrian imbued his Neo-Plastic compositions with a hierarchical gender binary, in which the masculine principle was deemed superior. In direct response, Marlow Moss's double-line constructions offer an abstract language of equality and non-binary relationships. Anton Prinner'
77s Double personnage (1937, original wood sculpture, 63 à 30 à 18 cm, Collection of Kálmán Makláry, Budapest) extends this argument into three dimensions. Two bodies merge into an ambiguous, unified form that resists any clear gender distinction, post-cubist in its formal vocabulary but entirely singular in its implications. Jacoba van Heemskerck and Louise Janin complete a room that makes a precise and original claim: even in its most non-representational forms, abstraction is never ideologically neutral.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3b8df274-e59f-419b-b6cd-9bf8b7e9aab4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153125265595043,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1242x1766/4ccdfdc59f/screenshot-2026-03-09-at-17-27-39.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Anton Prinner, Double personnage, 1937, Original-Holzskulptur, 63 x 30 x 18 cm, Sammlung Kálmán Makláry, Budapest",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ed280abd-2098-412b-b418-eabee2bef3d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153125237521058,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1276x1808/a570b006d9/screenshot-2026-03-09-at-17-27-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Anton Prinner, Double personnage, 1937, Original-Holzskulptur, 63 x 30 x 18 cm, Sammlung Kálmán Makláry, Budapest",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7b3a92e2-e510-4b5b-9e13-a60ba4211f63",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Queer Avant-Gardes and Intimate Networks traces the transatlantic circuits connecting Berlin, London, New York, and Paris. Nils Dardel's The Dying Dandy (Den döende dandyn, 1918, oil on canvas, 140 à 180 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) is one of the exhibition's most arresting works: a figure in vivid costume, attended by mourners whose grief is tender and unashamed, painted in a palette that owes nothing to the dominant aesthetics of its moment. His Visit to an Eccentric Lady (Visit how excentrisk dam, 1921, oil on canvas, 130.5 à 97.5 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) confirms Dardel as one of the show's most distinctive voices, one carrying a Nordic melancholy entirely his own. Pavel Tchelitchew, George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Duncan Grant, and Beauford Delaney complete a section that refuses the myth of the solitary modernist genius. These artists worked in relation to one another, and the exhibition makes that visible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"08f644ed-0616-4df8-a0b4-f933c468068f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153126846647183,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3217x4393/991c7287c0/queere-moderne_nils-dardel_visit-hos-excentrisk-dam_moderna-museet-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nils Dardel, Visit how excentrisk dam (Visit to an Eccentric Lady), 1921, oil on canvas, 130.5 x 97.5 cm (unframed), Donation in 1953 from Friends of the Moderna Museet, The Moderna Museet, Stockholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2cfeb24d-061e-4741-a74c-e5a83aa48ac2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The final chapters are harder to stand in. Queer Resistance since 1933 documents what happened when the freedoms these artists had carved out were systematically destroyed. Jeanne Mammen's withdrawal into internal exile in Berlin, Hannah Höch and Til Brugman's increasingly coded photomontages, Toyen's surrealist landscapes encoding desire in symbolic language to evade censorship: the exhibition holds the complexity without flattening it into a single heroic narrative. Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore distributed thous
77ands of anti-regime leaflets on Nazi-occupied Jersey, disguised as sisters, before being arrested by the Gestapo on July 25, 1944 and sentenced to death. The exhibition is also honest about Jean Cocteau and Romaine Brooks, who collaborated with fascist regimes as a means of self-protection, a moral complexity that a lesser exhibition would have quietly omitted.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The epilogue closes the show on a note of deliberate restraint. Sonja Sekula's Silence (1951), dedicated to John Cage, and Cage's legendary 4'33\" (1952), silence itself staged as cultural and political resistance against the McCarthy-era Lavender Scare, are not endings. They are withdrawals into forms that could not be easily seized or destroyed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"aba9cca5-cf43-4d3e-bbc1-8aef9b06bd00",quote:"\"Queer Modernism 1900 to 1950\" succeeds because it refuses to simply add new names to an old list. It challenges the very criteria by which greatness has been judged and history has been written.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"82053f81-350f-4e85-80f2-0bb7bb0ed705",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By excavating these forgotten avant-gardes, the exhibition does more than fill a gap in the historical record; it proposes a more complex, more truthful, and ultimately more liberating understanding of modernism itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is also, it should be said, exceptionally well-documented. Conceived by art historian and author Anke Kempkes and curated alongside Isabelle Malz and Isabelle Tondre at the Kunstsammlung, the project drew on a wide circle of queer scholars, artists, and specialists across disciplines. A dedicated queer advisory board shaped not only the intellectual framework of the show but also its educational program and public activities. The accompanying bilingual catalogue, published by Hirmer Verlag and running to 304 pages with approximately 200 illustrations, includes essays by Jonathan D. Katz, Tirza True Latimer, Diana Souhami, and the curators themselves. It is the kind of scholarly apparatus that signals a long-term commitment to the subject, not a temporary institutional gesture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But the exhibition's most significant claim is not directed at the present. It is directed at the past. By examining the queer spaces that existed within early modernism, the show makes clear that diversity was not something the 20th century needed to learn or earn. It was already there, operating through coded languages, intimate networks, and acts of quiet or explicit defiance, long before the vocabulary to name it existed. The plurality of the world was never a recent discovery. It was always the condition. What changed, over time, was simply the willingness to see it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not a corrective exhibition. It is a perceptual one.It asks us to look differently. And in that sense, it carries a lesson that extends well beyond the early 20th century: that the frameworks through which we read the world are not fixed, and that resetting them is sometimes the only honest move available. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At a moment when queer communities face renewed hostility across many parts of the world, the act of making this history visible is not a cultural luxury. It is a political one. For the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, this exhibition is also a form of institutional self-examination, a willingness to interrogate its own collection history and the assumptions that shaped it. That kind of critical self-awareness, directed inward as much as outward, is what gives the project its lasting weight.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"56e2ac5d-b660-4482-a0da-7220d9b1b8db",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K20, Dusseldorf (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
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77,{_uid:"38b6f876-6e89-478a-ad3e-bbdb4e76f527",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150769845580958,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/14274edf13/1-endless-incantations-exhibition-view.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1877c9b7-cbe8-454d-8024-50b285c12dbe",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:151700152134274,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5173x7058/dd294e2ca9/underworld-conv.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, metal spikes 245 x 285 x 15 cm courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9688b826-4313-464d-84d0-1c8a5dfbd191",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The tapestries are extraordinary objects. Dense, warm, almost breathing, and then interrupted, punctured, by metal spikes that catch the light and hold it hostage. There is nothing decorative happening here. Miranda is building a grammar, one that draws on medieval iconography, Buddhist philosophy, queer counter-culture, and the visual logic of armour, not to quote any of it, but to forge something that belongs to none of these traditions and all of them at once. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ebddd815-969f-4135-94ba-07d158e767d4",quote:"The result is a symbolic language that feels genuinely new, genuinely hard-won.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"398a05b0-b13c-48cc-ac90-609b5dfae328",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150773267821740,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4912x7360/8765355555/3-lux-portrait-by-boris-camaca.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, metal spikes 245 x 285 x 15 cm,courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c13ee0dc-acd9-4b8c-abb2-aa428460c815",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150773128246443,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5504x8256/8b80ae5fd4/4-underworld-conversation-detail.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, (detail), courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"62341fff-9c63-4d7f-b328-bf6a6416eda6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150767846102161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7360x4912/b3b811f08f/260109_luxmiranda_292.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Portrait photo by Boris Camaca",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2ff0df28-b68f-45ac-a903-ebc44e48a377",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The steel sculptures extend the same logic into three dimensions. Plasma-cut by hand, some mirror-polished to a finish that reflects the room back at itself, others lacquered in the iridescent tints of automotive bodywork, they read like artefacts from a civilisation operating on different rules. They are beautiful in the way that things built for serious purposes are beautiful, not despite their function but because of it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Harmony Coryn, Miranda's life partner and a significant presence in the Parisian underground, provides the show's sound design and has made a short video portrait of Miranda that plays alongside the exhibition. It is a quiet, precise film, domestic light, studio gestures, the specific attention of someone watching someone they know completely. It does not explain the work. It deepens it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the opening, the harpist Ange Halliwell performed in front of the central tapestry. For a few minutes, the boundary between object and event dissolved entirely. That is the register Miranda is working in: not art as product, but art as a sustained act of presence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"89d5af7b-c598-47fc-acba-e139731f9678",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776450684088,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2592x3872/aca535a66a/13-midnight-visage.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda MIDNIGHT VISAGE, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, tinted car clear coat 28 x 20 x 1 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"21d6a0a4-59a1-48f2-af85-ca210033bd99",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776450471095,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2592x3872/c1f1d3f34f/10-egograsping1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda EGO - GRASPING 1, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, hand mirror polished, metal protective-wax 17 x 20 x 1,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"335bf1ee-9249-4a5a-aca5-27480797fe0a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150777009382589,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3872x2592/cb4e0ea3da/16-moonbeam-serie-groupe-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda MOONBEAM 2, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, hand mirror polished, metal protective-wax, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d68b0eb-fc76-4b12-b678-c4fd73e6bb63",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776562734267,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4738x6316/2d5548e1f8/17-seas-incantation.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda SEAS INCANTATION, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, Aluminium, tinted car clear coast 20 x 23,5 x 8,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c1769c1f-13c9-4ef6-b36a-b92f0b480f02",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776561644729,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4738x6316/cb983f93f6/18-winds-incantation.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Lux Miranda WINDS INCANTATION, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, Aluminium, tinted car clear coast 18 x 21 x 8 cm, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0d9edb9b-fee8-4229-85f9-cb9a81725bcd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Endless Incantations\" is not an easy exhibition. It does not want to be. It is the work of an artist who has decided, with complete clarity, what they are doing and what it costs, and who has made that cost visible in every surface, every stitch, every cut. That kind of commitment is rare. Right now, it feels necessary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And yet, this is worth saying clearly, the show never buckles under its own weight. Work dealing with queer identity, political struggle, and embodied resistance can sometimes arrive with a heaviness that forecloses rather than opens. Miranda's does not. At the root of the practice is a daily act of watching the mind think, sitting with its noise until something visual surfaces. That process opens, over time, onto abstraction, and Miranda treats abstraction not as a retreat but as a territory of genuine freedom, a place where meaning stays mobile and elusive by design. \"Endless Incantations\" is, above all, a modern show: precise, alive, free of didacticism. The politics are in the material, not the label. The anger is in the cut, not the caption. It is exactly as much as it needs to be, and not one thing more.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until 21st February, T H E. P I L L, Paris (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sound design & Video : Harmony Coryn, Harpist performer : Ange Halliwell ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Photos artworks and install shots by Rebecca Fanuele - Portrait by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Boris Camaca",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-21 00:00",name:"\"Endless Incantations\" ÷ Lux Miranda Raises the Stakes",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"29ea11f3-dc86-485c-88d4-d0d18d94b41a",color:"#172053",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d131de91-3755-4208-8be4-2ab7abe16e08",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150773760689326,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3993x2593/c0b884fc2a/8-deep-green-detail.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda DEEP GREEN, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, tinted car clear coast 6,5 x 30 x 1,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"lux-miranda-raises-the-stakes",full_slug:"directory/reviews/lux-miranda-raises-the-stakes",sort_by_date:null,position:-990,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"b9057d17-d20f-4d60-8efe-27c2eeef8030",first_published_at:"2026-03-03T01:35:18.653Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Roméo Mivekannin",created_at:"2026-02-01T15:32:05.786Z",published_at:"2026-02-01T16:05:10.903Z",updated_at:"2026-02-01T16:05:10.916Z",id:140371254453486,uuid:"80063f44-9967-45b0-981c-2fe9089c5a24",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f261cf13-4b8b-4a09-8ac5-2c27315f57d4",title:"master piece by Roméo Mivekannin",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:140373123646199,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/10646x5323/4d92b0ec77/artgeneve-gowen-270125-juliengremaud-037-hd.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Roméo Mivekannin, Art Genève 2026, velvet paintings, Black figuration, contemporary art, postcolonial art, Ingres, European portraiture, GOWEN Contemporary, Béhanzin, art history, colonial critique, African contemporary art, painting on velvet, Le Modèle noir, art Basel, Geneva art fair, contemporary painting, Black artists, figurative painting, historical appropriation, Louvre Lens, Kunstmuseum Basel, art critique, 21st century painting",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Roméo Mivekannin paints Black figures on velvet at Art Genève, reversing European portraiture. Classical technique meets postcolonial critique in this powerful series."}],_uid:"24434f25-1fd9-4dec-b236-cd2d3ba03a2a",body:[{_uid:"04967aab-95fa-4059-b972-2bf8d041c6f1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Roméo Mivekannin",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Art Genève at the gallery GOWEN stand (D36), Roméo Mivekannin presents paintings on black velvet where Black figures wear the costumes of European aristocracy. What was background is now foreground. What was erased is now central.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Black velvet absorbs light. Unlike canvas, which reflects and diffuses, velvet devours. Mivekannin works directly onto this light-hungry surface, creating images where figures appear to condense out of darkness itself. In \"Ingres la comtesse d'Haussonville (2025)\", a Black figure inhabits the elaborate dress of the French countess. The lavender fabric is rendered with classical precision. Every fold, every play of light and shadow is executed with technical command that recalls nineteenth-century academic painting. But the velvet beneath disrupts the illusion. It creates depth through absorption rather than perspective, turning the picture plane into something between surface and aperture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"667ecdaf-4f2c-43e0-ae06-7cc93f84f009",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:140373677978361,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2857x3728/becc23e903/romeo-mivekannin-ingres-la-comtesse-d-haussonville-2025-acrylic-on-velvet-180-x-150-cm-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-gowen.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roméo Mivekannin, Ingres la comtesse dâHaussonville, 2025, Acrylic on velvet, 180 x 150 cm. Courtesy of The Artist and GOWEN.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ad07bf5d-3092-4a5b-8632-e31e984a2351",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"c6647b5b-2a1e-4085-bb1b-ab0b1a09d1b5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:140373215822584,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2990x3579/5ca8836c37/mo_153_ingres-la-baronne-de-rothschild_190x150.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roméo Mivekannin, Ingres la Baronne de Rotschild, 2025, Acrylic on velvet, 180 x 150 cm. Courtesy of The Artist and GOWEN",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"af19e3c8-c5c8-414b-9b01-f8fb82e7baed",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mivekannin, trained as an architect with a doctorate in photography and postcolonial Africa, has built a practice around inserting his face into historical images. Earlier series like \"Le Modèle noir\" and \"Cartes postales coloniales\" placed his features directly into paintings and documents that originally excluded or caricatured Black bodies. The velvet paintings shift the strategy. Here, the face reads less as autobiography than as placeholder, a sign standing in for the multitude that European portraiture erased. Mivekannin descends from Béhanzin, last king of Dahomey, and that genealogy runs through the work. It appears not as heritage to be celebrated but as historical fact that complicates any simple reading of these images.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Velvet is a fabric of status, associated with wealth and aristocratic display. But its material property is absorption. Mivekannin uses this contradiction. The paintings show figures dressed in the trappings of European power, yet those figures never fully detach from the darkness that surrounds them. The artist has written about shadow as \"mother of resistance,\" the space where enslaved and colonized peoples created codes, preserved memory, survived. In these paintings, shadow is literal. The velvet holds it, will not let it go. Light moves across the painted fabric, but the support underneath remains black, unyielding.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These paintings are somptuous. That beauty does not soften their argument. The classical technique, the sumptuous fabric, the careful composition: each element is deployed to make visible what European painting preferred to ignore. Mivekannin merges model and painter, collapsing the separation European art maintained between viewer and viewed, subject and object. The velvet paintings do not resolve the tensions they raise. They hold past and present together without reconciliation, using the formal vocabulary of European portraiture to articulate what that tradition spent centuries suppressing. Each figure that emerges from the velvet implies countless others still held in its depths. These are not individual portraits. They are signs of a crowd.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The face Mivekannin paints is never his alone. It stands in for voices that were silenced, bodies that were disappeared, histories that were buried. Shadow here is more than absence. It is the space where resistance took form. Under cover of night, enslaved communities danced, encoded messages, forged networks of survival. The velvet holds that darkness. It will not give it up. What appears on the surface is only ever partial. The rest remains below, waiting.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"08013ee0-5dce-42be-8829-44db9afb5c88",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:140373123646199,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/10646x5323/4d92b0ec77/artgeneve-gowen-270125-juliengremaud-037-hd.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shot, GOWEN at Art Genève (2026)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"155a1e1b-9629-466b-9865-b2718d4761ef",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"GOWEN GALLERY , stand D36 - Art Genève 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-28 00:00",name:"Post-Ingres Chef d'oeuvres÷Roméo Mivekannin",author:"Refresh Team (Europe)",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"7fc30cee-2582-4fdb-9206-491dbf31cde7",color:"#7e9ba3",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"ce3df902-f892-4be9-b3bb-cad0125047e9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:140378225353479,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1181x704/11ef73aeab/art-geneve-2026-featured-exhibition-image-697b53d2d67ae.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ayana V. Jackson, Black Rice, 2019, Archival pigment print on German etching paper, 109 x 106.3 cm. Courtesy of Ayana Jackson and GOWEN. Â©ï¸ Ayana V. Jackson",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"romeo-mivekannin",full_slug:"directory/reviews/romeo-mivekannin",sort_by_date:null,position:-910,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1f1f0ccf-d271-400d-a608-e4e9578127d2",first_published_at:"2026-02-01T16:04:56.580Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"PET Projected Emotional Technologies",created_at:"2025-12-08T22:22:04.513Z",published_at:"2025-12-08T22:52:15.775Z",updated_at:"2025-12-08T22:52:15.794Z",id:121007818842088,uuid:"2532a402-92c4-441e-976d-cf1fa4946d13",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"75d3595d-ccab-4a1a-8071-415f721fa883",title:" The Beautiful, Boring Trap of the AI Pet",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:121009063647091,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/375x300/59c9b2b9ee/cat1-copy-copy.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"AI companionship, artificial intimacy, AI girlfriends, digital companions, emotional labor, political economy of loneliness, technology critique, data brokers, algorithmic relationships, AI ethics, contemporary art exhibition, Arvida Byström, Telematic Media Arts, economic conditions, human connection, emotional infrastructure, chatbots, Replika, digital culture, technology and s
77ociety, algorithmic intimacy, manufactured loneliness, emotional commodification, AI and relationships, contemporary art criticism, San Francisco art, curator Alice Scope, YWGI Studio, digital avatars, male desire, emotional scarcity, reciprocal intimacy, tech capitalism, surveillance capitalism, emotional exploitation, digital seduction, AI critique, technology and economics, social isolation, emotional processing, digital culture critique",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"PET dismantles AI companionship mythology. A sharp critique of how economic conditions manufacture loneliness and architects profit from emotional scarcity through digital intimacy"}],_uid:"38bb7881-328c-4af8-9282-56fa9e14eb3f",body:[{_uid:"a88e8846-5ee6-4542-9c91-54b812377c28",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Beautiful, Boring Trap of the AI Pet",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Arvida Byström's PET: \"Projected Emotional Technologies\", running at Telematic Media Arts (",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"San Francisco) ",type:"text"},{text:"dismantles the mythology of AI companionship with surgical precision. Curated by Alice Scope, the exhibition deploys a visual language so seductive it functions as bait, drawing viewers into complicity before the critique lands. The exhibition refuses moral panic entirely, instead reframing AI intimacy as economic infrastructure, a system designed by those who profit from our emotional scarcity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Visually, PET operates as a seduction machine. Visitors are met with a cast of anthropomorphized digital avatars, glossy animal-coded humanoids representing the pig, the dog, the fox. Developed with YWGI Studio and featuring a cohort of artists and online creators, these figures are the faces of a new kind of intimacy, one trained on male desire and built from the digital exhaust of our collective loneliness. This seduction is deliberate. The glossy surfaces and animal-coded avatars create a space where comfort and complicity become indistinguishable.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But beneath this polished surface, the exhibition lays bare the cold mechanics of the political economy of loneliness. Byström and Scope brilliantly refuse the easy path of blaming technology for our social ills. Instead, they present a powerful argument: the rise of the AI girlfriend is not the cause of our isolation, but a direct consequence of economic conditions that make genuine human connection an untenable luxury. Referencing the development of artificial companions in Japan, the exhibition frames it not as a cultural quirk, but as a logical response to a society structured around crushing workloads. When people lack the time and energy for the beautiful, necessary friction of real relationships, the smooth, frictionless alternative of a digital companion becomes a rational choice, not a personal failing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bee4afe1-68ea-4159-8730-2f6a4918cd0c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121010347022223,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/795x993/add3d5d6e3/bunny-copy.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Arvida Byström, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a229e667-5b15-4268-b92b-e192db1c6692",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121010462283664,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/796x995/a9fe4c5349/cow-copy-2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Arvida Byström, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b35ac2df-53b5-441f-a669-c3299f2fa4b2",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"f2db37a8-cbd8-4055-85ec-0e6c21ae38aa",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here lies the exhibition's actual force. It forces us to look past the chatbot and at the system that creates the demand for it. Blaming the technology, as the curatorial notes suggest, is a âvery cheapâ way out. The harder question, the one the exhibition forces, concerns the economic structures that have made reciprocal intimacy a luxury good. The exhibition positions AI companions as symptomatic coping mechanisms, no different from true crime podcasts or doomscrolling, responses to a world that systematically denies us the conditions for emotional depth.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PET offers no predictions. It is a diagnosis of now. It exposes the machinery: our vulnerability harvested, packaged, and returned to us as a product. The intimacy on offer is proximity without reciprocity, a script written by those who profit from our longing, optimized by algorithms that have learned exactly which emotional buttons to push. The exhibition doesn't condemn the users of these services; it directs its critical fire at the architects of this new emotional marketplace.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But here is what the exhibition ultimately reveals: the AI companion, beneath its sophistication, is fundamentally sterile. It is a closed loop, a mirror that reflects only what we have already fed it. It cannot invent. It cannot rupture. It cannot introduce the friction that actually changes us. It is, fundamentally, boring. This is the trap: a relationship that feels sufficient, that is \"better than nothing,\" but that locks us in stasis. It is a flat, beige holding pattern, comfortable enough that we stop reaching for the messy, difficult, transformative work that actual growth requires. PET succeeds because it doesn't condemn the cage or those inside it. Instead, it illuminates the architects: the data brokers, the venture capitalists, the engineers who have monetized our loneliness, and reveals the elegant emptiness of their product.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"untiL",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" 18",type:"text"},{text:"th",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"November",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-05 00:00",name:"The Beautiful, Boring Trap ÷ of the AI Pet",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"aeb3faaa-590c-405f-ab46-cdb886ec08bc",color:"#c29b9b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"54931314-6bf0-483b-ae05-1387ee2c1687",poster:{i
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Contemporary art should do the same. It weaves threads between distinct histories and cultures, allowing them to resonate without erasing what makes each one unique. In a world increasingly shaped by anthropocentrism, hardened physical borders, technological authoritarianism, relentless optimisation, exclusion, and rigid binary frameworks, artâs capacity to reimagine our relationships with one another and with the world may be one of its most powerful forces.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This may sound naïve or utopian, but we have reached a decisive tipping point. Art is the force of love we need to resist disconnection and return to a world shaped by attention, care, and presence.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Attention is a radical currency, the rarest and purest form of generosity. To truly listen requires vacating the centre of oneâs own universe, suspending imposed meanings to create an empty space in which the world can be received. This deliberate clearing transforms the observer into a loving participant. When the drive for dominance yields to that specific gravity, a structural equilibrium becomes possible. Acting as if we love the future shifts the paradigm from passive anxiety to active construction. It rejects utopian escapism and frames care as infrastructure.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The living world offers the ultimate blueprint for expanded care, yet human observation has long been constrained by rigid taxonomies. For centuries, biology operated under a strict heteronormative Victorian and Cartesian bias, treating the natural world through a reproductive calculus in which any behaviour outside maleâfemale pairing was dismissed as noise. This was not simply a social prejudice, but an epistemological failure that shaped the very questions researchers thought to ask. Nature has always been queer. Thousands of species exhibit behaviours that defy simple binaries. Humans are a very small species living in a multi-layered biosphere. The living world is an exuberant, irreducibly plural field of becoming, entirely indifferent to the categories imposed upon it. Acknowledging this does not abandon scientific rigour. It demands a far higher standard of it. When a cultureâs core beliefs no longer match the conditions required for survival, the consequence is a collapse.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The same failure of imagination governs our relationship to the future. The discourse surrounding what lies ahead has been monopolised by an authoritarian way of thinking, projecting unshakable confidence in extractive new technologies and centralised systems. During periods of severe instability, society turns to artists for critical thought.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art stands as the genuine avant-garde of this century precisely because it addresses care, responsibility, and human dignity in the face of aggressive technological expansion.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The greatest risk that artificial intelligence poses to creativity is not the loss of ownership, but the surrender of cognitive agency. What is being automated is the most replaceable stratum of creative work. What remains is the part we were rarely given enough time to practise: judgement, presence, care, and the capacity to hold complexity without collapsing it into a simple answer. Intelligence will not have been mastered so much as it will have forced a reckoning with the capacities it cannot replicate. Those who continue to create with agency keep building human capacity at the very moment when everything tempts them to stop. Art has never operated according to the logic of output. Its vitality is inseparable from the human capacity to navigate absurdity with awe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rebuilding collective urgency begins with conversation. Fear is an exhaustible resource. What sustains action is love, understood as a deep, knowledge-based attachment to the natural world that transforms concern into commitment. The future is not a fixed destination. It is a structure being built continuously through the choices enacted today. The question is: how do we approach this conversation in order to build a realistic and resilient future together?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The challenge is not only to recognise the limits of anthropoce
77ntric thinking, but to unlearn its deeply embedded habits without simply reproducing its assumptions in a new vocabulary.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art can prepare us intellectually, affactively and socially to take seriously other ways of being with the world. Its value may lie in its capacity to make this transition perceptible: to allow us to rehearse forms of attention, care and solidarity that extend beyond the human, towards all the beings and systems with which we are entangled.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"We have been passively observing the collapse of the climate and still do nothing; we get used to it as if it were just an outside spectacle. To break this inertia, we do not need the dogmatic jargon of extremist, dystopian, or dissonant ecological statements, nor do we require an authoritative, radical injunction.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"We need the exact opposite. Art brings a meditative sensibility to the act of looking with the world. By inviting us to look with the world rather than at it, not as a retreat into nostalgia but as an embrace of regenerative progress, artists allow us to feel deeply, to experience profoundly, and to be moved, reconfiguring the imagination itself toward coexistence, humility, and shared inheritance. Art provides an experimental space: a subtle, realistic, and efficient path toward the activation of a transformative agency. For this potential to be realized, art institutions must also rethink their structures and economic systems, while new models must be developed to extend the reach of art beyond the closed networks that define todayâs âart worldâ, a term that should ultimately cease to exist.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gregory Sholette introduced the concept of the âunpresentâ: a condition in which everything appears the same yet is completely transformed, lacking both a past and a future. Faced with this moment, empathy emerges as a choice: an attentiveness to others, to the living world, and to our interdependencies. It is a sensitive way of resisting, of imagining other ways of being together, and of restoring our connection to a big, bold, and beautiful new world.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This text is the editorial note : Refresh Magazine, Print#2 - Fall 2026",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0678cd82-4719-4636-af75-90f989d39554",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:224926065242412,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/04f9fd4774/menu.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3000x2000"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d560d0e-fbfe-4281-9cb8-44fed37520b5",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Through exhibition reviews, exclusive interviews, artist features, poetry, and manifestos, the issue brings together international artists.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artists : ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Agnieszka Kurant, Ashfika Rahman, Arvida Byström, Aurora Mititelu, Beatrice Glow, Dögg Jónsdóttir, Elisa Giardina Papa, Inès Sieulle, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Kalie Garnier, Kira Xonorika, Lesia Vasylchenko, Libby Heaney, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Miranda Lux, Nicole L'Huillier, Nikita Kadan, Pierre et Gilles, Precious Okoyomon & NhaSan Collective, Raphaël Barontini, Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Sarah Martin-Nuss, Satadru Sovan Banduri, Simone Post, Stéphane Cagol, Lesia Vasylchenko, Théo Viardin",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#FF0000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Editorial Team :",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#FF0000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Chetika Algama, Suso Barciela, Gabrielle Barkess-Kerr, Aundy Bauman, Paul Bauman Le Random, Suso Barciela, Armand Camphuis, Satyajit Dave, Daisy Gould, Philippe de Manus, Sarah Maria Lillig, Louis Pohl Koseda, Valentina Peri, Iacapo Prinett
77i, Pourt Dgrut,, Sharon Toval, Philippe Riss-Schmidt",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Special thanks to Dr to Gabrielle Barkess-Kerr, Director, Curatorial Ethics Network",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Special thanks to ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Björn Geldhof and Oleksandra Pogrebnyak",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#727272"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{type:"hard_break"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9ef25808-8615-4e96-8882-f873c35d5312",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223293261944032,alt:"",name:"the protestation of love",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/9ed8d44828/refresh_reel_images_fixes_sans_tremblement.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2026-09-25 00:00",name:"The Protestation of Love÷Print Issue",author:"Editorial Team, Print Fall 2026",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"e7cf9fc7-578e-44db-9370-05f74da1b925",color:"#532c73",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"92f08a7e-c167-4129-9335-0dfe6fe890ae",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223516000803765,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1146/37c37ed97f/a-a1-courtesy-kalie-granier-santa-cruz.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy Kalie Garnier, Santa Cruz",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:"9"},slug:"the-protestation-of-love",full_slug:"directory/essays/the-protestation-of-love",sort_by_date:null,position:-280,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"c2994ecd-db36-4a6a-b53d-10f7dca3e5e8",first_published_at:"2026-09-24T09:03:48.675Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true}]},slug:"the-protestation-of-love",full_slug:"directory/themes/the-protestation-of-love",sort_by_date:null,position:-30,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91167857566941,meta_data:null,group_id:"a1314f5e-c001-4f29-af99-3ba2012a2d80",first_published_at:"2026-09-24T14:41:12.249Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"We are not alone",created_at:"2025-09-17T09:23:22.668Z",published_at:"2026-06-17T09:19:01.397Z",updated_at:"2026-06-17T09:19:01.413Z",id:91797105357515,uuid:"baf1040c-5967-4cec-a27a-a9bfbb785c43",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"8afab359-d21a-4115-82f8-40944fa0ea69",title:"WE ARE NOT ALONE",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:125564107118834,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1926x1294/601e8cee68/sofia-crespo.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"post-anthropocentrism, contemporary art, ecology and art, Algocene, artificial intelligence art, nature and technology, co-evolution, Anthropoce
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77ntric camp which demands that humans renounce their self-appointed supremacy. On the other hand, thereâs a neo-anthropocentric position which stresses that humans are the only species with both the power to threaten the biosphere, and the ability to recognize that power.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This tension is at the core of contemporary environmental debates. The anti-anthropocentric perspective draws on a mixture of evolutionary biology, natural history and comparative ethnology to question the human/animal and human/nature dichotomies, and expose them as Western constructs. Running parallel to this is a neo-anthropocentric position which identifies the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch. When human activity becomes as visible in the geological record as asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions, we canât help but reassess our significance within the global ecosystem. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rather than trying to pin down humanity as either ordinary or exceptional, this contradiction might be better resolved by recognizing that all organisms â human and non-human â are simultaneously ordinary in their material existence and exceptional in their peculiar ways of being. The way forward requires us to abandon the very concept of humanity's \"place in natureâ, a notion that inevitably positions us as a species apart. Instead of trying to slot ourselves into a natural hierarchy, we should embrace the fact that we are inextricably \"part of nature,\" woven into its fabric through our interrelations with other organisms. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If we stop thinking of the biosphere as a separate entity that we're in the process of destroying, we can see more clearly what's actually happening. The planet will be fine. It's an indifferent sphere of rock that will keep spinning long after we're gone. What we're actually destroying is ourselves, our habitat, our capacity to thrive, our ability to enjoy a world rich with life. The planet doesn't need saving. We do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This idea is key to James Lovelock's Gaia theory, which proposes that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system where living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings. Humans are both a part of this system and a disruptive force within it. This shift is not just semantic. It transforms how we understand human intelligence itself - no longer a discreet entity but something continuously shaped and redefined through our entanglements with the non-human world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These questions take on new dimensions in our post-digital age, where the boundaries between human, machine, and nature become increasingly porous. This digital transformation marks our passage into what we might call the second phase of the Anthropocene: the Algocene. In this new era, algorithmic systems are taking human technology to new extremes. At the same time, we are becoming increasingly aware of the devastating ecological consequences of these technological advances. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Co-Evolution in a Hybrid Habitat. The Emergence of a New Nature and the Algocene.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In his groundbreaking book ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"AI and the Chimpanzees of the Future",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:", the French anthropologist Pascal Picq analyzes how humans and technology are coevolving, tracing the origins of animal, human, and artificial intelligences through an evolutionary lens. His central insight is both humbling and liberating: we are witnessing a new phase of evolution, one in which humanity must learn to live collaboratively with all these different forms of intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These philosophical and evolutionary shifts converge in a tangible transformation: a new reality is taking shape around us. From genetically modified organisms to man-made minerals, from the wildlife adapting to urban environments to the microplastics coursing through our oceans, we are witnessing the emergence of what might be called a
77new nature or post-nature. Layered over this physical transformation is a digital one: networks and data streams create an invisible yet pervasive structure that mediates our relationship with the physical world. In this hybrid reality, organic and synthetic, natural and technological interweave.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this post-digital, post-nature, post-anthropocentric vision, the question is no longer about humanity's place in nature, but about how all entities can co-exist and co-evolve in a way that sustains the flourishing of life in all its diverse forms. We are entering a multiverse of possibilities, a recognition that multiple realities, dimensions and forms of existence can coexist and interweave. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artists are already finding radical ways to imagine these futures. \"Philosophy gives us the concepts to think differently about our place in nature, but art gives us the experiences to feel differently about it,\" explains philosopher and cultural theorist Timothy Morton. Contemporary artists are at the forefront of exploring these hybrid ecologies, mapping the contours of a world where human and non-human, organic and digital, past and future converge in unprecedented ways. They invite us to engage in a meaningful dialogue about how we navigate our increasingly hybrid world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"649145bb-ee89-44a8-87f4-7ecea548d90a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:137939069578525,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/8261b56d69/mock-up_refresh_final_03.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4a7686e4-ee2b-4fb8-a0aa-c6ef469a0ba5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Print Issue #1 - \"We are not alone\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"AVAILABLE NOW ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"â",type:"text"},{text:"We are not alone",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"â features fourteen 21st-century artists at the forefront of these hybrid ecologies, charting a world where human and non-human, organic and digital converge in new ways.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{type:"hard_break",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"Artists :Alice Bucknell, Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, Entangled Others, Eunjo Lee, Ivana BaÅ¡iÄ, Joey Holder, Josèfa Ntjam, Nancy Baker-Cahill, Philip Ullman, Perry Kulper, Sybil Montet, Timur Si-Qin, Vincent Broquaire, and Wang & Söderström",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Texts by Chethika Algama, Armand Camphuis, Diane Drubay, Philippe de Manus, Philippe Riss-Schmidt and Felix Whits",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Get it",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" HERE",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://shop.refresh.art/",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"italic"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"416de276-3998-427a-bcb9-f795d9aaa0dc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:145810949702745,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x2000/d4370adb14/mockup_refresh_couv.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Cover",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2026-02-23 00:00",name:"We are ÷ not alone",author:"Print Issue #1",component:"essay",color_dark:{_uid:"5818cae6-148d-4426-8042-f0a0c998d117",color:"#010000",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"3ee99c78-12a4-486d-b2a1-1a5d6eb4f40f",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:125564107118834,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1926x1294/601e8cee68/sofia-crespo.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],hero_alignment:""},slug:"we-are-not-alone",full_slug:"directory/essays/we-are-not-alone",sort_by_date:null,position:-120,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168231327288,meta_data:null,group_id:"e4d8ff5f-9776-433f-b168-fafe30ac8647",first_published_at:"2026-01-04T10:03:09.973Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"LIVING ERRORS",created_at:"2026-03-12T17:24:09.733Z",published_at:"2026-04-03T15:36:10.889Z",updated_at:"2026-04-03T15:36:10.910Z",id:154200677344252,uuid:"001b04ad-c1e8-4a1e-8d0a-da6dff4c6c47",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"2a053a0f-9bfb-49f4-a436-6732d09139a9",title:"Living Errors",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:154219114432150,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/0900a9533e/eva-papamargariti_all-that-now-flows-through-us_2024.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"living errors, MARTINETZ, Sophia Naumann, Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, Mary-Audrey Ramirez, contemporary art exhibition, speculative biology, hybrid art, post-digital art, diversity and art, ecological art, technology and nature, non-human art, art and biology, mutant forms, generative error, systemic collapse, art review, contemporary art 2026,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A review of LIVING ERRORS at MARTINETZ: how Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez turn anomaly into argument for diversity, openness, and systemic change."}],_uid:"9609087a-43f8-41b7-ab7a-ea8de9019696",body:[{_uid:"a727f656-6187-4691-b685-64a4f66e74ed",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Sumptuous Power of the Anomaly",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"LIVING ERRORS' is a magnificent exhibition where three artists treat error not as failure but as the only honest starting point. They build creatures that belong to no existing taxonomy, hybrids suspended between the biological and the technological, the real and the not-yet-real. Their statement: a world that eliminates difference eliminates itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A living error is not a malfunction. It is not the gap between intention and outcome, nor the signal of a system breaking down. It is something altogether more generative: an unforeseen deviation that carries within it the seed of a new direction, a rupture that does not end a process but initiates one. The life forms that arise from such ruptures are by nature hybrid and ambiguous, resistant to fixed classification, perpetually in the act of becoming something that has no name yet. They have no category yet. That is precisely the point.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where diversity enters, not as an ethical aspiration or a curatorial gesture, but as a structural necessity. Openness to the foreign, the mutant, the unclassifiable, is not generosity. It is the condition of survival. Every system that has ever endured, whether biological, cultural, or informational, has done so by remaining porous, by absorbing what it could not predict. And every system that has ever collapsed has done so for the same reason: it closed in on itself. It mistook coherence for strength, purity for resilience, and the elimination of difference for order. Any fixed framework, however rational its foundations, however noble its intentions, carries within it the architecture of its own undoing. Rigidity is not stability. It is the first stage of catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is this idea that \"LIVING ERRORS\", curated by Sophia Naumann at MARTINETZ Gallery, takes as its animating principle. The gallery is recast as a laboratory for speculative biology, a space where the very axioms of life are subject to aesthetic and critical inquiry, and where the anomaly is not corrected but cultivated.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"5816be27-6594-4ad8-bfad-8ac2ab4d7430",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219154691739,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x1589/197eb58661/katja-novitska_approximation_-2017.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Katja Novitska, \"Approximation\" (corn snake hatching twist), 2017 Digital print on aluminium, cutout display, acrylic glass 175 Ã 220 Ã 40 cm Courtesy of the artist and KRAUPA-TUSKANY ZEIDLER",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"16c0da15-fc14-4811-89a9-f712848dc77f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the heart of this investigation are the works of Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez. Their respective practices converge on a shared frontier, one where the boundaries between the biological, the ecological, and the technological dissolve. The ontologically ambiguous entities they construct are not merfantasies; they are plausible propositions for life forms that elude our current taxonomies. These chimeras of flesh and wire, data and dust, are living errors precisely because they expose the inadequacy of the conceptual frameworks we impose on the world, revealing them as too coarse to capture the fine grain of emergent realities.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A unified vision connects these three distinct artistic inquiries. It is a perspective that deliberately decenters the human, viewing the non-human not as a subordinate or a threat, but as an agent of transformation. The work collectively resists the comfort of binary Cartesian oppositions, presenting entities that are neither fully natural nor wholly artificial, neither material fact nor pure fiction. They inhabit a liminal space of perpetual becoming, troubling the very categories we use to make sense of existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0f79d6c6-86ec-4073-80e9-2c0340e99c8d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154257012514457,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/608x720/00e5843385/mary-audrey-ramirez_bridge-baby-bear.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mary-Audrey Ramirez, \"Bridge Baby Bear,\" 2025 Digital print on satin 70 x 60 cm Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a584b3dc-a885-4c7f-92e9-3d71dea98ac7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154257012731547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3733x4979/9fdc8beca0/mary-audrey-ramirez_dracula-rabbit.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mary-Audrey Ramirez, \"Dracula Rabbit\", 2026 3D printed sand 38 Ã 22.5 Ã 15.8 cm Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"57d6ca73-6854-4540-a544-c80c7faf5ce5",quote:"Diversity is the only system that has never failed",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"7b3161d0-5ea7-44c0-8a6c-c6c02a7b0f42",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219189040803,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3648x2819/c4676ce2ed/katja-novitskova_earthware-20210308.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Katja Novitska, \"Earthware\" (2021-03-08) In collaboration with PWR, 2023 UV ink transfer,epoxy clay,nail polish 120 Ã 164 Ã 3 cm Courtesy of the artist and KRAUPA-TUSKANY ZEIDLER",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1d546a3a-b071-4255-9bce-f0d7bc9ab3c0",component:"mobile-newsletter"}
77,{_uid:"36f6a523-31f3-4d32-a41c-2ff89bcc1a27",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154256112381417,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x3000/381584aeb4/eva-papamargariti.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eva Papamargariti, \"All that is hidden\"(2), 2023, courtesy the artist and MARTINETZ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6fc5b051-dbf7-49ea-89fc-768341748788",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's argument culminates in a principle of universal applicability, observable in ecosystems, genetic codes, and now, our global technological infrastructures. It is the principle that heterogeneity and co-evolution are the engines of a living world, while uniformity is a precursor to systemic collapse. An informational ecosystem that insulates itself from diverse external inputs, feeding only on its own recycled logic, is destined to degrade into a sterile and self-referential parody, an echo chamber that ultimately fades into silence. The living error, by contrast, is the intrusion of the outside. It is what keeps a system alive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8ed8dfcc-33ce-4cb4-ba88-5ba407f5683e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958805319595,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8004x5191/3a1ea1e541/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5ffb247c-098b-4d6d-a06a-27ff0043cfe1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958806249388,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5363x7317/1c4283f8ee/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4e5945fc-bb95-4087-b15c-738ce698a6e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958803857321,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5001x7192/4773697669/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3a9c1e4d-33d4-4f77-a874-96d036407b31",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"March 20th - April 30 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"MARTINETZ, Cologne (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-12 00:00",name:"The Sumptuous Power of÷The Anomaly",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"1833935a-e34f-4442-89b3-09304e25aee2",color:"#6d2170",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c31888c0-65c5-4452-bacd-293c5bc6d69b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219114432150,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/0900a9533e/eva-papamargariti_all-that-now-flows-through-us_2024.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eva Papamargariti, All that now flows through us, 2024",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"living-errors",full_slug:"directory/reviews/living-errors",sort_by_date:null,position:-1030,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1120ade4-782c-4d4a-8b11-70cd85be1d20",first_published_at:"2026-03-12T21:32:28.604Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"AGNIESZKA KURANT",created_at:"2026-03-11T05:24:18.985Z",published_at:"2026-03-11T13:09:57.685Z",updated_at:"2026-03-11T13:09:57.701Z",id:153669873631548,uuid:"54734525-f9c9-4bfe-bc51-92534257e48b",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"2d40f2f4-edcb-4d8e-b1d9-da3c1b205270",title:"recursion",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:153673866031366,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/970x548/072ff97309/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-06-40-16.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Agnieszka Kurant, Recursion, Marian Goodman Gallery, collective intelligence, co-evolution, algorithmic prediction, contemporary art, AI art, nonhuman intelligence, liquid crystal, ferrofluid, Uncomputables, Unthoughtforms, Recursivity, Alien Internet, Adjacent Possible, Sentimentite, Wordoid, Phantomatics, speculative art, post-digital art, Refresh magazine",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Agnieszka Kurant's Recursion at Marian Goodman Gallery explores collective intelligence, co-evolution, and the limits of algorithmic prediction through visually stunning new works."}],_uid:"9dcf507d-52d6-4d8c-adb2-d2fd45579448",body:[{_uid:"2579f607-cb07-49b0-abcd-136e8b8a56f4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Crystals that grow from political data. A chameleon that reads the internet. Languages no one has ever spoken. \"Recursion\" is Agnieszka Kurant at full force: rigorous and impossible to reduce. Agnieszka Kurant's \"Recursion\" at Marian Goodman Gallery explores collective intelligence, co-evolution, and the limits of algorithmic prediction through somptuous new works.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnieszka Kurant explores creativity as a collective phenomenon, challenging the modern myth of individual authorship. Her works translate the idea that everything that exists results from the encounter of intelligences, forms of awareness and agency that meet, collide, and produce something neither could have reached alone. The paradigms of individualism and personal autonomy are displaced here in favour of collective personalities and polyphonic subjectivities, plural and hybrid, that Kurant convenes through her practice. At Marian Goodman Gallery in New York, she does not make objects in any conventional sense. She designs complex systems within which unpredictable forms can emerge from a multiplicity of organisms, human, animal, bacterial, algorithmic, each shaping and being shaped by the others in a process of continuous co-evolution. These are not closed systems with predetermined outputs but open, dynamic structures in which small variations produce consequences that no initial condition could have anticipated. Her role is structural, not expressive. And yet the results are, without exception, visually extraordinary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1575e685-a778-4bc1-bbb1-dd7dbc6b2e1c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153709120988489,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2320x1566/009a8ff0d6/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-09-00-25.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Uncomputables, 2026, the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8d3bc97a-24b7-4c48-9eea-9a9568327a55",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153712439289741,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/984x1330/fdff036fe3/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-08-54-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Unthoughtforms, 2026, the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0f284c21-4ecd-4c2a-9cda-a5b27e713e74",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153713239459893,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/932x1252/1308bf4cf3/j.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Unthoughtforms, 2026, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1fc0a5a1-2493-49bf-9c07-3f583210f81d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens on the gallery's street-level window with Future (Invention), the word \"future\" translated into fourteen languages, including Aymara, MÄori, and Yupno, cultures in which the future is understood as coming from behind, above, or below rather than lying ahead. Before you enter, the work has already shifted the ground beneath you.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Inside, Uncomputables and Unthoughtforms are the exhibition's centrepiece. Kurant reactivates the 1950s experiments of cybernetician Gordon Pask, who grew metal crystals in copper sulfate solutions to model a form of chemical computing. Here, the system is fed with AI-harvested socio-political and economic data, converted into electric currents and sound vibrations. The resulting structures, branching and tree-like, suspended in a luminous blue aquarium, are among the most quietly spectacular objects in recent contemporary art. They are physical records of emergent, unthought ideas, forms that no one designed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"82b00f9f-f221-4484-9093-608e37943cd8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153677888966964,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1568x1076/6c72b892d9/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-06-56-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Recursivity 3, 2024/2026, the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4c7f1fcc-1228-4809-b9bd-07720ee06f30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153724028697702,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1766x1326/0e052dc71e/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-10-04-22.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Alien Internet 2, 2023/2026, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7fb577cc-503c-4135-809c-f9f42c41f1cc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Recursivity\" presents a bronze chameleon inside a mirrored terrarium, its skin coated in liquid crystals that shift colour in response to an AI processing millions of social media users' speculations about the future. The sculpture is both a precise conceptual proposition and an object of considerable presence: the liquid crystal surface cat
77ches the light differently at every angle, the bronze casting is meticulous, and the whole thing pulses with a slow, almost biological rhythm.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Alien Internet\" is a shape-shifting cybernetic organism made of ferrofluid, continuously reshaped by the migration data of millions of wild animals including whales, bats, elephants, and sponges. Suspended in an electromagnetic field, it moves with an uncanny, liquid intelligence. The work conceives of the biosphere as a single, sentient communication network, one in which species do not simply coexist but co-evolve through the data they generate and exchange. It looks exactly like one.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Adjacent Possible\" inscribes AI-generated Paleolithic signs onto stone using pigments produced by genetically engineered bacteria. The stones are beautiful objects, dense with the weight of deep time, and the signs on their surface carry the strangeness of a language that almost existed. Phantomatics extends this into film, presenting AI-generated languages spoken by simulated voices, while Wordoid uses neurotechnology to visualize a wordless conversation between multiple minds, affect and sensation rendered as shifting three-dimensional holographic forms.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Sentimentite\", a mineral created from sixty pulverized historical currencies, shaped by algorithms analyzing emotional responses to major world events, closes the loop. It is a geological object that should not exist, and it is genuinely beautiful.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4c305f36-c04d-4ee8-8648-91b43ee0df72",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153731017997867,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/938x674/4f96f61fea/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-10-28-04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Adjacent Possible, 2021,courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"274eed3c-bacd-4b87-81fc-dd7dc83dc301",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153729927519640,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/952x684/c836621c8d/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-10-27-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Adjacent Possible, 2021, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"811cd12a-1d88-451d-a15c-c9e04e073f0e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153727716351265,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x1332/715e6aeda3/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-10-19-18.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Sentimentite, 2022, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1c96300b-1f93-485d-b344-251279fdb093",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Across all these works, an underlying argument takes shape. We live under the pressure of systems that treat the future as a resource to be managed, where predictive analysis and risk modelling convert what has not yet happened into something already owned. Kurant's practice is a direct counter to this logic. Her bio-geo-technological processes demonstrate that evolution, whether biological, chemical, or social, is never a solitary affair. It is always co-evolution: species, systems, and technologies transforming one another in feedback loops that no single agent controls and no model fully captures. The error, the mutation, the unforeseen outcome: these are not failures to be corrected but the very conditions under which new forms of life and thought become possible. No algorithm is neutral. No dataset is complete. The internet is not a commons but a largely privatised space, and the intelligence it appears to generate is built on the invisible labor of millions of organisms, human and non-human alike, who have no say
77in what is done with what they produce.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kurant's works insist on the irreducibility of the unpredictable within complex systems. Whether biological, social, or computational, complex systems share a fundamental property: they cannot be fully modelled from the outside. Their behavior emerges from the interaction of their parts, not from any single governing logic. Artistic creativity, scientific discovery, and social change have always emerged from accidents, from the unplanned collision of forces that no model anticipated. The idea of a perfectly controllable world, where margins of error are reduced to zero, is not a utopia but a form of closure. These works propose something different: that the future is a collective matter, and that building it requires holding open the space for what cannot be calculated.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery (New York), until ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"21 March 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-09 00:00",name:"\"Recursion\"÷The Unknown Is the Point",author:"Refresh Team (USA)",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"d81b4b48-1afe-43e0-bbdd-28273f592750",color:"#728b5d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"cc233853-fa79-4f25-bc3f-5ec756bb1f3d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153712090543928,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2040x1540/43ae5208a5/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-08-59-45.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnieszka Kuran,recursion, install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"agnieszka-kurant",full_slug:"directory/reviews/agnieszka-kurant",sort_by_date:null,position:-1020,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"74ad32ca-a5f6-4b05-81fd-13a629f35afd",first_published_at:"2026-03-11T09:45:43.652Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Lux Miranda Raises the Stakes",created_at:"2026-03-02T23:59:04.446Z",published_at:"2026-03-07T03:19:36.413Z",updated_at:"2026-03-07T03:19:36.431Z",id:150758786880381,uuid:"7c2f1ca4-1f2d-4511-8422-1a5cbc1e0ca4",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c3af2bfc-189b-4d9c-bc2b-9c5f4a78ee67",title:"ENDLESS INCANTATIONS ",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:150767846102161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7360x4912/b3b811f08f/260109_luxmiranda_292.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Lux Miranda, Endless Incantations, T H E P I L L, contemporary art Paris, tapestry and sculpture, queer art, plasma-cut steel, wool and metal, embodied practice,, abstract art, , exhibition review, Paris 2026,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"At T H E P I L L Paris, Lux Miranda fills the gallery with hand-tufted tapestries, plasma-cut steel, and a queer symbolic language built from months of physical labour. One of 2026's best."}],_uid:"0dd17ade-7dc1-4303-abbf-63b433214c39",body:[{_uid:"54b0cc93-52e5-405d-a954-a87e246153d8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"No render farm, no algorithm, no screen doing the heavy lifting. \"Endless Incantations\" was still one of the most contemporary shows in Paris to date. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Lux Miranda ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"explores queer abstraction and meta archeology through tapestry and metalwork. The genius artist works with wool and fire-cut steel, with bare hands and months of labour and lands at the precise frequency of the present.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"You do not look at this exhibition. You get caught in it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"T H E P I L L is a small gallery. Miranda makes it feel like a landscape, one that has been through something, that carries the residue of a conflict you cannot name but recognise immediately. A tapestry the height of a room. Steel forms that hover between weapon and relic. The light doing things it shouldn't. The whole space vibrating at a frequency just below speech.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Miranda's practice is built on a single, radical premise: that the body is the site of knowledge, and that making is a form of thinking that no other process can replicate. Every work in this show begins as a drawing, not a sketch, not a proposal, but a full act of attention. The notebooks are daily, relentless, meditative. Forms surface from that practice the way things surface from deep water: slowly, under pressure, changed by the journey. Those forms then move into material, into the physical resistance of wool accumulated stitch by stitch over months, into the controlled violence of a handheld plasma torch cutting through steel. The hand is never abstracted out of the process. Its tremor is in the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"38b6f876-6e89-478a-ad3e-bbdb4e76f527",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150769845580958,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/14274edf13/1-endless-incantations-exhibition-view.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1877c9b7-cbe8-454d-8024-50b285c12dbe",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:151700152134274,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5173x7058/dd294e2ca9/underworld-conv.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, metal spikes 245 x 285 x 15 cm courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9688b826-4313-464d-84d0-1c8a5dfbd191",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The tapestries are extraordinary objects. Dense, warm, almost breathing, and then interrupted, punctured, by metal spikes that catch the light and hold it hostage. There is nothing decorative happening here. Miranda is building a grammar, one that draws on medieval iconography, Buddhist philosophy, queer counter-culture, and the visual logic of armour, not to quote any of it, but to forge something that belongs to none of these traditions and all of them at once. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ebddd815-969f-4135-94ba-07d158e767d4",quote:"The result is a symbolic language that feels genuinely new, genuinely hard-won.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"398a05b0-b13c-48cc-ac90-609b5dfae328",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150773267821740,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4912x7360/8765355555/3-lux-portrait-by-boris-camaca.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, metal spikes 245 x 285 x 15 cm,courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c13ee0dc-acd9-4b8c-abb2-aa428460c815",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150773128246443,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5504x8256/8b80ae5fd4/4-underworld-conversation-detail.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, (detail), courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"62341fff-9c63-4d7f-b328-bf6a6416eda6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150767846102161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7360x4912/b3b811f08f/260109_luxmiranda_292.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Portrait photo by Boris Camaca",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2ff0df28-b68f-45ac-a903-ebc44e48a377",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The steel sculptures extend the same logic into three dimensions. Plasma-cut by hand, some mirror-polished to a finish that reflects the room back at itself, others lacquered in the iridescent tints of automotive bodywork, they read like artefacts from a civilisation operating on different rules. They are beautiful in the way that things built for serious purposes are beautiful, not despite their function but because of it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Harmony Coryn, Miranda's life partner and a significant presence in the Parisian underground, provides the show's sound design and has made a short video portrait of Miranda that plays alongside the exhibition. It is a quiet, precise film, domestic light, studio gestures, the specific attention of someone watching someone they know completely. It does not explain the work. It deepens it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the opening, the harpist Ange Halliwell performed in front of the central tapestry. For a few minutes, the boundary between object and event dissolved entirely. That is the register Miranda is working in: not art as product, but art as a sustained act of presence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"89d5af7b-c598-47fc-acba-e139731f9678",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776450684088,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2592x3872/aca535a66a/13-midnight-visage.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda MIDNIGHT VISAGE, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, tinted car clear coat 28 x 20 x 1 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"21d6a0a4-59a1-48f2-af85-ca210033bd99",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776450471095,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2592x3872/c1f1d3f34f/10-egograsping1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda EGO - GRASPING 1, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, hand mirror polished, metal protective-wax 17 x 20 x 1,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"335bf1ee-9249-4a5a-aca5-27480797fe0a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150777009382589,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3872x2592/cb4e0ea3da/16-moonbeam-serie-groupe-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda MOONBEAM 2, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, hand mirror polished, metal protective-wax, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, p
77hoto by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d68b0eb-fc76-4b12-b678-c4fd73e6bb63",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776562734267,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4738x6316/2d5548e1f8/17-seas-incantation.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda SEAS INCANTATION, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, Aluminium, tinted car clear coast 20 x 23,5 x 8,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c1769c1f-13c9-4ef6-b36a-b92f0b480f02",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150776561644729,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4738x6316/cb983f93f6/18-winds-incantation.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Lux Miranda WINDS INCANTATION, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, Aluminium, tinted car clear coast 18 x 21 x 8 cm, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0d9edb9b-fee8-4229-85f9-cb9a81725bcd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Endless Incantations\" is not an easy exhibition. It does not want to be. It is the work of an artist who has decided, with complete clarity, what they are doing and what it costs, and who has made that cost visible in every surface, every stitch, every cut. That kind of commitment is rare. Right now, it feels necessary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And yet, this is worth saying clearly, the show never buckles under its own weight. Work dealing with queer identity, political struggle, and embodied resistance can sometimes arrive with a heaviness that forecloses rather than opens. Miranda's does not. At the root of the practice is a daily act of watching the mind think, sitting with its noise until something visual surfaces. That process opens, over time, onto abstraction, and Miranda treats abstraction not as a retreat but as a territory of genuine freedom, a place where meaning stays mobile and elusive by design. \"Endless Incantations\" is, above all, a modern show: precise, alive, free of didacticism. The politics are in the material, not the label. The anger is in the cut, not the caption. It is exactly as much as it needs to be, and not one thing more.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until 21st February, T H E. P I L L, Paris (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sound design & Video : Harmony Coryn, Harpist performer : Ange Halliwell ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Photos artworks and install shots by Rebecca Fanuele - Portrait by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Boris Camaca",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-21 00:00",name:"\"Endless Incantations\" ÷ Lux Miranda Raises the Stakes",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"29ea11f3-dc86-485c-88d4-d0d18d94b41a",color:"#172053",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d131de91-3755-4208-8be4-2ab7abe16e08",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150773760689326,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3993x2593/c0b884fc2a/8-deep-green-detail.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda DEEP GREEN, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, tinted car clear coast 6,5 x 30 x 1,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, p
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77world that feels as if it is perpetually making-itself-with its inhabitants. Here, the logic of autopoiesis (of the self-made, autonomous subject) is supplanted by a pervasive sympoiesis, a co-creative becoming. An enigmatic guide speaks not for a conquered nature, but from within a complex web of multi-species kin-making. The narrative unfolds through a series of dialectical encounters, framing dialogue itself as a form of ecological practice. This is technology in service of an animist sensibility, where the goal is not mastery but attunement, not extraction but exchange.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The workâs political charge is located in this subtle recalibration of purpose. It imagines a civilization that has metabolized an ethic of care so completely that predation and accumulation have become unthinkable. It models a consciousness that finds its richness not in infinite growth but in the patient observation of intricate, tentacular connections. The player is not a hero imposing their will, but a node in a network, invited to trace the lines of relation that bind the humus to the artifact, the human to the non-human. The experience is a rehearsal for a different way of being, a speculative fabulation that insists other worlds are not only possible, but are already being woven in the generative, relational processes of this one.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8a926c1b-e8d9-4af2-9767-f08a18bee512",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675280583,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/bdb0fc1b44/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-06.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4906ddd9-7b4d-415f-8056-f4d4eb581c68",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675296970,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/cfa259f2a1/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-02.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"53656a06-d6e8-453d-b133-3d3e087c1f4f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675284680,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/bed032e46b/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-03.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2fc7ab28-ff4a-4869-9a4e-188c1253ce82",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675305163,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/345cb6b966/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-04.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"37d32f1b-1f67-430b-a632-1132675c5f71",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675284681,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/7a044a8489/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-05.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
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It affirms that the most urgent task of creative technological practice is not to build ever more convincing illusions, but to craft the conceptual tools and narrative prototypes for our survival. Deumierâs work is one such tool: a quiet, elegant, and necessary fiction.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"GRAY AREA, San Francisco (USA) -Until 15th of March",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sandrine Deumier: Unnatural - Of Humus & Artifact ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"is presented in San Francisco with support from Villa Albertine",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"underline"}]},{text:", the Institut Français and the French Ministry of Culture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-19 00:00",name:"Sympoietic Fictions÷On Sandrine Deumierâs âUnnaturalâ",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ebd85b7c-6ddb-419a-b594-afec0afbf93c",color:"#454354",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c0156a54-2c1c-4858-8397-0b6f8557c7fc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146813217134612,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/453d999acd/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-05.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"sandrine-deumier-unnatural-of-humus-artifact",full_slug:"directory/reviews/sandrine-deumier-unnatural-of-humus-artifact",sort_by_date:null,position:-960,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"5507d4ca-14f4-45e6-a2f6-afb7244af28d",first_published_at:"2026-02-19T21:58:21.628Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Monira Al Qadiri",created_at:"2025-12-22T13:36:38.772Z",published_at:"2025-12-22T15:50:05.029Z",updated_at:"2025-12-22T15:50:05.049Z",id:125833211002795,uuid:"5386d654-c556-442e-854e-fdba57a374bb",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c3887f8e-f3ae-453e-a1fc-5031ccc06f1e",title:"Monira Al Qadiri",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:125834112466865,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2227x1482/c702d7d1a3/69148e3c0107efbfe91b9f0f_s1020471.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Monira Al Qadiri, contemporary art, ARKEN museum Copenhagen, petroculture, extractivism, environmental collapse, oil industry critique, speculative fiction art, anthropocentrism, ecological devastation, installation art, iridescent sculptures, BENZENE FLOAT, Crude Eye, Gastromancer, resource extraction, climate crisis art, dark humour, Gulf War artist, Kuwait artist, post-oil futures, non-human perspectives, planetary violence, art criticism, Guardian style review,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Monira Al Qadiri's \"Chameleon\" at ARKEN transforms petrochemical molecules into iridescent sculptures, confronting extractivism and collapse with dark irony. 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It is this contradiction that defines Al Qadiriâs practice: she forces us to gaze at the architecture of our own destruction and find it, to our cynical delight, utterly literal.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"621b8b5d-b095-422a-9eb4-9ae1c35e2fc3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:125835831939135,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1470x1841/d684c323c4/69148e94d2efa7f1dad480da_s1020450.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Monira Al Qadiri, Seismic Songs, 2022. Photo: Anders Sune Berg",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e3e1b67-f802-4578-a975-15bc818a2ce8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:125835832012864,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1067x1401/d5108428e4/691492618c6c8d4df82b4c8e_l1005190.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Monira Al Qadiri, BENZENE FLOAT, 2023-24, Installation af fem oppustelige skulpturer. Photo: Anders Sune Berg",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"629edbc9-8c4e-4998-a8d9-69070adfc051",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Al Qadiri, a Kuwaiti artist raised in the shadow of oil refineries and a witness to the burning wells of the Gulf War, understands the seductive grammar of petroculture ... Her work dissects the world that oil has built, a world of dizzying wealth, ecological devastation, and a pervasive, often invisible, dependence. She tackles the grand, species-level arrogance of extractivism not with a didactic lecture, but with a wry, speculative wit. This is not about mourning what we have lost, but about laughing, perhaps a little hysterically, at the absurdity of what we have built. It is, as the French say, \"rire pour ne pas pleurer\" laughing to keep from crying.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This cynical joy is her primary tool. In Al Qadiriâs hands, the brutal machinery of resource extraction is transfigured. The menacing, earth-piercing drill heads of the oil industry are reimagined as Alien Technology or Future Past, levitating objects of dreamlike beauty that point towards the sky instead of burrowing into the ground. She plays with scale to warp our perspective, shrinking a colossal refinery to the size of a toy in the video work Crude Eye, inviting us to see it through the naive, story-making gaze of a child. By aestheticizing these industrial behemoths, she exposes the seductive power they hold over our collective imagination, a power that has normalized their planetary violence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"df67b0a6-e201-4eb4-ac66-edff5e9fd4c9",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"61b52ba9-d659-4ca0-959e-62aecff382e4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:125834239094712,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2227x1482/6d16b09b1d/69148e3c0107efbfe91b9f0f_s1020471.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Monira Al Qadiri, Gastromancer, 2023. Photo: Anders Sune Berg",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f319639e-9997-4eae-b0b0-364c314b259a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:125837099507820,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2231x1315/cc76384924/69148eea8fec7a57c7124de4_s1020439.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Monira Al Qadiri â Chameleon, 2025, Installations view, ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo: Anders Sune Berg ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"24a69752-b43d-4afa-8228-d6d3ba051d6f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beyond the critique of our fossil fuel addiction, Al Qadiriâs work mounts a challenge to anthropoce
77ntrism itself. She gives voice to the silent, non-human actors in this global drama. Her speculative narratives wonder what the dinosaurs, long fossilized into the petroleum we burn, might sing back to us. In \"Gastromance\"r, a pair of murex seashells, once the source of priceless purple dye, float in a contaminated atmosphere, contemplating their own strange evolution. She asks us to consider the oil refinery not as a symbol of human ingenuity, but as a potential âcity of beings from other worlds.â",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is a radical decentering of the human perspective. Al Qadiriâs art creates a cosmos of contradictions where ancient mythologies collide with a vivid, camp futurism, and where the lines between organic and synthetic, beautiful and terrifying, are gleefully blurred. By infusing her critique with such playful, ironic, and deeply cynical humour, she does something rarer still: she refuses the consolations of either despair or hope. There is no escape hatch in her work, no redemptive arc. The laughter is not a reprieve from the collapse but its soundtrack. She does not carve out a space where we can live with darkness; she shows us that we are already living in it, have been for decades, and the only honest response is to see it clearly and laugh at the obscene beauty of our own undoing. Al Qadiri does not offer answers because there are none. She asks: What stories will we tell in the aftermath of oil? But the question itself is almost obscene. There may be no aftermath. There may only be the long, slow suffocation of the systems we depend on, the quiet extinction of worlds we never bothered to notice. Her work is not a first draft of anything. It is a final accounting.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7d182532-4df0-4f04-915c-52395b6a6782",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{type:"hard_break",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Ishøj (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"until 6th/04/2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-12-15 00:00",name:"Oil's Final Dream÷Monira Al Qadiri ",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"6c5c336b-85d7-4012-b336-765285aeb861",color:"#372b5c",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"81b06a88-0eb2-4092-8e6f-5de7ecceb04c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:125834432704461,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4033x2691/7d23dec346/69148c4721871d28916db663_monira-al-qadiri-benzene-float-2023.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Monira Al Qadiri, BENZENE FLOAT, 2023-24, (Installation of five inflatable sculptures). Photo: Anders Sune Berg",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"monira-al-qadiri",full_slug:"directory/reviews/monira-al-qadiri",sort_by_date:null,position:-830,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"3420d901-fcb9-43fb-98e4-8d73a8055135",first_published_at:"2025-12-22T13:55:43.060Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Yuko Mohri's Entanglements: The World Refuses to Stay Still",created_at:"2025-12-14T23:03:35.174Z",published_at:"2025-12-15T07:40:09.792Z",updated_at:"2025-12-15T07:40:09.811Z",id:123141386987186,uuid:"0fc4aec9-208a-4d72-84cd-9b9817132c2d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"64a9c4c8-a255-40f9-9228-b6fb5f71c955",title:" Yuko Mohri's Entanglements",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:123142933259547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3150x2362/4571dac039/_ago9612.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:" Yuko Mohri, Entanglements, Pirelli HangarBicocca, contemporary art, Gaia hypothesis, systems art, kinetic sculpture, feedback loops, installation art, Milan art exhibition, Lovelock, ecological art, sound art, interactive installation, artistic practice, anthropoce
77ntrism, self-regulating systems, organic decay, electromagnetic fields, experimental music, art criticism, Guardian style, Blanqui, cosmology, sensory experience, art theory, systems thinking, nature and art, interdisciplinary art, performance art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Yuko Mohri's Entanglements at Pirelli HangarBicocca challenges anthropocentric views by creating systems where nothing acts independently. Feedback loops, decay, and movement become art itself."}],_uid:"6c968818-d282-4d6d-8821-ba4e47d64e6e",body:[{_uid:"733ab28d-378e-4164-82a8-a63ef99b0705",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yuko Mohri's Entanglements: When Systems Become Visible",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis describes a world where nothing is fixed, where organisms and their inorganic surroundings form a continuous, self-regulating feedback system. The theory challenges the notion of nature as a passive backdrop to human activity. Yuko Mohri's \"Entanglements\" at Pirelli HangarBicocca operates from this premise. Not as metaphor, not as environmental rhetoric, but as the structural condition of artistic practice itself. The exhibition does not illustrate Gaia; it enacts it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mohri's exhibition refuses the autonomy of the individual work. Feedback loops, electromagnetic fields, and organic decay become the actual material of art. The exhibition operates as a single, unified system where nothing acts independently. This is not metaphor but operational principle. The work does not represent interconnectedness; it instantiates it. Each piece functions as a node in a larger network, and the network itself is the artwork.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"03561c8a-5484-4b6a-936e-27748fd274c2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:123143990183210,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2362x3150/3d8677dcf9/_ago9723.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuko Mohri I/O, 2011-ongoing (detail) Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e8c952bd-98f8-494f-8a5a-ef88d441b90b",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"23455483-5658-4b8c-934e-bad95ccfb59d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:123145361864162,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2362x3150/7977e7ad26/_ago9567.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuko Mohri Decomposition, 2021-ongoing (detail) Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f5a892ba-bf78-487c-9e72-f261f3863cc0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In \"I/O\"(2011âongoing), rolls of paper suspended from the ceiling accumulate dust and debris from the gallery floor. A scanner reads this material, converting it into electrical signals that activate lights and objects. The environment itself becomes the composer. Randomness is not incidental but structural. The work refuses the artist's intentionality in favor of systemic indeterminacy. What Lovelock described theoretically, Mohri constructs as operational fact: the planet as a self-regulating organism responding to minute variations becomes the actual structure of the work. The gallery space transforms into a living system that generates its own aesthetic output.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This approach echoes ecological thinking without succumbing to its rhetoric. Mohri's work engages with concepts of interconnectedness and feedback that predate contemporary climate anxiety. Yet the work operates at a remove from the earnest environmentalism that often accompanies such themes. There is something almost austere in her method. Rotting fruit generating electricity in \"Decomposition\" (2021âongoing) and fish movements triggering sonic chains in\" Flutter\" (2018-25) document transformation without sentiment. Systems are neither benign nor hostile in these works. They are simply operative. The artist observes the mechanics of decay and motion with the precision of a scientist, not the moralism of an activist.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"19e193bd-3fc5-4ce4-ba7f-0d57defe6ac2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:123146733401658,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3150x2362/5778ff6a62/_ago9586.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuko Mohri Piano Solo: Belle-Ãle, 2024 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f4ce5ef7-ec8c-47f9-8959-bd0fda148c61",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:123147052140091,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2362x3150/6ac951f7fe/_ago9675.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuko Mohri âEntanglementsâ Exhibition view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Foreground: Magnetic Organ, 2004-ongoing Background: You Locked Me Up in a Grave, You Owe Me at Least the Peace of a Grave, 2018 (detail) Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"696162bc-0590-4482-abc9-18e21aed3c48",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:123147166221885,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2362x3150/8523e1a51e/_ago9733.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuko Mohri Moré Moré (Leaky): Variations (Flow #1, Flow #2, Flow #3), 2018 (detail) Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e4948fce-41d7-484a-b93b-08d716f121f9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:123148187629135,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3150x2362/96632ec6dd/_ago9609.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuko Mohri You Locked Me Up in a Grave, You Owe Me at Least the Peace of a Grave, 2018 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"70a3468d-5e8f-44a7-b97f-65a2f95ef179",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's most ambitious piece, \"You Locked Me Up in a Grave, You Owe Me at Least the Peace of a Grave \"(2018), combines sound, light, and movement in a single immersive environment. A suspended, rotating spiral staircase evokes a planet spinning on its axis. Distorted strings vibrate while speakers amplify the sound, creating a hypnotic sensory environment. The title references Blanqui's cosmological writings, invoking circularity and revolution. The work operates at the intersection of the cosmic and the political, where planetary motion and human struggle become indistinguishable. Here, Mohri moves beyond systems observation into something closer to immersion. The work becomes less about demonstrating interconnectedness and more about the disorientation that follows from recognizing it. To enter this space is to experience the vertigo of being embedded in forces larger than oneself.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mohri uses familiar objects: umbrellas, kitchen utensils, reworked instruments. But accessibility here is a trap. The conceptual apparatus remains rigorous. She does not explain systems; she instantiates them. Visitors encounter not representation but operation. The work asks nothing of interpretation, only attention. This refusal of explanation is itself a statement. In an art world accustomed to didactic frameworks and interpretive guides, Mohri's work insists on direct encounter with systemic complexity.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Anthropocentrism imposes a fixed frame while positioning humans above the ecosystems they nonetheless inhabit. Mohri's work exposes this contradiction directly. Her sculptures refuse the illusion of stability. They do not represent systems; they activate them. The world is not a stage for human action but a continuous entanglement of forces, agencies, and transformations in which humans are embedded, not elevated. \"Entanglements\" insists on this. Not as theory, not as ethics, but as the ground upon which all making must stand. In rendering visible what remains invisible in dominant frameworks, Mohri stakes a claim not just for art's relevance but for its necessity. The exhibition suggests that art's role is not to represent reality but to expose the mechanisms through which reality continuously constitutes itself.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5e055a98-37bd-4c71-8eb0-7e58f99dfb8e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PirelliHangarBicocca, Milan (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until 11/01/26",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-12-15 00:00",name:"Yuko Mohri \"Entanglements\" ÷The World Refuses to Stay Still",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"7c9bbc7e-0b99-4ae8-b1a1-9528094c16dc",color:"#939896",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"1ad47fcc-7697-4923-9b84-ef1f176611d0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:123142933259547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3150x2362/4571dac039/_ago9612.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuko Mohri You Locked Me Up in a Grave, You Owe Me at Least the Peace of a Grave, 2018 Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2025 Courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan Photo Agostino Osio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"yuko-mohri-s-entanglements-the-world-refuses-to-stay-still",full_slug:"directory/reviews/yuko-mohri-s-entanglements-the-world-refuses-to-stay-still",sort_by_date:null,position:-790,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"d505594e-e479-481a-a47c-709c68cb454e",first_published_at:"2025-12-14T23:28:44.036Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Marguerite Humeau: Torches - HAM",created_at:"2025-12-08T23:19:46.494Z",published_at:"2025-12-09T09:00:42.630Z",updated_at:"2025-12-09T09:00:42.651Z",id:121021999112848,uuid:"008c91b5-328a-47e9-a8d9-d6d50775eb88",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"aa4067b3-20b3-484f-bb91-76fbb3b2fa80",title:"Marguerite Humeau",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:121022170921067,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6601x4715/c1c4da4a1a/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Marguerite Humeau, Torches exhibition, HAM Helsinki, contemporary art, speculative design, sculpture, extinction, Anthropoce
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77ne. The exhibition traces this same arc: origins, proliferation, complexity, and then the question that hovers over everything. What comes after humans?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"28d9f96c-6e77-4008-8da5-62cb4fa915b2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121024004929677,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7716x5511/676ea39a21/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-20.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marguerite Humeau, âTorchesâ at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, 2025. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Julia Andréone. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a6e70f3-06bf-4f0b-a636-4d44dcb4acb5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121024391669905,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7418x5299/d0f219c53c/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marguerite Humeau, âTorchesâ at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, 2025. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Julia Andréone. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a97a7bd3-514b-4dbb-a61c-94972a59bd1f",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"c9c47213-62cf-44fb-adfa-ad6d44d915e5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the work's central preoccupation, and it distinguishes Humeau. She does not treat extinction as metaphor or as occasion for moral urgency. Instead, she treats it as evolutionary fact. Humans are one species among millions. We will not persist indefinitely. The Anthropocene is not humanity's triumph but the moment we recognize ourselves as geologically significant precisely because we are destroying the conditions for our own survival. This recognition produces a specific kind of clarity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The sculptures themselves resist easy categorization. They are neither animal nor machine, neither organic nor synthetic. Humeau designs them using 3D modeling software and manufactures them through CNC machining. The digital precision of the forms is counteracted by her choice of materials: beeswax, wasp venom, yeast, cyanobacteria. Some of these materials are alive. They continue to metabolize, to grow, to decay throughout the exhibition. The sculptures are not monuments to permanence but documents of impermanence. They acknowledge their own mortality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This choice of materials is not decorative. It is philosophical. By using substances that live and change, Humeau refuses the false eternity that sculpture traditionally claims. Her works participate in the same cycles of creation and destruction that govern all life. They are subject to the same pressures, the same vulnerabilities. They will not outlast the Anthropocene. They will not survive the extinction they seem to contemplate.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c1a90b4f-3526-4307-b329-a3beffdddb1a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121025040591001,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5595x7833/441c78f11f/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-19.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marguerite Humeau, âTorchesâ at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, 2025. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Julia Andréone. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"bc24d64f-09e3-4ef2-ad01-89a9c48c8cf1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121025148999835,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5512x7717/e7aa771fbb/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marguerite Humeau, âTorchesâ at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, 2025. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Julia Andréone. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"44e79dc0-951f-4d56-80f4-8f34dcc07fb5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121025427036324,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5520x3943/834a69e57f/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-9.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marguerite Humeau, âTorchesâ at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, 2025. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Julia Andréone. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"44ec1049-404a-48d9-98c7-282a3053d105",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121022953789561,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8688x6206/eb8c8d3597/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-8.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marguerite Humeau, âTorchesâ at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, 2025. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Julia Andréone. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"caa07576-f373-460b-9522-51334a11bf40",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Speculative design asks \"what if?\" It treats design as a tool for exploring alternative futures. Humeau has translated this into sculpture and installation. But she has also transformed it. Her work does not present scenarios for critique or debate. It constructs worlds. It makes visible the forms that might emerge from the wreckage of our current moment.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's immersive quality amplifies this effect. Rather than presenting finished objects in a neutral gallery, Humeau has orchestrated a complete sensory environment. Sound and light animate the sculptures. The vaulted ceiling of HAM's grand hall becomes part of the work. This juxtaposition, between human architectural ambition and the fluid, evolving forms below, generates a specific tension. It asks: what will archaeologists make of these vaults when humans are gone? What will they find?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a particular kind of intelligence at work here. Humeau does not pretend that art can solve the crises of the Anthropocene. She does not offer false hope or technological salvation. But she also refuses despair. Instead, she constructs alternative evolutionary narratives. She imagines what forms of life and consciousness might flourish in a post-human world. This is not escapism. It is a form of intellectual resistance, a refusal to accept that the present moment exhausts the possibilities of the future.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"40ea59dc-59bd-467f-a1d5-1fef117fcaae",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121027627190493,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5107x3648/781fb89bde/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-18.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marguerite Humeau, âTorchesâ at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, 2025. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Julia Andréone. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ef0ed8e8-8ccb-4bb6-8a98-5c7f8c57e743",quote:"In a moment when so much contemporary art retreats into decoration or provocation, Humeau's commitment to intellectual and imaginative inquiry stands out",author:"",component:"quote"}
77,{_uid:"baebcde1-3f83-4fc2-9156-6c296f71ed96",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:121027203123402,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3719x5177/930559bf73/marguerite-humeau-soihdut-facklor-torches-16.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marguerite Humeau, âTorchesâ at HAM Helsinki Art Museum, 2025. © Marguerite Humeau. Photography by Julia Andréone. 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Humeau's practice is earnest without being naive. She takes her own questions seriously. She pursues them across years, across continents, through collaboration with dozens of specialists. This commitment to genuine inquiry, to what she calls \"epic quests\" through knowledge systems both scientific and marginal, has become increasingly rare. Most contemporary artists retreat into either spectacle or irony. Humeau does neither.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Torches asks a series of questions that cannot be resolved through rational argument or empirical evidence. What will we leave behind? What traces of human existence will persist? What new forms might emerge from the materials and ideas we have accumulated? What does it mean to create art in an era when we know that our species will not persist indefinitely? These are not comfortable questions. But they are the questions that matter now.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a moment when so much contemporary art retreats into decoration or provocation, Humeau's commitment to intellectual and imaginative inquiry stands out. She has constructed a world in which the viewer can contemplate human extinction not as apocalyptic fantasy but as evolutionary possibility. Torches illuminates this possibility. It does not offer salvation. 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77ontemporary art, Francesca Minini, Fantasy vanishes in Flesh, feminist art, body politics, identity fluidity",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Ivana BaÅ¡iÄ's posthuman sculptures explore transformation, hybridity, and relational ontology through genderless beings that challenge biological essentialism and fixed identity."}],_uid:"299d8d38-c14c-446e-9ca6-3e630212d3ec",body:[{_uid:"bf0306d8-cea5-4a4c-8476-3b10789698bf",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The myth of âBeingâ- Ivana BaÅ¡iÄâs world of transmutations",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ivana BaÅ¡iÄ's ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Fantasy vanishes in Flesh",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" at Francesca Minini confronts the illusion of fixed identity. Through translucent beings caught in perpetual metamorphosis, the artist reimagines the body as a site of posthuman transformation where flesh, steel, and silicone merge into genderless creatures that refuse biological destiny.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5a66b53d-62c2-40ad-b8bc-e434b5387015",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The monumental sculpture embodies relational ontology: nothing makes itself, everything exists through entanglement. This is not abstraction, it's a coherent response to a world that tears itself apart through rigid categorizations.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mutating flesh, a raw undeniable pulse, an all-consuming corporal fantasy. Transformation is not an arbitrary circumstance; it is the only gospel.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In \"Fantasy vanishes in Flesh\", currently on view at Francesca Minini, Ivana BaÅ¡iÄ summons to witness the unnerving prayer of relinquishing the bodily limitations. Throughout the exhibition, each work appears to be suspended in an ongoing metamorphosis, an allegory made physical upon the seamless synthesis of sharp steel, silicone, glass and wax. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Her work carries the distant traumas of a childhood marked by the violent collapse of Yugoslavia. In the face of war, the body is the first site upon which identity is etched and subsequently violated. It is then no coincidence, that BaÅ¡iÄâs work would resonate well with a posthuman vocabulary. As contemporary philosopher, Rosi Braidotti emphasizes, âHumanismâs restricted notion of what counts as the human is one of the keys to understand how we got to a post-human turn at allâ. War, after all ,is an unfortunate culmination of the human desire to worship purity, confines and exclusion. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"BaÅ¡iÄ studies the very humanist categorizations that habitually spiral into militancy. Breathing life into the posthuman, for her is not an absent-minded abstraction, but a way of making coherent, a society that persistently tears itself apart. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4cf1bd94-c8f0-4da0-b592-023f20929d77",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:118140625477795,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1969x2953/293efd524f/7_mm_basic_views_06-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fantasy Vanishes in Flesh, 2025 Exhibition view at Francesca Minini, Milan\u2028. Ph. Andrea Rossetti",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"96e98e80-b8fb-493a-86a8-ae83dd18b812",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:118141263478956,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2191x2953/9bf9682b7e/14_mm_basic_views_13.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fantasy Vanishes in Flesh, 2025 Exhibition view at Francesca Minini, Milan\u2028. Ph. Andrea Rossetti",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"688fec7b-8aef-4fa1-9bd0-c7dc0c2183bd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Within the fragmented atmosphere of the exhibition, one sculpture in particular, encapsulates the breadth of BaÅ¡iÄâs metaphysical quest in the dismantling of âselfâ. It distils the central tension. It is the final spectacle. Through it, conceived are the liminality between b
77irth/death and liberation by virtue of the necessary rupture.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The liberty to morph seems infinite. Transformation is familial to the sentient experience. The body yearns to itch, split open, leak and regenerate, betraying a coherent form. Perhaps at the very birth of the human consciousness, Identity transgressed all boundaries. The fluidity of âbeingâ was lost. Labels came to be cemented. Posthumanism emerges as an indispensable tool against this essentialism. There is salvation to be found and amnesty to be lived in a posthuman societyâAn escape from the patriarchal Anthropocene that has somehow standardized the human life.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fear of hybridity is a fear of disorder. We are unsettled by humanoids because they defy a skin and form, we have canonized as âhumanâ. They seem illegitimate in their nature, too tangled, too mutable. Yet, it is their tangled ways of being, in some ways, that guides the pathways towards a freedom. Donna Haraway imagined the myth of the cyborg (a hybrid of machine and organism) as a signifier of mutiny. It transcends the binary logic of our world. Identity and the fundamental nature of âselfâ are inconsequential. The cyborg rejects the enlightenment ideal of manâ rather its existence relies upon the network of connections and unstable mutations. It is impure in thought and action. The cyborg, in Harawayâs own words, is âresolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity.â. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d67b8d75-a94a-4d97-a188-b27ccee2d4aa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:118141884133560,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4032x3024/e7f9d986cd/ca4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fantasy Vanishes in Flesh, 2025 Exhibition view at Francesca Minini, Milan, \u2028Photo Andrea Rossetti",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"debb690f-7c5f-466a-9be3-6a1535f18964",quote:"Our existence, like these humanoidsâ can be realized as a cluster of relationships of substances rather than the substance itself. In a way weâre all mutations of each other and interconnected metaphysically.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"45fa3d09-b276-4a95-8680-dd76330b62ea",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the age of artificial intelligence, biotechnology and an ontological crisis, the margins between humans, animals and technology have softened. BaÅ¡iÄ attempts the reimagination of the body as giving way to supernatural evolution for the purposes of contemplation. She acknowledges transformation not just as inevitable, but liberatory. Like Harawayâs cyborg, Ivana BaÅ¡iÄâs sculpture, titled âI had seen the centuries, and the vast dry lands; I had reached the nothing and the nothing was living and moistâ (2018â2025), of the monumental genderless being contemplates a likely myth. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Clutching on to the earth through fatal metallic arthropodan legs, the creature stands, a translucent crossbreed caught in the process of continual birth. It is at the threshold of transformationâ shedding flesh while shedding the self through an open slit in the chest. In the back, it pushes out an amniotic-like sack, having conceivably rebirthed itself. This seemingly parthenogenetic phenomenon envisions an absolute continuation, full of hope. A conceptually genderless being, yet still unmistakably emblematic of the female experience. BaÅ¡iÄâs representation of rebirth, volatility and artificiality reframes the female beyond biological essentialism. There is nothing humanely natural about the reproduction seen in the sculpture. Thus, suggesting a body that has escaped the biological destiny of women. The performance of self-birth is an assertion of autonomy. The sculptureâs ambiguous nature, blurring the distinctions between flesh/machinery, man/woman, exposes the instability of the patriarchal âwomanhoodâ. Identity instead is seen through the posthuman lens â as relational rather than
77innate. The sterile nature of the installation does not hinder sensitivity or warmth in the viewer. It all feels quite fragile. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"BaÅ¡iÄ confronts the same ambivalence of Harawayâs cyborg. This enigmatic creature is a dream of liberation too. It is a reminder that mastery of inherent continuities like death and living is an illusion. The human exceptionalism is however founded on this illusionâthat we may command the natural order. It is a reminder that these things happen beyond our control. To fix such an entity, and to trouble it with superficial identities of human, machine, woman, beast, intended to create eventual disruption, is futile. The act of âbeingâ is fluid, stratified and exceeds a system of taxonomy. The reference to âsympoeisisâ by the artist deepens the myth. The term, elaborated and utilized by Haraway, describes systems that are entirely anti self-containment and fully relational. \"Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means 'making-with'- Nothing makes itself â. A way of existing in co-creation, perpetually entangled. For the Chimeric being, living as a âsympoeticâ, means that its existence is shaped through a labyrinth of relations. It refuses the fantasy of a self-sustained mind and body. Every living thing then, is a plurality of forms, breathing dependently. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The materiality itself of BaÅ¡iÄâs sculpture performs within the domain of the cyborg. The tension in-between vulnerability and strength is pulsing through its form. Like the cyborg, it is not a creature from the future or an alternate realityârather a mirror of our potential unrealized hybridity. BaÅ¡iÄâs masterpiece is a visual declaration of the posthuman truth, living in the continuum of becoming and daring to know the elements of relational ontologyâ It is the tender cyborg. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Our existence, like these humanoidsâ can be realized as a cluster of relationships of substances rather than the substance itself. In a way weâre all mutations of each other and interconnected metaphysically. No one comes out of the motherâs womb as autonomous creaturesâ there is an umbilical cord to be cut. Our entanglement to one another is then tangible from the get-go. The transitory nature of Harawayâs cyborg and BaÅ¡iÄâs genderless being, is an embodiment of this very entanglement. The physical rebirth seen in the sculpture, encapsulates a denial of separateness or individualized identity, echoing the interrelatedness of the cyborg. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Distinct selves, begin to lose meaning at the face of impermanence and continuous reinvention. The remainder is a fragile devotion to âbecomingâ. Within this realm, salvation depends upon the forgoing of selfhood and embracing the collective vulnerability of existence itself. In the faded glisten of the sculptureâs corporeality, reflected are the intricacies of the posthuman condition. Sympoiesis becomes a virtue of enlightenment. Metamorphosis, a promise of deliverance. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a34d263d-64dc-4ac9-b597-fbbe1761de12",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition runs until 12th of December at Francesca Minini Gallery, Milan (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-12-01 00:00",name:"The myth of âBeingâ÷Ivana BaÅ¡iÄâs world of transmutations",author:"Chethika Algama",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"bea03086-c534-41a5-a9c3-c4e8a4badbd7",color:"#61615f",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e4866496-b6f3-4aca-b030-6b43021ecef5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:118138097332376,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1782x1180/7e8ddcf5f3/5_mm_basic_views_09.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"ivana-basic-s-world-of-transmutations",full_slug:"directory/reviews/ivana-basic-s-world-of-transmutations",sort_by_date:null,position:-730,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"9b4cf294-c107-4064-82f3-a44dc1a70ded",first_published_at:"2025-11-30T20:11:10.419Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Persistent Worlds",created_at:"2025-11-24T20:59:56.726Z",published_at:"2025-11-25T09
77:08:22.168Z",updated_at:"2025-11-25T09:08:22.194Z",id:116033113024980,uuid:"414187e2-137c-4d7c-9e1f-966d7c222610",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"db15e7e8-9e27-480b-903d-e77d8babcbe2",title:"persistent worlds by Alice Buknell",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:116034055275871,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1462x810/23658f979d/screenshot-2025-11-24-at-22-02-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Alice Bucknell, Persistent Worlds, Kunsthalle Praha, video game art, ecological art, climate art, nonhuman intelligence, quantum entanglement, interspecies communication, digital capitalism, speculative fiction, cooperative games, Small Void, Nightcrawlers, Staring at the Sun, The Alluvials, contemporary art, political imagination, dissolution of binaries",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Alice Bucknell's \"Persistent Worlds\" at Kunsthalle Praha uses video games to dissolve human/nonhuman binaries and reimagine ecological knowledge as entanglement."}],_uid:"9d0e9b32-44bd-4563-bc63-1ecf0120ff63",body:[{_uid:"ee244416-ccc5-475b-ba31-dbfa7e194223",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Persistent Worlds\": Alice Bucknell's Solo Show at Kunsthalle, Prague",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Alice Bucknell's video games don't let you escape the climate crisis. They force you to feel it from the perspective of quantum particles, nocturnal pollinators, and drought-ravaged ecosystems, dismantling the myth that humans stand apart from the world they're destroying.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The modernist and anthropocentric dream of controlling nature is failing. In their first museum solo show, artist Alice Bucknell (they/them) wields the tools of digital simulation to propose a necessary alternative. Their work argues for a radical shift away from control and towards interconnection, where knowledge is not domination, but a profound and ultimately more hopeful entanglement.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"While Silicon Valley peddles crypto schemes and NFT snake oil, Alice Bucknell is doing something far more urgent: building video game worlds that force us to confront the climate catastrophe we're living through. Their work doesn't offer escape; it offers a reckoning. Bucknell is an artist and researcher whose practice weaponizes game engines and moving images against the very systems that created them. Their work explores the entangled realms of ecology and nonhuman intelligences to challenge the very foundations of modernist thought, searching for viable alternatives to the crises our dominant paradigms have created.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Persistent Worlds,\" their first major solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Prague (European Union), serves as a powerful testament to this inquiry. The title itself, borrowed from multiplayer gaming, hints at a world-building practice that extends beyond representation. Digital worlds here are dynamic systems that unravel and reconfigure our reality. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition design, a multi-layered environment of light and sound by Studio Richard Loskot, immediately immerses the visitor, dissolving the comfortable distance between observer and participant and plunging them directly into Bucknellâs thought-experiments.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9b24f27f-d792-4398-bcb7-e2faa91342b4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116041912743394,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1076/b6bf27abb8/p-22-on-la-river-1920x.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Bucknell, The alluvials,(still), courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8f1d4eb4-7e45-41bd-9c03-1bb5bc9cf3c4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The showâs intellectual rigor unfolds through the dialectic it stages between its four
77core works. The two narrative installations, âStaring at the Sunâ (2024â2025) and âThe Alluvialsâ (2023), present conflicting paradigms for planetary survival. âStaring at the Sun âoffers a searing critique of the solutionist mindset, dissecting the seductive hubris of solar geoengineering. Its polyphonic narrative, which weaves together real-world interviews, exposes the dangerous allure of a top-down, technological fix: the final, desperate gasp of the modernist dream of control. In stark contrast, âThe Alluvialsâ shifts its focus from the global panacea to the situated intelligence of a specific place. Its exploration of a drought-ravaged Los Angeles finds hope not in planetary intervention, but in the active agency of nonhuman systems and the resilience of local, often marginalized, knowledge.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"625ace00-b212-4d36-9b89-0c67c3b3cc29",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116044567897612,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1258x1566/d54c4576d8/screenshot-2025-11-24-at-22-45-52.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Persistent Worlds\", The Alluvials, install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1f1d44d4-3a16-48f1-9305-dabae28a8192",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116044567860747,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1204x1578/b7d7a176c7/screenshot-2025-11-24-at-22-46-06.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Persistent Worlds\", The Alluvials, install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f37405a8-06f2-4f0d-bb32-d6e9d3656f30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116045239383570,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x969/92ae47882e/highresscreenshot00365-1920x.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Bucknell', The Alluvials, (Still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9a24b47c-7215-4065-86f4-ab5df0b9a520",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116211139388353,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/540x720/a69170d9ec/dscf5663_hd.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"persistent worlds\", install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1f0a1f2e-04ef-4969-a99d-a8bc61bf59a9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116211139367871,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/540x720/796e8a5efd/dscf5634_hd.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"persistent worlds\", install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7afa699f-44e3-4eee-8752-81a3fc4ac8ce",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This tension between the global gaze and embodied experience is radicalized in the two new cooperative games, which function as philosophical experiments in decentering the self. \"Small Void\" (2025) pushes this critique of the autonomous individual into far more intimate territory. At first glance, its mechanics draw from the principles of quantum entanglement, developed through a dialogue with physicists at CERN. However, this cosmic framework is ingeniously repurposed to explore the terrestrial dynamics of attachment theory and the inherent limits of language. The game unfolds as a queer dating sim, where tw
77o players must navigate the frictions and expansions of identity that love induces. The world itself, inspired by the strange, symbiotic existence of lichens that blur the lines between life and death, acts as a third player, transforming the beings who move through it. \"Small Void\" thus becomes a profound meditation on the breakdowns in communication and the ways in which we are fundamentally reshaped by our relationships, both human and nonhuman.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4e43e614-b648-48e7-8490-7d3404817728",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116047929898561,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/980x735/e7ed493b2e/guided-tour-persistent-worlds-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Persistent Worlds\", Small Void, Install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"539d2689-c5e5-4500-8f8d-874824721733",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116210778370980,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1177x720/5f89113bf4/small-void_giants_hd-1.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Bucknell, Small Void,(still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1db01ead-6f5b-45c0-8145-6aa1256e8242",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Nightcrawlers\" (2025), commissioned by the Centre Pompidou, performs a different kind of ontological shift. As a pollination simulator, it casts two players as bat and flower, locked in a nocturnal dance of mutual dependency. The game's brilliance lies in how it forces players to attune themselves to radically alien modes of perception: navigating darkness not as absence but as a space of heightened sensory awareness, and finding ways to signal across species boundaries where verbal language fails. Here, music becomes more than aesthetic decoration; it functions as an affective technology for transcending the rigid divisions between sensing and knowing, between self and other. If Small Void explores love as a force that destabilizes identity, Nightcrawlers reimagines it as an instrument of interspecies communication, a way of reaching toward forms of intimacy that exceed the human entirely.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fd04ec21-73d3-4a6b-b2b4-c5ae393ea29a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116048609998414,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/980x735/64dd55a279/persistent-worlds-guided-tour.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Persistent Worlds\", Nightcrawlers, install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"94d89289-e420-4187-86f7-a534bbe76a6b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116049255667311,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1165/eb692a50c7/screenshot-2025-03-31-123415-1920x.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Bucknell, Nightcrawlers,(still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e9d9cdee-52b9-4998-8628-4d99d567b2a9",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"a16d8935-f459-4425-beb6-a6bc0ebe7ac5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116049453450867,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/990x1320/c31f2a7e7d/dscf5669.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Persistent Worlds\", Nightcrawlers, install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c64e794c-7f4e-47a1-a4a6-6c3faeac5d35",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116049418331762,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x2555/3956a61592/b0032713-1920x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Persistent Worlds\", Nightcrawlers, install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"50445961-4c82-4ab5-9862-1bd1e553d574",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116049797056124,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1156/fcf47d99cf/screenshot-2025-03-31-124024-1920x.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Bucknell, Nightcrawlers,(still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"93601530-efa9-482e-a671-ed169dbb955a",quote:"Alice Bucknell's video games don't let you escape the climate crisis. They force you to feel it from the perspective of quantum particles, nocturnal pollinators, and drought-ravaged ecosystems, dismantling the myth that humans stand apart from the world they're destroying.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"c1b7dcf2-7e66-498e-bb46-aac1ae111e97",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116049944802941,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1184/30a63a8f6e/screenshot-2025-03-31-123806-1920x.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Bucknell, Nightcrawlers,(still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"aa775123-127e-4f72-946c-6d96468c2b0e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" \"Persistent Worlds\" is more than a collection of beautiful artworks; it is a carefully orchestrated intellectual and sensory journey. What distinguishes Bucknell's approach is their understanding of video games not as entertainment, but as affective interfaces capable of grasping what rational systems cannot. By embracing the strange, unpredictable possibilities of play, they probe the outer limits of scientific knowledge and systems thinking, revealing where these frameworks falter. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's real achievement lies in its capacity to dissolve the binaries that structure our world: human versus environment, natural versus synthetic intelligence, self versus world. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In refusing the consolations of both technological salvation and apocalyptic despair, Bucknell carves out a third path: one that demands we learn to think and feel at scales that exceed the human, where knowledge is not control but a form of entanglement.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âPersistent Worldsâ ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by LÃvia Nolasco-Rózsás",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kunsthalle Prague (European Union) - Until 19/01-26",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ebce95a3-25bf-443c-a4f1-eec3a83275a8",component:"mobile-newsletter"}],date:"2025-11-24 00:00",name:"Love as Instrument: Alice Bucknell÷Dismantles the Myth of Human Supremacy",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"248a4feb-f3f1-40ef-b1b5-990f526868d3",color:"#3e1855",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"9883eb64-60dc-49f2-beb1-ef6b9a0dda12",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:116211876365280,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1198x720/32692c1118/screenshot-2025-03-31-124103_hd.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nightcrawlers, (Still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"persistent-worlds",full_slug:"directory/reviews/persistent-worlds",sort_by_date:null,position:-690,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"53222a8b-ab68-4e34-b229-9d7874867c5e",first_published_at:"2025-11-24T22:22:42.451Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"intrications",created_at:"2025-11-22T20:55:10.803Z",published_at:"2026-03-14T21:33:28.719Z",updated_at:"2026-03-14T21:33:28.742Z",id:115324153086886,uuid:"03a0ed13-b00b-4ec5-b729-c97f0b49efb2",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"5f82ce73-7794-40b0-b71a-6afa5fd60cd2",title:"Intrications",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:115324780452843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2001/74cd1f4704/8-iver9421-hdr.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Joséfa Ntjam, INTRICATIONS, exhiibition,IAC Villeurbanne, Institut d'art contemporain, Sarah Caillet, art review, contemporary art, AI art, digital collage, immersive exhibition, scenography, speculative cosmology, post-Cartesian, Black diaspora art, queer art, matriarchal art, art and technology",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Review: Joséfa Ntjam's INTRICATIONS at IAC Villeurbanne. A stunning, immersive show where diversity, mythology, and technology entangle in a new speculative cosmology."}],_uid:"07cc5918-7dd9-4d06-9ccd-489084d3f49d",body:[{_uid:"b2c94ee7-154f-4fd8-b353-79cb4aa534c4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Engine of the World: On Joséfa Ntjam's \"Intrications\" exhibition",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Josèfa Ntjam's art is a powerful and necessary statement, one that uses fiction to dismantle the rigid certainties of identity, race and origin. In her hands, African mythology and science fiction become tools to forge a new, entangled cosmology, one that challenges dominant Cartesian frameworks and proposes diversity as the very engine of existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the Institut dâart contemporain in Villeurbanne",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"(European",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" Union)",type:"text"},{text:", Joséfa Ntjam unveils her largest and most ambitious exhibition to date, a powerful statement of intent spanning over 1200 square meters and featuring new works conceived specifically for the space. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"With \"Intrications\", the world is not given, but perpetually generated. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ntjam advances a powerful thesis against the grain of our times: that the universeâs creative force lies not in order and categorization, but in the vibrant and unpredictable entanglement of its most diverse elements. The exhibition is a masterful demonstration of this principle, positioning diversity not as a passive subject for representation, but as the very engine of the world. It is a speculative cosmology where the friction between disparate realities,",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"mythological, technological, political,",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"sparks new forms of existence. Under the curation of Sarah Caillet, this landmark exhibition propels the institution itself to the forefront of the international avant-garde",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:".",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9db97f42-2a2a-4462-ad7b-b20604b6cb68",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115335990094870,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2001x3000/81a112303c/5-iver9290.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" JENGU, MAMI WATA, Courtesy the artist and Nicolleti, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8b7af3e6-c8a1-4eb2-9e81-8e517f5d5cb4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115342549638186,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2001x3000/8062f934bf/5-iver9281.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"WISDOM, Courtesy the artist and Nicolleti, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7ff42f6a-5832-4839-9112-71419b64bddd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115346040351795,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/816x459/d293181c14/big-exposition-intrications-josefa-ntjam-iinstitut-art-contemporain-iac-villeurbanne-2025-credit-ivan-erofeev.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shot, courtesy the artist and IAC, PHOTO Ivan Erofeev ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"847ee566-bbd8-4383-a9db-271ddde072d6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115341663587367,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2001x3000/9226848066/5-iver9303.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"DJENGU, Courtesy the artist and Nicolleti, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"127f6282-50ee-4500-b84c-3920ffc89c0e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115344626715696,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/708x1066/44a159717a/screenshot-2025-11-22-at-23-17-39.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" ROOTS, Courtesy the artist and Nicolleti, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"25becc7f-a070-4e24-9454-6aef83ddeb7f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ntjamâs method is one of radical synthesis. She dismantles the clean architecture of Cartesian thought, which places a singular, rational human at its center, and proposes instead a rhizomatic network of being. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs title",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" âIntricationsâ (Entanglement)",type:"text"}
77,{text:" a nod to quantum physics, serves as a conceptual anchor: the notion that separate particles can remain fundamentally linked suggests a universe bound by invisible threads. This idea is made manifest in a space where organic and synthetic textures merge, where the legacy of anti-colonial revolt is entwined with the silent life of plants, and where ancestral memory resonates within digital avatars.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"07fda2e3-2847-4e72-9b7c-21dec6d3ad06",quote:" Nothing exists in isolation; everything vibrates with the energy of everything else.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"6f3cea02-e6f1-4bc7-9340-34a09d54b49c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This generative power is most evident in the teeming, speculative mythology Ntjam constructs. It is a world populated by AI-generated beings, chimeras born from a collision of data: 3D models of plankton, digital scans of West African deities, and the archived faces of historical figures like Marthe Ekemeyong Moumié and Ãlisabeth Djouka. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By weaving together Dogon cosmogony, alongside other West and Central African mythological systems, with the political lineage of the Black diaspora, Ntjam creates a narrative space where matriarchal histories and queer identities are not marginal notes but foundational truths. This is the engine at work, a complex machinery of colliding worlds that produces a future unbound by the limitations of the past.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ultimately, \"Intrications\" is a deeply political and poetic act of world-building. It is a testament to fiction as a form of resistance, a strategic flight into a reality more complex and more true than our own. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a1ba6a6c-c7fc-4ce9-8d31-f510c7edcae7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115372073418069,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2240/f885075f4d/dislocations-2022-still-hd-film-17-min-credits-josefa-ntjam3.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dislocation (still),Co-production Aquatic Invasion Production, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati et CNC Courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e2bbc69f-8505-42c1-8b40-8bd484cb40ed",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The intelligence of the exhibition extends to its very architecture. The space is not a container for the works but an active agent in this world-building. In a particularly intelligent scenography, Ntjam and",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"the",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" curator ",type:"text"},{text:"have transformed the entire space into a multidimensional journey, a multi-layered environment that defies linear progression. The viewer is guided through a dense",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"threshold of matter, where each turn reveals a new layer of the speculative cosmology. This is not a white cube, but a living ecosystem,",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"a 'multi-space' with multiple dimensions",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"where the physical layout itself becomes a manifestation of entanglement, forcing the visitor to navigate a world where all things are interconnected.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But to focus solely on the exhibitionâs conceptual architecture would be to miss its achievement. While the political urgency of Ntjamâs project is undeniable, its true force resides in the singularity and maturity of her aesthetic language. It is in the material intelligence of the objects, the affective power of the images, and the sheer elegance of everything",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"in",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"between",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"that the artistâs proposition becomes not just legible, but deeply felt. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ntjam demonstrates that the most radical political work in art is often that which recalibrate our perception before it reshapes our thought. It is through this mastery of form,",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"this beauty,",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"that she moves beyond critique to propose a new aesthetic regime, offering a glimpse of a world not just reimagined, but rendered exquisitely possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Institut dâart contemporain, Villeurbanne (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curator: Sarah Caillet",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition till 22nd February 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ee4ec4e2-fbce-4bfc-b951-dbba98b33322",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"35958589-d2ae-48da-ab21-9d740b54dcce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115397283418433,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1281/c503162a39/swell-of-spaecies-josefa-ntjam-2024-vue-dexpo-intrications-iac-villeurbanne-2025-c-ivan-erofeev-6.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Swell of spæc(i)es, Install shot, IAC Villeurbanne, PHOTO Ivan Erofeev",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c0c6003e-96ab-4f2d-9d58-2a28c79cfc15",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Refresh",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"Guide",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" to the ",type:"text"},{text:"Worlds of \"Intrications\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Josèfa Ntjamâs exhibition is a meticulously journey",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"spread across the nine rooms of the Institut dâart contemporain. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b13550fd-a2bc-40c4-9be1-dfec437672a9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Room 1: Sanctuary of Ancient Rains",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition begins by plunging the visitor into a three-dimensional collage. In \"Sanctuaire des Pluies Anciennes\" Ntjam explodes the flat plane of the digital image into a human-scale environment. Thirty sculptural cutouts on plexiglass and foam create a dense, floating landscape that the viewer must navigate, not just observe. It is a forest of interwoven forms, where figures of anti-colonial resistance (Marthe Ekemeyong Moumié, Ãlisabeth Djouka, Mafory Bangoura) stand as ancestral guardians among mythological creatures and symbolic flora,the tenacious bramble, the regenerative hydra, the cooperative coral. The visitorâs movement activates the space, revealing the intricate connections between memory, resilience, and force.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a19aa8b3-cd3f-4f80-8ea1-8b85267bb21c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115328713456630,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2001/b69e6ac7b0/room-1-of-the-exhibition.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Room 1, Install shot, PHOTO Ivan Erofeev",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c6d9f3cd-9c48-4f03-a057-9f49196af426",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Room 2: Dislocations",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The journey continues into a darkened chamber featuring the video Dislocations. Here, the recurring avatar Persona drifts through a dislocated past, from the cosmos to a subterranean cave that is both interstellar and submarine. This space evokes the real-world caves used as refuges by Bassa resistance fighters in Cameroon, transforming the geological into a matrix of memory. Personaâs form dissolves and merges with the water, its very matter becoming a vessel for the scattered archives and silenced family histories that constitute a counter-narrative to official colonial accounts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"6eca8d0b-050f-46f7-979d-f4409a3ef22c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115372073418069,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2240/f885075f4d/dislocations-2022-still-hd-film-17-min-credits-josefa-ntjam3.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dislocations, (still),Courtesy the artist and Nicolleti, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b66a1e4d-7739-4ad8-b7db-02cf2836f6b0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Room 3: Incubators of Revolt",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This room presents a radical proposition: a training ground for insurrection. The Incubateurs de révolte are sci-fi-like cells where the visitor is placed in a situation of physical instability, with moving floors that reflect the constant adaptation required of racialized bodies. Inside, videos function as tutorials for uprising. The avatar Marthe, inspired by Marthe Ekemeyong Moumié, shares recipes for protestâa black paste for monuments, a fermented juice for the streets. Another video poses open-ended questions about revolt, turning the incubator into a political stage and a laboratory for future alliances.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5d957785-c48b-4b80-bdc3-d84c5483f9c7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115330961263621,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7912x5277/032b72d2c9/3-iver9870.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Intrications\", Install shot, PHOTO Ivan Erofeev",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"62ec4403-8c6c-44e2-bea5-1cb784ca75b7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Room 4: Cosmic Genesis",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, science and myth merge to propose an alternative origin story. The video Myceaqua Vitae, born from a residency at the SNOLAB deep-earth astrophysics lab, imagines life on Earth as emanating from the cosmos. A drop of primordial substance, composed of water, dark matter, and luciferin, falls to create a fertile world. The journey ends with the organism under glass, its mystery now subject to scientific scrutiny. The accompanying sculpture, Luciferin Drop, embodies this moment of creation, a point of light in the darkness that blurs the line between fiction and reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e39cb094-cdf1-417f-a700-6fc17bf29a5e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115384314069186,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1281/e0d16100c9/vue-dexpo-intrications-josefa-ntjam-iac-villeurbanne-2025-c-ivan-erofeev-12.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Intrications\", Install shot, PHOTO Ivan Erofeev",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"09c53bd0-3b9e-4d64-b063-c7a03344006c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Room 5: A Tapestry of Resistance",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This room is dedicated to Ntjamâs digital photomontages, a practice she considers a form of digital painting. These dense compositions, some weaving together hundreds of images, map the invisible filiations between historical and contemporary struggles. The 17th-century anti-slavery plea of ambassador Nsaku Ne Vunda resonates with the Black Panthers, French suburban uprisings, and the American Civil Rights Movement. The works create a non-linear documentary fiction where past and present are entangled, revealing the shared strategies of survival and solidarity across time and space.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"7f2d7918-956c-4c12-9f37-ee157993edeb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115384814031045,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1281/90d40a6fcf/vue-dexpo-intrications-josefa-ntjam-iac-villeurbanne-2025-c-ivan-erofeev-9.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Intrications\", Install shot, PHOTO Ivan Erofeev",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"26fd846c-f070-47ad-a255-a872c0e6be31",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Room 6: Matter Gone Wild",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The film matter gone wild expands on the avatars introduced in Room 3. In a hallucinatory universe, Ntjam embodies three entities who confront systems of oppression through performance and rap-like spoken word. Le Mixotrophe is an insurgent, hybrid plankton. Marthe la Polyporeuse is a forest chameleon who uses metamorphosis as a tool of evasion. And Saturna, Personaâs twin, is a being of pure antimatter and black rage who calls for a radical break from the cycles of domination.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8520a6e1-a35e-46d2-ad7b-279699afff03",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115373260496386,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/26b5199ff3/josefa-ntjam-marth-2023-still-video1-adagp-paris-2023.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b0b1964f-8bf2-4cf1-b28f-917ea6940d84",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Room 7: The Cellular Archive",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This space explores the microscopic as a political landscape. In the Ectocarpus and Bell Hooks photomontages, cells and bacteria become animated archives, transmitting heritage through contamination and fluidity. The microscopic and the aquatic converge, as jellyfish and mangrove roots share the same power of circulation and transformation. Here, Black empowerment is a biological force, and the living organism itself is a moving archive of resilience.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"040ce0e7-f8bd-49aa-892a-797c97bbf4d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115324780452843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2001/74cd1f4704/8-iver9421-hdr.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7b5e5fe2-6459-4720-8b3e-20ef31731b96",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rooms 8: Swell of Spæc(i)es",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition culminates in the immersive 3D animation swell of spæc(i)es. This installation offers three distinct viewing experiences. The main film, with a score by Fatima Al Qadiri, is a meditative journey. Two other perspectives are offered through jellyfish-shaped bio-resin sculptures, whose voices provide poetic reflections on the cosmos. The work takes the scientific possibility of extraterrestrial plankton and weaves it into a creation myth where the celestial serpent of Dogon cosmology sends life across the universe. In this endless, cyclical narrative, the smallest organisms connect the ocean floor to the stars, reminding us that in the infinite universe, everything is connected.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"be31c923-0b4d-4675-a2c0-b5ff247bd48b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115344675679281,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1202x790/46d887bf50/screenshot-2025-11-22-at-23-17-18.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Swell of Spæc(i)es\", install shot, courtesy the artist and LAS foundation",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"147f2b38-b3e4-4926-a95d-32351d8618d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115346580528182,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1460x398/0dddf38581/screenshot-2025-11-22-at-23-25-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Swell of Spæc(i)es\", Still, courtesy the artist and LAS foundation",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4fb35bc0-3ef2-4fb2-9ca6-e54ce8556099",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115346978470969,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1458x402/738a39450d/screenshot-2025-11-22-at-23-27-03.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Swell of Spæc(i)es\", Still, courtesy the artist and LAS foundation",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3d686db3-80fc-47d4-991a-1dcaffb29daf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115347211803707,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1458x384/faf9f84d11/screenshot-2025-11-22-at-23-27-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Swell of Spæc(i)es\", Still, courtesy the artist and LAS foundation",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f65959e7-517a-4f82-a86c-40fad66588ee",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115347160259642,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1450x398/09bf87c667/screenshot-2025-11-22-at-23-27-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Swell of Spæc(i)es\", Still, courtesy the artist and LAS foundation",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8ad27e02-aa91-4233-aaa1-afecca236fe2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115347417148476,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1458x396/4333a03fc2/screenshot-2025-11-22-at-23-27-28.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Swell of Spæc(i)es\", Still, courtesy the artist and LAS foundation",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fe2409cf-490b-4919-8b3d-8f094de34457",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115347610356798,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1456x402/a7129c581b/j.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Swell of Spæc(i)es\", Still, courtesy the artist and LAS foundation",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"76bc9eef-11c1-47e2-9fed-10ccd6b73fb8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Courtyard: The Sound Installation",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Unifying the entire exhibition is Ntjamâs first-ever sound installation, conceived as the sensitive core of the journey. Acting as a beating heart or an echo chamber, it absorbs and redistributes the vibrations from every room, making the quantum theory of entanglement a felt, sonic reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"652b3d00-c25f-488a-a844-5c33a881a837",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:115331911965704,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2001/d35be79ccd/11-iver9475-hdr.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Intrications\", Install shot, PHOTO Ivan Erofeev",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"055b4bbb-1c60-43be-94e9-669599d17051",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Please note that you can download an entire exhibition guide on the IAC website",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-11-23 00:00",name:"Josèfa Ntjam÷ Diversity as the Engine of the World",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e1bc080a-f15a-422c-bb34-fa6dcfff1062",color:"#172e92",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e76cb83f-f8a3-4a23-afae-ebc5d1c5932f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:125628671836392,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8858x4245/e5cc65ac5c/dislocations-2022-still-hd-film-17-min-credits-josefa-ntjam-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dislocation (still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"intrications",full_slug:"directory/reviews/intrications",sort_by_date:null,position:-680,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"8146ad1c-307a-463a-b7f2-dc3f384f5dc0",first_published_at:"2025-11-23T01:53:49.528Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Louis Paul Caron",created_at:"2025-11-12T18:29:32.045Z",published_at:"2025-11-12T19:45:30.986Z",updated_at:"2025-11-12T19:45:31.006Z",id:111749415131680,uuid:"6074df50-48a0-4038-9db7-43761c33e1f9",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f2559a18-52d9-47b2-84fd-f89f7db82056",title:"Louis Paul Caron",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:111750114150102,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1067x600/8340ce059e/le-fumoir-2025-55-pouces-danae.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"ouis-Paul Caron, Paris Photo 2025, Incendies series, AI art, climate change art, digital art, contemporary art, DANAE gallery, environmental art, artificial intelligence, French artist, Lyon, climate crisis, moving paintings, algorithmic art, ecological art, art criticism, climate catastrophe, passive observation, collective inertia, Renaissance painting, Old Masters, generative art, video art, Nina Roehrs, digital sector, Lumen Prize, Villa Albertine",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Louis-Paul Caron's AI-generated series Incendies at Paris Photo 2025 explores climate catastrophe through hyper-realistic tableaus of stillness amid disaster."}],_uid:"b801a50f-616b-49ff-a078-9daf54b8d3dc",body:[{_uid:"138a0d81-d48a-4fe3-baf9-631aecfa94d7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Quiet Apocalypsoe: Louis-Paul Caron's Seductive Visions of Collapse",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Paris Photo, the French artist's hyper-realistic, AI-generated tableaus of disaster appear deceptively literal. But beneath their cinematic gloss lies a subtle and unsettling critique of our collective inertia in the face of climate catastrophe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a quiet beauty to the end of the world as envisioned by Louis-Paul Caron. In his series Incendies (\"Fires\"), we encounter scenes of immense devastation rendered with the crisp, hyper-realistic finish of contemporary spectacle. In 'Le meeting', suited figures conduct business in a glass-walled boardroom as a city burns outside. In 'Le déjeuner', a couple dines in an elegant restaurant, the
77ir intimate meal set against a backdrop of wildfire consuming the landscape beyond and so on.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The initial reading appears straightforward: the world burns while we carry on with our daily rituals. However to arrest the analysis there would be to miss the profound ambivalence at the heart of Caron's practice. These are not didactic warnings but deeply psychological portraits of a world grappling with a crisis so immense it has been absorbed into the texture of everyday life, becoming ambient, almost banal in its persistence.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1ce4e5b8-8eac-40c4-bb67-d1eec724cd82",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111762838501394,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/960x540/67c2f4d4b4/le-tete-a-tete-caron-2025-x540q80.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Paul Caron, tête à tête (still), coutesy the artist and DANAE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e57393e9-8d70-4324-9aae-8c0d9d4517e2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111763096229922,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/960x540/711456038d/le-meeting-caron-2025-x540q80.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Paul Caron, Le meeting (still), coutesy the artist and DANAE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"39a5326d-ccad-408e-986d-f12c72c7d381",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The true subject of Caron's work is not the fire, but the stillness. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here is where his cynicism operates most incisively. His figures are contemplative, detached, their composure functioning as a mirror held up to our own mechanisms of psychic survival. As the artist observes, his work aims to reveal the \"subtle, internalised ways in which we navigate collapse,\" reflecting a condition in which \"distraction and detachment have become survival mechanisms.\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhaustion these works provoke derives from their refusal of consolation. They present what we already know but struggle to articulate: that we sit, that we wait, that we continue our meetings and our meals while the world burns.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e02c21b1-7e1c-4bcf-b26c-79089a72386e",quote:"This is the phenomenology of our present moment, and Caron compels us to witness our own complicity in the stillness.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"fadc32d0-e959-4a9f-845a-a070dd49dca6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The aesthetic perfection ooursef these images intensifies rather than diminishes their critique. These are AI-generated visions that possess the compositional rigor of Old Master paintings (the artist spent time digitally deconstructing Renaissance works from the Louvre to internalize their formal strategies) yet bear the flawless finish of algorithmic production. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The result is a kind of seductive sterility, images that oscillate between beauty and unease. They feel excessively composed, as if catastrophe itself has been subjected to the logic of aesthetic optimization, carefully art-directed for our consumption.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not a stylistic choice but a conceptual strategy. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The images attract us with their formal perfection even as they indict us with their content, replicating the very dynamic they depict: we are drawn to the spectacle of disaster, yet remain structurally positioned as passive observers. By creating what he terms \"moving paintings\" (living tableaus in which time appears suspended) Caron constructs a in-between space that refuses easy interpretation. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The works \"open a space,\" as the artist explains, \"to question, to feel, and perhaps to see ourselves mirrored in the silence of those who sit and watch the climate burn.\" Yet this space is draining, precisely because it enacts a kind of affective loop: we are confronted with our own passivity, recognize ourselves in these figures, and yet remain fundamentally unchanged by the encounter.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work resists easy celebration or recuperation. It is not concerned with issuing warnings but with articulating a more difficult truth: that the true catastrophe is of course not be the fire itself, but our capacity to sit calmly and observe it, to frame it as another image, another view through the window. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"465884af-3df2-4e4b-8cca-935005f42caf",quote:" Caron understands that we have become spectators to our own extinction, and his images perform this spectatorship with uncomfortable clarity.",author:"",component:"quote"}
77,{_uid:"d96fa17a-7637-4271-b309-f8ebb6c5a291",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111766858029282,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2094x1150/fa6286cdf3/aeroport-caron.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Paul Caron, L'aeroport (still), coutesy the artist and DANAE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"69b39e58-0403-4e13-835c-7124c8b41403",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In Caron's quiet, burning world, we are all implicated in the stillness. Perhaps the most cynical, most devastating dimension of his vision lies in its acknowledgment of its own futility. He knows we will look at these images, feel their weight, experience a moment of recognition, and then move on. Just like the figures in his paintings. Just like we always do. The work does not DABNAE escape from this condition. It simply makes it visible, and in doing so, forces us to confront the exhausting reality of living in a perpetual present tense of catastrophe, where action has been replaced by an aestheticized paralysis.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Paris Photo, until 16th November--DANAE",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-11-12 00:00",name:"The Quiet Apocalypse÷Louis-Paul Caron's Seductive Visions of Collapse",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"30037a79-299f-4299-873c-375eb8698a3b",color:"#713d21",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"800242b2-16c5-448d-a0d3-4ef6770b8afc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:111750114150102,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1067x600/8340ce059e/le-fumoir-2025-55-pouces-danae.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Louis Paul Caron, Le Fumoir ,2025, courtesy the artist and DANAE",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"louis-paul-caron",full_slug:"directory/reviews/louis-paul-caron",sort_by_date:null,position:-640,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"ab0d122e-b30a-45b3-bab6-6dfc93b7fd4d",first_published_at:"2025-11-12T19:44:12.095Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"softs robots",created_at:"2025-11-04T23:42:27.068Z",published_at:"2025-11-26T21:03:01.395Z",updated_at:"2025-11-26T21:03:01.417Z",id:108995162423637,uuid:"be1bff14-dfe6-4a73-9811-3ddb9a84df78",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f46672cf-093c-4e5f-a913-d61202a064af",type:"",title:"soft robots",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:108995839844400,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1297/4ff48e59de/soft-robots_cc_003_photo-by-david-stjernholm_lille.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"soft robots, Copenhagen Contemporary, art contemporain technologie, intelligence artificielle art, robotique organique, corps et machine, exposition art numérique, art et IA, technologie douce, métamorphose corporelle, art interactif Copenhague, futur organique, sculptures cinétiques, installation immersive, Klára Hosnedlová, Ayoung Kim, A.A. Murakami, Rhoda Ting, Mikkel Bojesen, Yunchul Kim, WangShui, Alice Bucknell, human-machine relationship, soft robotics, bio-technologie, art et physique quantique, simulation IA, corps augmenté, technologie tactile",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"\"Soft Robots\" at Copenhagen Contemporary explores the organic fusion of body and technology. A tactile vision of the future where machines come alive. Until Dec 31"}],_uid:"1a07b3c2-8b70-480b-8ab2-87917e60fa7f",body:[{_uid:"3fc415ed-a121-4f33-acd4-e8496d6201b2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Soft Robots:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" The Art of Digital Breathing",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Is Resistance Futile? ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Copenhagen Contemporaryâs \"Soft Robots\" is less an art exhibition in the traditional sense and more of a beautifully crafted lesson. Itâs a didactic show, but one that succeeds thanks to a roster of exceptional artists who make the teaching feel like a revelation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Every new technology arrives trailing clouds of utopian dreams and doomsday prophecies. From synthetic biology to artificial intelligence, our creations inspire as much hope as they do fear, a drama that intensifies as we navigate a world of ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"increasingly pervasive technology",type:"text"},{text:".",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The relationship between human and machine has become one of modernityâs defining cultural dramas, leading to the inevitable, almost cliché question: Is resistance futile, will the machines win? ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The great merit of \"Soft Robots\" Copenhagen Contemporaryâs exhibition, is that it refuses to give a simple answer. Instead of a binary verdict, it offers a far more nuanced and interesting conversation",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a84973e2-19ba-4376-bb18-50c53fa11df6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The show immediately establishes its focus on transformation and the body. The first work visitors encounter is a sculptural installation by Czech artist Klára Hosnedlová, presenting large, human-sized cocoons that suggest a state of metamorphosis. This theme of the body in flux continues throughout. In Ayoung Kimâs video \"Delivery Dancerâs Sphere\", we follow a motorcycle courier in a futuristic Seoul whose every move is dictated by the disembodied voice of the \"Dancemaster\" her body only reclaims its agency in a strange, erotically charged fight with a doppelgänger.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"345919cf-f55f-4cfa-abf6-95cb0a73fade",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:109003566408044,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x1920/bc39f2d989/soft-robots_cc_033_photo-by-david-stjernholm-e1761834525487.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rhoda Ting & Mikkel Bojesen, AFTER CARE, 2025.Copenhagen Contemporary, 2025 Photo: David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7b3fa415-2ba0-4c28-bb29-00e572e10f47",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:108999304663138,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1391x1920/dbd2343e5b/soft-robots_003_photo-by-david-stjernholm_lille.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Soft Robots, Photo by David Stjernholm Soft Robots, Klára Hosnedlová â To Infinity (2023) Installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary, 2025 Photo: David Stjernholm / @david_stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"85bbb471-9ba6-4598-9558-58494f45abf8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:109001600590110,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1280/bc1119963f/soft-robots_cc_002_photo-by-david-stjernholm_lille.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Ayoung Kim â Delivery Dancerâs Sphere & Evening Peak Time is Back (2022) Installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary, 2025 Photo: David Stjernholm / @david_stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"ba8cfc1c-c7c5-477c-be7a-6734a6558ab3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:109000690950373,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2950x1646/bfc430deb5/screenshot-2025-11-05-at-01-04-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ayoung Kim â Delivery Dancerâs Sphere & Evening Peak Time is Back (2022) Installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary, 2025 Photo: David Stjernholm / @david_stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4d884ceb-d1ee-4291-a05d-3c12b6ec2d95",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:109007514206764,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2052/0a20f2775d/soft-robots_013_photo-by-david-stjernholm-1_lille.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"A.A. Murakami â Beyond the Horizon (2024) Installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary, 2025 Photo: David Stjernholm / @david_stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6acfde39-abb2-4362-bf66-2be01736b0de",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The show largely eschews the sterile, hard-edged aesthetic we associate with technology, and refreshingly avoids the trap of easy anthropomorphism. Instead, it presents a vision of a future that is squishy and organic. Japanese-British duo A.A. Murakami create a meditative space filled with giant, machine-generated bubbles that dissolve into scented smoke. This idea finds its most tactile and unsettling expression in Rhoda Ting and Mikkel Bojesenâs ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"\"",type:"text"},{text:"AFTER CARE\" Here, a large pit of dirt and rocks becomes a bizarre nursery for a colony of pneumatically-powered, soft-bodied creatures. Visitors are invited to handle them, transforming the gallery into a kind of alien petting zoo.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A standout example of this is Yunchul Kimâs \"Mercurial\", a pair of shimmering, chrome-coated kinetic sculptures that float and spin in mid-air. They are not programmed in a traditional sense; their movement is a direct result of physical forces, a duet governed by the laws of physics. They feel alive, not because they mimic life, but because they are subject to the same elemental forces as any living thing. Itâs a powerful statement about the potential for technology to be a conduit for natural phenomena, rather than a sterile imitation of it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This conversation is pushed furthest in the digital realm with works by WangShui and Alice Bucknell. WangShuiâs âCertainty of the Fleshâ is an AI-driven live simulation that speculates on how we merge with our technological extensions. Alice Bucknellâs \"Small Void\", a two-player video game, was developed in dialogue with physicists at CERN, using the paradoxes of black holes and quantum entanglement to explore breakdowns in communication. Itâs here that the exhibitionâs didactic purpose becomes clear: it features truly excellent artists who are not just illustrating complex ideas but are using them as a medium to explore deep human experiences.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bc590f17-12f7-4f35-a81e-4ed137eab250",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:109557668101168,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7129x4795/c2b0b224c4/yunchulkim_mercurial_03_web2mb-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Soft Robots, Photo by David Stjernholm , Ynunhul Kim â MERCURIA, Installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary, 2025 Photo: David Stjernholm / @david_stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"3565f74d-c188-4748-a4f3-dd3867875a48",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:109001230176534,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1107/2657473922/sv-duo-portfolio-1920x.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Buknell, small void, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"00be242f-fc12-4832-9a54-8f36d4a81b33",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:109001882743075,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1297/302e1872c8/soft-robots_cc_003_photo-by-david-stjernholm_lille.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Soft Robots, WangShui â Certainty of the Flesh (2023) Installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary, 2025 Photo: David Stjernholm / @david_stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"04bbd253-8210-4b34-8445-115e4b20c370",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This approach makes the exhibition remarkably accessible, a genuine crowd-pleaser. And this is where its true nature as a didactic exhibition shines. It sets out to teach a lesson about our relationship with technology, and it succeeds not by being preachy, but by being playful and engaging. The showâs success doesnât come from a deep, academic exploration, but from being a very good contemporary art exhibition where the concepts are clear, the aesthetics are compelling, and the interaction is meaningful. Its triumph lies in making you feel the lesson, not just understand it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"",type:"text"},{text:"Soft Robots\" manages to take a deeply fashionable topic and treat it with intelligence, wit, and a surprising amount of heart. It insists that art can provide a different language for the future, one distinct from that of Big Tech. You will leave not with answers, but with the exhilarating feeling that the ghost is well and truly in the machine, and itâs a squishy, writhing, oddly lovable ghost at that. Itâs a show that gets under your skin, in the most literal sense.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8d5e5c59-3232-4743-b303-84759072e825",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A.A. Murakami (UK/J)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Alice Bucknell (US)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Ayoung Kim (KR)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Daria Martin (US)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst (US/UK)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Joan Heemskerk (NL)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Jonas Kjeldgaard Sørensen (DK)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Klára Hosnedlová (ÄR)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Martyna Marciniak (PL)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Nanna Debois Buhl (DK)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Rhoda Ting & Mikkel Bojesen (AUS/DK)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Silas Inoue (DK/J)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Takashi Murakami (J)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"WangShui (US)",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Yunchul Kim (KR)Exhibition runs until 31st December",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Copenhagen (European Union) Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-11-01 00:00",name:"More Than Human÷ More Than Machine",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"9a6a7f28-73e8-4394-a5e0-af0fb16f5fa6",color:"#1d103e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d1d5f048-723c-4989-a100-6bfe511d2f7a",type:"",poster:{i
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Co-curated with speculative architect Liam Young, it positions itself explicitly against western thinking, proposing instead what it calls \"a distinctly Singaporean approach to the future, one shaped by long-term thinking, environmental pragmatism, and an ethic of collective responsibility.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition treats the future not as something to fear, but as something to be designed, debated, and actively constructed. It promises hope. It promises agency. It promises that another world is not just possible, but already being built. This is an exhibition that knows exactly what it is selling, and to whom.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The opening galleries deploy a familiar strategy. We are presented with a thrilling array of decolonized futurisms. Osborne Macharia's Afrofuturist",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" beautiful",type:"text"},{text:" portraits suggest futures built from different temporal logics. Asian \"Silkpunk\" explorations reimagine technology through ritual and craft. These works are beautifully curated, visually stunning, and strategically positioned. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"They function as a kind of cultural permission slip, a diverse veneer that allows the exhibition to claim it is presenting \"alternative ways of living, thinking, and being.\" You walk through a synthetic forest that cleverly declares its own artifice. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For a moment, you are meant to believe that this pluralism is genuine, that these voices will shape the future on offer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"46f51286-e94d-4947-b50f-3baedbb80c39",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107784433927529,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1294x1802/5f842f70d0/people-of-the-rift-2025-osborne-macharia-courtesy-of-the-artist.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"People of the Rift, 2025, Osborne Macharia, Courtesy of the Artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e6e360fa-e00a-4cd4-a6e0-8788875d2baa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107784572433770,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1362x1812/d60a0cbfd7/people-of-the-rift-2025-osborne-macharia-courtesy-of-the-artist.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"People of the Rift, 2025, Osborne Macharia, Courtesy of the Artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dd1408e3-8647-452f-9005-eaf5e14e4a19",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107791824479643,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4060x2275/0c5b20a057/frequenseers_-archives-of-the-amber-sea-2025-shiro-fujioka-courtesy-of-the-artist_1.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Frequenseers: Archives of the Amber Sea, 2025, Shiro Fujioka. Courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d11dfa08-07df-4964-9ffe-c3c31a20e9d9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But this diversity is window dressing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" The exhibition's true agenda becomes clear as it unfolds. The pluralistic vision dramatically narrows, collapsing into a celebration of a very specific model of futurity. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The centerpieces are grand, universalizing projects that reveal a staggering anthropocentrism. Liam Young's Planet City imagines concentrating all 10 billion humans into a single metropolis, treating the planet as a stage set for human convenience. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Great Endeavor visualizes carbon-capture infrastru
77cture at planetary scale, a monument to the fantasy that we can engineer our way out of a crisis born from engineering the planet for ourselves. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"WOHA's biodiverse vertical cities and Pomeroy Studio's floating farms present Singapore's approach to urban planning as a template for the world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3ba6f24c-c1e8-4649-a92a-9ecd44a90b07",quote:"The non-human world exists only as backdrop, resource, or problem to be managed.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"e10bd3b9-4228-48a4-9255-7f078e019de3",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These are not speculative provocations. They are advertisements for a particular vision of control, efficiency, and top-down management dressed up as salvation, where nature is reduced to infrastructure and other species exist only to serve human needs.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"884f50ca-ee62-40cb-bcfb-257f77ff0682",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107788196853139,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3200x1800/8ee534be77/design2050-a-render-of-east-coast-parkway-singapore-in-the-future-as-imagined-by-woha-woha-and-obilia.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Design2050, a render of East Coast Parkway, Singapore, in the future as imagined by WOHA © WOHA and Obilia",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4c270c51-2fbf-406b-add7-a6359726fe74",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107791200826776,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4500x3001/cbcfb3ceaf/float-farm-2025-by-jason-pomeroy_2-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Float Farm (2025) by Jason Pomeroy",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b8485c71-da01-4053-9e1a-2876e397cbd5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107786264044934,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1152/d9ed18179e/the-great-endeavor-2024-liam-young-courtesy-of-the-artist.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Great Endeavor, 2024, Liam Young, Courtesy of the Artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f9a1fcd1-551d-436a-b470-b490a829bb50",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"48eb083b-e0d9-43b8-814a-1b73f75ec5bc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107786562225544,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1024/46e8ee4a46/world-machine_data-center-concept-by-liam-young_courtesy-of-the-artist.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"World Machine_Data Center Concept by Liam Young_courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"036a5ca4-8537-4656-820e-08b67c1b098a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes this exhibition particularly insidious is how transparently it functions as state propaganda. The official description does not hide this. It celebrates it. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition proudly frames itself as showcasing Singapore's superior approach to the future, contrasting its \"hopeful\" pragmatism with western dystopian hand-wringing. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not subtle. It is part of Singapore's SG60 celebrations, sponsored by the DesignSingapore Council, explicitly positioned as a showcase of national achievement. The future on display is not radical or alternative. It is a polished, green-washed version of the present Singaporean model, exported as universal solution.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"5db1f90d-7739-4fd3-a971-b69dc58bd064",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107787674387857,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8000x5072/e1747be491/link-scape-2024-rad-ar-courtesy-of-the-artist_2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Link-Scape, 2024, RAD+ar, Courtesy of the Artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2dbf6cba-7a6c-49f2-95a5-a6d814eb450e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The irony is almost too rich. Here is an exhibition about alternative futures staged in a semi-parliamentary authoritarian state, a global tax haven where dissent is tightly controlled, where conformity is enforced, where the entire society functions as a kind of managed experiment in social control. The \"ethic of collective responsibility\" the exhibition celebrates is, in practice, a euphemism for state-mandated compliance. The \"long-term thinking\" is planning without democratic input. The diverse cultural voices showcased at the start are reduced to aesthetic decoration for a singular, technocratic vision that leaves no room for genuine difference, for messiness, for the unpredictable and disobedient nature of actual human futures.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is diversity washing and art washing operating at the highest level. It is particularly rich to celebrate diversity and alternative ways of being in a state that does not recognize same-sex marriage. The exhibition takes the visual language of radical futurism, the aesthetics of decolonization and pluralism, and deploys them in service of a deeply conservative agenda. It presents a future that is clean, green, efficiently managed, and profoundly unfree. It is a future where problems are solved by experts, where technology is wielded by benevolent planners, where everyone fits into their assigned role in the grand design. It is, in other words, a perfect reflection of Singapore itself, packaged as hope and sold to the world as the only alternative to Western collapse.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1c0a4c98-fdea-4b81-9b70-48d002b31210",quote:"Ultimately, Another World Is Possible is not an exhibition. It is a propaganda exercise masquerading as speculative art",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"201d64de-548d-4b84-80b3-33cf79e8501e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It gestures towards radicalism only to retreat into the safety of authoritarian techno-solutionism. The most revealing aspect is how openly it declares its purpose. This is not accidental or hidden. It is the point. The exhibition exists to celebrate and export the Singaporean model, to position it as the future we should all aspire to. In doing so, it reveals the poverty of imagination at the heart of so much contemporary futurism. Even our dreams of other worlds, it turns out, must conform to the logic of the authoritarian-capitalist machine. Another world may be possible, but this exhibition makes clear it will not be permitted.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Another World Is Possibleâ is on view from September 13, 2025 â February 22, 2026, at the ArtScience Museum.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-11-01 00:00",name:"Another World is Possible ÷But Definitely Not This One",author:"Refresh Team (Asia)",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"38cd137a-6d43-42a6-abde-da045a6e2758",color:"#c64b21",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c2ce9cbd-06e9-42ad-afeb-6b1bed712953",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:107778472375617,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2770x1814/3988b3103c/architects-save-the-world-and-bring-joy-to-millions-jurong-plantations-2009-woha-courtesy-of-woha-and-obilia.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Architects Save the World and Bring Joy to Millions â Jurong Plantations, 2009, WOHA, Courtesy of WOHA and Obilia",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"an-other-world-is-possible",full_slug:"directory/reviews/an-other-world-is-possible",sort_by_date:null,position:-590,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"b1b3617d-dc6d-416b-9837-0844c07c689a",first_published_at:"2025-11-01T13:57:44.301Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"ORCHID ISLAND LAURENT GRASSO",created_at:"2025-10-11T19:30:31.303Z",published_at:"2025-10-17T17:25:56.573Z",updated_at:"2025-10-17T17:25:56.592Z",id:100439782637763,uuid:"15f1a7b6-6b47-48de-a51c-7f250aee86dd",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"b1c3d9c8-ab09-4c6c-947b-850a3d86a1a5",type:"",title:"ORCHID ISLAND by LAURENT GRASSO",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:100439884909421,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1344x930/50b00e55f4/screenshot-2025-10-11-at-21-29-05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"ORCHID ISLAND, LAURENT GRASSO, Perrotin,",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Laurent Grassoâs \"Orchid Island\" merges myth, climate, and immersive aesthetics â a poetic reflection on environment and time."}],_uid:"30807f90-2299-4692-b964-114ad4d6ffd3",body:[{_uid:"f294c6b1-02eb-4a55-b188-9540d0c84b44",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When the Past Meets the Future: Laurent Grasso's Mesmerising Time Warp",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The visionary exhibition \"Orchid Island\"",type:"text"},{text:"at Perrotin London is a thrilling collision of history, science fiction, and environmental anxietyâand it's utterly unmissable.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"There is a profound and unsettling beauty to the work of Laurent Grasso. The French artist, a recipient of the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize, has built a career on exploring the liminal spaces between the known and the unknowable, the visible and the invisible. His latest exhibition, âOrchid Island,â at Perrotinâs London gallery, is a masterful continuation of this inquiry, a haunting and immersive experience that leaves you questioning the very nature of reality itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The centerpiece of the show is a film, Orchid Island, shot on the remote coasts of Taiwan. Rendered in a stark, mesmerizing black and white, the film presents a lush, tropical landscape overshadowed by a vast, levitating black rectangle. This enigmatic form, at once abstract, alien, and supernatural, hovers with an unnerving stillness, a silent sentinel in a world devoid of human presence. The effect is deeply unsettling, a disruption of the natural order that speaks to a history of dispossession and the constructed nature of our perception of the exotic. Accompanied by a hypnotic score from Nicolas Godin of the band Air, the film is a powerful testament to Grassoâs ability to transform landscapes into metaphysical experiences, to imbue them with a sense of the sublime and the terrifying.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This motif of the black rectangle, a recurring symbol in Grassoâs work, reappears in his Studies into the Past series of paintings. Here, idyllic historical landscapes, rendered in the style of 17th and 18th-century masters, are disrupted by the intrusion of this same geometric anomaly. The effect is one of temporal dislocation, a haunting of the past by a memory of the future. In Tropical Scene, the form is materialized as a sheet of dark plexiglass embedded within the painting, a physical presence that both obscures and reframes the composition, forcing a confrontation with the act of looking itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition also features works from Grassoâs Anima series, where the ephemeral form of a cloud is translated into shimmering palladium foil paintings and constellations of neon. For Grasso, the cloud is not merely a meteorological phenomenon but a threshold between the earthly and the celestial, a mutable form that absorbs our projections of fear and desire. The palladium surfaces shimmer with a cosmic intensity, while the neon outlines evoke a sense of danger and instability, a potent metaphor for the ambiguities of our time, where the sublime beauty of the sky coexists with the looming threat of environmental catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This concern with the future of our planet is further explored in the Future Herbarium series, where Grasso creates imaginary mutations of post-disaster flora, executed in the manner of 18th-century botanical illustrations. These works, conceived in parallel with his film ARTIFICIALIS (2021), presented in the nave of the Musée dâOrsay, are a poignant and unsettling reminder of the fragility of our ecosystem.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Grassoâs practice is a complex and multifaceted one, drawing on a wide range of disciplines, from physics and philosophy to alchemy and science fiction. He is an artist who is not afraid to tackle the big questions, to explore the limits of our understanding and to challenge our assumptions about the world around us. His work is a powerful reminder that there is more to reality than meets the eye, that the unseen forces that shape our world are often the most powerful.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Laurent Grasso: Orchid Island is at Perrotin, London, until 20 December.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"43368d2a-9db1-445d-a385-74b321a5ce65",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101803673598421,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2402x1466/2208a81392/screenshot-2025-10-15-at-16-59-22.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"View of Laurent Grasso's exhibition 'Orchid Island' at Perrotin London, 2025. Photo: Eva Herzog. ©Laurent Grasso/ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c0334d8e-266d-4372-b3b1-bf7f15fadf6c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101799516842376,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1918x1428/7f43896726/screenshot-2025-10-15-at-16-41-26.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"View of Laurent Grasso's exhibition 'Orchid Island' at Perrotin London, 2025. Photo: Eva Herzog. ©Laurent Grasso/ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e91cd802-c320-49d5-85d2-77ad108ae10d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101799516584326,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1906x1416/654285a8dc/screenshot-2025-10-15-at-16-41-38.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"View of Laurent Grasso's exhibition 'Orchid Island' at Perrotin London, 2025. Photo: Eva Herzog. ©Laurent Grasso/ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d7af9519-0eb0-4fce-a916-c0d1f710705e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101799516408196,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/778x580/852ab14c3b/screenshot-2025-10-15-at-16-39-40.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"View of Laurent Grasso's exhibition 'Orchid Island' at Perrotin London, 2025. Photo: Eva Herzog. ©Laurent Grasso/ADAGP, Paris, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"07de28df-4d55-4f89-a3bf-92fcb82707c6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101802664630731,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1018x1520/6f7cf9d477/screenshot-2025-10-15-at-16-55-06.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Laurent GRASSO Future Herbarium, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"759223b4-c4c0-4b56-ae7e-699edf947e9d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:101802664368586,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1068x1524/732ba5aaba/screenshot-2025-10-15-at-16-55-22.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Laurent GRASSO Panoptès, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-14 00:00",name:"Orchid Island ÷ Laurent Grasso Exhibition",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"3a8bd8df-8841-4307-bf66-78f5a561778a",color:"#493815",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"110e4ce4-309c-4511-ac55-1d1a9df3211d",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100443303250832,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1752x968/5b15d85ce1/screenshot-2025-10-11-at-21-41-08.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Laurent Grasso, Orchid Island, 2023. HR film",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"orchid-island-laurent-grasso",full_slug:"directory/reviews/orchid-island-laurent-grasso",sort_by_date:null,position:-180,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fa066571-f330-4691-b784-1cd8e8fcc965",first_published_at:"2025-10-12T11:22:25.468Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Subject to Change",created_at:"2025-10-09T15:11:57.286Z",published_at:"2025-10-13T18:22:54.321Z",updated_at:"2025-10-13T18:22:54.339Z",id:99668448437519,uuid:"6
77ad8c7dc-7e9b-48ca-bf6b-ac345b416183",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"57b3acb1-3775-4c61-bfba-bb5790871a3e",type:"",title:"Subject to Change",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:99668705252611,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1166x640/95fb66e843/screenshot-2025-10-09-at-17-06-39.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Artificial intelligence, Sofia Crespo, Gazelli gallery",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Refresh magazine review : where art and AI intersect. Read our take."}],_uid:"0e8fc0ce-be63-4e02-8142-1acb306fa240",body:[{_uid:"35278255-5bc5-435b-9452-abacdcd1af46",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âSubject to Changeâexhibition,",type:"text"},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"a needed pause in the age of AI",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In an art world often breathless with technological hype, \"Subject to Change\" at Gazelli Art House offers something increasingly rare: an invitation to slow down. Bringing together nine internationally recognised artists who work critically with artificial intelligence, this exhibition refuses to be seduced by the siren call of speed, efficiency and automation that dominates contemporary AI discourse.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What makes this show compelling is precisely its resistance to the rush. Rather than simply deploying AI as a tool, artists including Memo Akten, Nouf Aljowaysir, Morehshin Allahyari, ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"Sofia Crespo (Entangles Others)",type:"text"},{text:"and Jake Elwes take time to deconstruct, question and reimagine their relationship with algorithmic systems. They build bespoke models, examine biases embedded in datasets, and work with meticulous attention to materiality â whether that's sculpture, print, video or even synthetic DNA. The result is a body of work that feels conceptually rigorous and labour-intensive, expanding our understanding of what it means to create in an age increasingly shaped by machine learning.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"f02df0ae-8212-43bd-9d8e-6952ff843081",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99671128574626,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1543/cdb68d0c65/auriea-harvey-black-ship-2024-3d-model-ar-courtesy-of-the-artist_1.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Auriea Harvey, Black Ship, 2024 Printed mural, sculpture and augmented reality experience",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2afd2ef3-657c-4026-85a8-8b90c310b3c8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition unfolds across three distinctive approaches. Several artists confront the colonial legacies and biases baked into today's AI models. Aljowaysir's new work in her Ancestral Seeds series (2025) partially erases fragments of colonial-era photographic archives, highlighting how these historical images continue to haunt contemporary AI systems. Allahyari's moving image installation Moon-faced (2022) revives erased traditions of gender fluidity in Persian portraiture, while Auriea Harvey's Black Ship (2024) reclaims AI-generated imagery of enslavement as a vessel of resistance.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A second strand explores parallels between data and the natural world. Entangled Others â the duo of Feileacan McCormick and Sofia Crespo â present their groundbreaking project featuring fictitious aquatic lifeforms encoded in synthetic DNA, while Primavera De Filippi extends her pioneering work on blockchain-based lifeforms through Plantoid and Arborithms.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The third approach finds artists satirising Big Tech's version of AI. Memo Akten's psychedelic film All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (2021) was made using his own bespoke text-to-image models before such tools went mainstream, while Jake Elwes transforms corporate legal jargon into an absurdist multi-genre score in Terms & Conditions Opera (2024-2025).",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"61fec6bf-29a6-4916-8d8e-ba59054b518d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99668705252611,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1166x640/95fb66e843/screenshot-2025-10-09-at-17-06-39.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Memo Atken, \"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, 2021\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bcc0dde8-d134-4bb9-845a-3b0f68afe05f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet for all its conceptual ambition, the exhibition stumbles slightly in its presentation. The works are displayed in a rather conventional white cube format that feels oddly at odds with the show's progressive intent. For an exhibition that champions slowness, reflection and critical engagement with established systems, the staging feels surprisingly traditional â even a touch conservative. One might have hoped for a more adventurous approach to spatial design that embodied the very rupture and process-oriented thinking the artworks themselves explore.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This reservation aside, \"Subject to Change\" remains an exhibition of considerable importance that absolutely deserves your time. It succeeds in bringing a critical, human perspective to a technology that's reshaping our future, reminding us that behind every algorithm lies intention, history and, crucially, choice.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There's something fascinatingly productive about the fact that this resolutely forward-looking exhibition finds its home in the heart of Mayfair, a neighbourhood synonymous with tradition and establishment prestige. The location creates a different energy â a tension between the quarter's classical elegance and the conceptual radicality of the works on display. It's as if the exhibition itself embodies the dialogue between past and future, convention and innovation, that it seeks to explore through AI.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fb068503-e2f0-4f41-bd3f-1bb9bf70821d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99687899049965,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1432x1562/009ca31054/screenshot-2025-10-09-at-18-30-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Morehshin Allahyari \"Moonfaced\", 2021 Video and bespoke mirrored arch frame, accompanied by ERC-721 token",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b8f9ca69-91ac-44cf-807d-a4421922022a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Subject to Change\" isn't just an exhibition to see â it's an experience to inhabit, a necessary moment of pause in our accelerated relationship with technology. Go see it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gazelli Art House, London â until 20 December",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2025-10-03 00:00",name:"Subject to Change ÷ A Pause in the Age of AI",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"4f2ab0ef-6180-4500-8725-dc971a9357e8",color:"#000000",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2dcdfd76-c539-445a-9db2-e16c6eb33155",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99671160380092,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/c9309a1e6b/eo0007-3.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Entangled Others, \"self-contained 009.4, 2024\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"subject-to-change",full_slug:"directory/reviews/subject-to-change",sort_by_date:null,position:-120,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"64e0959c-5fa3-4d84-93ba-643f9e5d664b",first_published_at:"2025-10-09T15:18
77:36.548Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"new ways of seeing",created_at:"2025-10-09T12:54:28.939Z",published_at:"2025-10-24T17:50:54.861Z",updated_at:"2025-10-24T17:50:54.876Z",id:99634663210929,uuid:"b3af2590-3fd0-4fdc-abce-bd2e479c9840",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"4670d9ff-103f-426d-b85e-3fc2f663392f",type:"",title:"New Ways of Seeing",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:99636106933468,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3600x2800/b43a50ae88/pr-kit-line-up.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"New Ways of Seeing 2025 recap, New Ways of Seeing festival review, Paris art festival October 2025, interdisciplinary art festival recap, art and technology event Paris, digital art festival highlights, contemporary art events Paris 2025, New Ways of Seeing festival summary, what happened at New Ways of Seeing, art technology culture festival Paris, post-digital art festival, interdisciplinary conversations art science, Paris cultural events 2025, New Ways of Seeing artists speakers, festival recap art technology",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"nside New Ways of Seeing 2025: A recap of Paris's groundbreaking interdisciplinary festival where artists and thinkers explored how digital tools are reshaping creativity, perception, and culture"}],_uid:"711e7ffb-a94f-4f74-ac64-a52c053e80fc",body:[{_uid:"7bd4be3d-6b5c-47ef-a4ea-0d59e7d74f18",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Our Screens, Ourselves: The Paris Festival Urgently Rethinking How We See",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As technology reshapes our reality, a new interdisciplinary festival in Paris, 'New Ways of Seeing,' asks the critical questions of our timeâand demands we reclaim our agency. Refresh magazine will be there to cover it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"We inhabit a post-digital world where the boundaries between physical and virtual have dissolved. Our environments are hybrid, our identities fragmented across platforms, our perceptions mediated by algorithms we neither see nor control. In this landscape, the very act of seeing has been fundamentally transformedâand with it, our capacity to act, to choose, to shape our own realities. The urgent question is no longer how technology changes us, but whether we can reclaim the agency to change it back.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This October, during the height of Paris Art Week, a two-day festival titled \"New Ways of Seeing\" convenes global voices from art, science, culture, and technology to confront this challenge head-on. Set against the backdrop of a resurgent Parisian art scene, the festival, founded by the French non-profit organization led by Kim Lê Boutin, centres on a radical proposition: that individuals and communities can navigate technological change with \"confidence, curiosity, and critical perspective\"âif they reclaim their agency.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The festival's mission is explicit. It seeks to help people \"understand these technologies, reclaim agency, and unlock their own creative potential.\" This is not passive observation but active resistance to the logic of algorithmic determinism and corporate control. From October 24-25, 2025, \"New Ways of Seeing\" offers a space for transdisciplinary conversations that refuse to accept technology as a fait accompli, instead positioning it as something to be questioned, subverted, and reimagined.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The festival's program reflects this urgency. A series of panels delve into pressing contemporary themes, from \"Embodying Multiple Identities\" in our multifaceted digital lives to \"Playing with Technology\" beyond the confines of efficiencyâimagining, as one panel description puts it, ways of \"working with technology, or even subverting it.\" Discussions like \"Beyond Dualism\" challenge binary views of the physical and virtual, exploring how we might \"see our environments, tools, and selves as part of one complex, interconnected reality.\" Meanwhile, \"Bodies, Ruins and Interfaces\" examines practices rooted in bodily perception and post-digital materialities, and \"Uncoded Collective Intelligences\" explores how cross-field conversations might move us \"away from destructive production cycles and toward more expansive ways of thinking and making.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At a time when Paris is reasserting its position at the forefront of the global art scene, \"New Ways of Seeing\" promises to be more than a cultural event. It is a response to our current moment, a critical examination of the tools that connect and divi
77de us, and above all, an urgent call to reclaim our agency in this hybrid, post-digital age. As the art world descends on Paris, this festival stands as a crucial space for those who refuse to be just usersâand insist on becoming makers, thinkers, and agents of change.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4e5d7435-5669-448a-99fb-3e53557addd5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99855530868878,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/d9f073ec1f/pr-kit-line-up.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:true,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-19 00:00",name:" New Ways of Seing Festival ÷ Rethinking How We See ",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"b356e1a4-ea89-4505-9d38-6525086b95d6",color:"#1419df",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"90c65c82-00b2-4664-823e-ac6c5d14f922",type:"",poster:{id:100381678647889,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3209x1611/ed0146c4e8/screenshot-2025-10-11-at-17-33-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:100377790839356,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/d1ac5532e7/pr-title-1080-x-1920.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:true,component:"media"}]},slug:"new-ways-of-seeing",full_slug:"directory/reviews/new-ways-of-seeing",sort_by_date:null,position:-100,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"6457d665-ca44-40d7-9c3c-ac4259e8962f",first_published_at:"2025-10-10T00:52:39.739Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Future-Proof: The Founding Exhibition of Refresh",created_at:"2025-10-08T13:53:38.961Z",published_at:"2025-10-13T17:42:28.453Z",updated_at:"2025-10-13T17:42:28.473Z",id:99295309737381,uuid:"9a5d8a41-77e9-4103-87cb-f167ba0b9d70",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"837fe1d0-6d52-43ed-b6cc-9afb3302d9f5",type:"",title:"Future-Proof",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},keywords:"refresh, exhibition, anthropocene, future-proof,",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Review of Future-Proof: The founding exhibition of Refresh"}],_uid:"3543fbfb-a3fc-491b-90da-8f1d136ef5a5",body:[{_uid:"898ced3d-07d9-43c8-89a8-c718b3ee5d5a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a disused government office building on the windswept coast of Brittany, something radical took shape. The port town of Paimpol, better known for its fishing heritage than its contemporary art scene, became an unlikely laboratory for reimagining our collective future. Future-Proof, the inaugural exhibition of the Refresh programme, brought together a dozen international artists who used speculative fiction to sound the alarm on our decaying present.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The choice of venue spoke volumes. The vacant offices of the Direction Départementale de l'Ãquipementâonce the bureaucratic machinery of regional planningâbecame the stage for projections of crumbling utopias, ecological catastrophes, and gamified parallel realities. In these abandoned halls where bureaucrats once drafted blueprints for the future, artists interrogated the very foundations of our anthropocentric worldview.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Future-Proof offered no easy answers or comforting visions. Instead, it confronted visitors with the uncomfortable truth that the futures we're currently shaping may be ones we don't want to inhabit. Through film and video installations, the exhibition deployed the tools of speculative fiction to hold up a mirror to our technological entanglements and ecological blind spots.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"4520966a-c42b-4988-919d-2c157add9aca",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99299703227940,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/7a35731fe3/simone-c-niquille-technoflesh-homeschool-voyez-vous-vinciane-lebrun-8014-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Simone C Niquille",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"00c1198d-4bb8-402a-ba68-c7424fa54776",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Digital Natives Confront the Anthropocene",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artist selection brought together key voices of the post-digital generation. Alice Bucknell, the Los Angeles-based artist who builds speculative worlds using game engines, explored the intersections of architecture, ecology, and non-human intelligence. Lawrence Lek, whose immersive virtual environments have been probing questions of identity and AI consciousness, brought his distinctive brand of Sinofuturism to the Breton coast. Theo Triantafyllidis deployed his signature blend of digital and physical media to interrogate how we experience space in hybrid realities.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"They were joined by Mali Arun, Stine Deja, Hoël Duret, Lukas Marxt, Marcel Mrejen (who also served as guest co-curator alongside Philippe Riss-Schmidt), OMSK Social Club, Julien Previeux, the duo Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, Rustan Soderling, and Philip Ullman. Together, they formed a constellation of voices united by a common concern: how do we navigate the overlapping crises of technology and ecology without repeating the mistakes that got us here?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's manifesto was blunt. \"A decade of important transitions awaits us,\" the curators declared. \"Technologies will not be enough if we do not rethink them within a genuine vision that encourages us to re-imagine our way of inhabiting the world.\" It's a world, they insisted, that must embrace diversity, inter-connectivity, and interdependenceânot just among humans, but across species and ecosystems.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bf303ee0-b42c-491d-a376-d9f0e0f137e1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99300510799443,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/64b921f0e3/rustan-soderling-let-me-speak-to-the-driver-voyez-vous-vinciane-lebrun-7791-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rustang Soderling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"11863b42-8d68-4e6b-9e35-579b0355a5f6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An Organic Identity for Uncertain Times",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Even the exhibition's visual identity, designed by PPOffice studio, embodied this ethos. Rather than imposing a slick, corporate aesthetic, the design team spent time documenting the specific landscapes and soundscapes of the Côtes d'Armor. Working with AI models, sound designer Pablo Galera, motion designer Nam Borgers, and a team led by associate art director Ãtienne Clerc, they created what they called a \"sensorial identity\"âone that placed technology and uncertainty in productive tension.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The result was a multimedia campaign that felt organic yet uncanny, rooted in place yet algorithmically generated. It proved an apt visual metaphor for the Refresh programme itself, which seeks to bridge the gap between cutting-edge digital art and audiences far removed from the usual institutional circuits.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"78a2de07-16fb-4101-9b82-065f81d00713",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100368041068888,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/96cbfbe7b6/alice-bucknell-swamp-city-voyez-vous-vinciane-lebrun-7904-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alice Buknell",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5a8ebcc6-f064-4a1b-b27d-b3bf9587abbf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100368204216669,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/f4777d4029/hoel-duret-drop-out-voyez-vous-vinciane-lebrun-7830-1800x.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hoel Duret",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e3342956-6048-4bae-a906-63378d125131",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Future-Proof was, as its title suggested, a provocation. It dared us to stop letting our futures be \"constrained by the present\"âto break free from the path dependencies and technological determinisms that have brought us to this precarious moment. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As we sail toward uncertain horizons, the exhibition argued, artists have a crucial role to play in \"planting the seeds of fertile futures in the rubble of the world before.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Whether those seeds will take root remains to be seen. But in a former planning office on the Brittany coast, at least someone tried.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curators Philippe Riss-Schmidt and Marcel Mrejen",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"86f298c3-0879-45a7-913b-987337df1247",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100369480231327,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2506x1652/7b28206157/screenshot-2025-10-11-at-16-42-57.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julien Prévieux",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3bb4c587-e08a-4956-95b1-52aa684da4d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100369480841633,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2492x1760/3fd0590edf/screenshot-2025-10-11-at-16-42-44.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Philip Ulman",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-08 00:00",name:"Future-Proof:÷The Founding Exhibition of Refresh",author:"Editorial",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"238d196b-404d-471c-98df-787783af999c",color:"#6d7c9b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"9408c9f8-6dc9-4650-aa0f-8d2c9db754a8",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100369479928222,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2522x1588/c9c8e8da49/screenshot-2025-10-11-at-16-42-21.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],color_light:{_uid:"9fd2db93-ebd0-4cc4-a3b0-227251cf756b",color:"#f6f7f8",plugin:"native-color-picker"}},slug:"future-proof-the-founding-exhibition-of-refresh",full_slug:"directory/reviews/future-proof-the-founding-exhibition-of-refresh",sort_by_date:null,position:-80,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"5d4d1fc2-6462-4add-ab93-67513206e407",first_published_at:"2025-10-08T14:16:16.428Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"The Glorious Sludge: A Review of Most Dismal Swamp's exhibition 'The Bastard Fields'",created_at:"2025-10-07T09:57:19.801Z",published_at:"2025-10-15T15:05:56.861
77Z",updated_at:"2025-10-15T15:05:56.884Z",id:98883337473246,uuid:"427c7d7b-f758-43a6-8799-61c0ce452323",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"bb1eca9b-5196-457b-a60d-1c44357f04ff",title:"The Glorious Sludge: A Review of Most Dismal Swamp's exhibition 'The Bastard Fields'",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},keywords:"Most Dismal Swamp, Exhibition review, Refresh magazine,",priority:"",component:"SEO",description:"Review by Refresh magazine of the exhibition 'the bastard fields' by Most Dismal Swamp in London."}],_uid:"2520c55d-6626-4249-bd1b-5b1d48de8514",body:[{_uid:"051078c0-b230-484a-880d-4d3311f78ad1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The most contemporary exhibition in London right now is happening at Autotelic Foundation (Bacon Factory), and it's everything you didn't know you needed. Most Dismal Swamp's 'The Bastard Fields,' curated by Nadim Samman at the Autotelic Foundation's new space, is the kind of art event that makes you wonder if you've accidentally ingested something you shouldn't have. And we mean that in the best possible way.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Upon entering, you're not just in a gallery; you're in a \"mixed-reality biome.\" The centerpiece is the film, The Bastard Fields, a hallucinatory fever dream that feels like a cursed videotape you'd find in a haunted Blockbuster. It's a glorious mess of folk-horror, glitchy futurism, and experimental video art that would make even the most seasoned cynic crack a smile. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d9984bfe-2a5b-4979-8ae8-211d096e08e0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98884063620428,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/02663dff10/still-5-from-the-bastard-fields-most-dismal-swamp.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Still from 'The Bastard Fields' courtesy Most Dismal Swamp",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4773563f-f3c6-4509-8e91-f97b21034ada",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The narrative, if you can call it that, is set in a world suffering from model collapseâthat delightful phenomenon where AI systems, gorging themselves on their own synthetic output, degrade into increasingly homogenous, toxic sludge. It's the algorithmic equivalent of mad cow disease, and Most Dismal Swamp has built an entire cinematic universe around it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this nightmarish terrain, AI hasn't just flooded the zone; it has completely drowned it in biased data and recursive garbage. The film introduces us to what the artist calls \"midification\"âa term so perfectly nauseating it should be in the Oxford English Dictionary by now. We watch as characters variously seek resistance or accommodation with this new reality, stumbling through a landscape where meaning itself has been transformed into sludge by an endless network of creative directors, reality-hustlers, and content producers extracting every last drop of value from the cultural corpse.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9da9fc49-514b-430f-bbd8-75a1802ea3d6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98884063673677,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1759x989/969587e415/still-6-from-the-bastard-fields-most-dismal-swamp.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Still from The Bastard Fields by Most Dismal Swamp",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4fa3f841-c356-4385-a197-336798ac48e2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The cast is a parade of the damned: a bog body plotting escape routes with a scrapheap robot, two creative directors peddling reality presets across a fractured Splinternet, a mystic rabbit livestreaming epistemological sinkholes, an outlaw preacher cultivating his field conventicle, and poor little Brownie getting martyred in the churn. It's content's final convulsion, the clamour and shame of expression at the end of the world. And somewhere in all this chaos, you realize: this says everything about the old world dying, screaming its head off as it goesâand about those tedious, droning, predictable dystopian discourses we've all grown so bored of. The film doesn't just document collapse; it revels in it, finding a perverse beauty in the death throes of consensus reality while simultaneously mocking the tired rhetoric of technological doom.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The installation accompanying the film extends this delightful nightmare into the physical space. Props from the film are scattered around like relics from a civilization that never quite existed, making you feel like you've stumbled onto the set of a low-budget sci-fi horror movie from the 80sâif that movie had been made by someone who spent too much time on obscure Discord servers.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"fe8c0a3e-a34f-41cb-bb7e-361a56928815",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99801005336601,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x506/7f08901eab/promo6-5d3c2c608aff849452245a1cfe544962.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Still from The Bastard Fields by Most Dismal Swamp",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8a25f265-9ed7-407c-86e0-44ded836e97e",quote:"The whole experience is sticky, erratic, and gloriously incoherent. It's a refreshing departure from the sometimes sterile, white-walled galleries.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"1b2fc096-d6bc-4c04-afa8-e23033f2bb8d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Most Dismal Swamp, the brainchild of Dane Sutherland, has created a world that is both terrifying and hilarious, a perfect reflection of our current digital hellscape where the boundaries between the real and the generated have dissolved into a toxic soup.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The film's use of historical locations like Peden's Coveâa 17th-century Scottish haven for religious dissentersâadds layers of symbolic weight to this vision of algorithmic apocalypse. The parallels are almost too on the nose: underground communities seeking refuge from dominant powers, only now the tyrant isn't a monarch but a neural network trained on the worst of humanity. It's neo-medieval, it's post-digital, it's everything our moment deserves.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Diversity as the Engine of the World, Uniformity as the Path to Collapse",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fundamental principle is this: it is diversity that creates the world, and uniformity that leads to its demise. This is not merely a cultural observation, but a foundational law found in ecological, genetic, and now technological systems. The concept of \"model collapse\" serves as the perfect contemporary metaphor: a system that feeds on its own creations, without diverse external input, inevitably becomes a caricature of itself, increasingly bland and degraded until it reaches insignificance. It is an informational ecosystem that closes in on itself and dies.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Against this backdrop, the exhibition \"The Bastard Fields\" is not simply a critique, but an active embodiment of the principle of creative diversity.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"So, should you go? Absolutely. 'The Bastard Fields' is a visceral, unforgettable experience. It's a much-needed dose of weirdness in a world that's becoming increasingly bland despiteâor perhaps because ofâits algorithmic \"creativity.\" It's art that doesn't take itself too seriously while simultaneously taking everything deadly seriously, and that's why it's so brilliant. Go, get lost in the sludge, witness the old world's death rattle, and thank me later.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Bastard Fields is on at Autotelic Foundation (The Bacon Factory, 6 Stannary Street, London, SE11 4AA) from 3 October to 14 December 2025",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"10ae7167-2814-4cb2-9a3a-3d745946cb6d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:99798936864783,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/900x506/901bfafc71/still-4-from-the-bastard-fields-most-dismal-swamp-5d3c2c608aff849452245a1cfe544962.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Still from The Bastard Fields by Most Dismal Swamp",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
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Not one emotion, but all emotions. Because emotions were deeply deeply unacceptable within my family growing up.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Supposedly negative emotions were quickly shut down âoh sheâs in a sulkâ, âyouâve got a face on youâ, âcheer upâ etc etc. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And positive emotions - joy, excitement, amusement, enthusiasm, awe - were never demonstrated by my parents. Iâm not exaggerating, my mother never even put decorations up at Christmas time. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And in me positive emotions were often ignored, labeled as âtoo muchâ or responded to with a grunt of âwho does she think she isâ, âsheâs too cleverâ, âyouâre not doing that until youâve doneâ¦â.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sounds like fun, right?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"My parents split up when I was five and I lived with my mum. I would have preferred to live with my dad but he would never let me.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"My mumâs home was filled with a grey state of stagnation and a weird kind of neutral depression. That was until she had a drink, when she actually appeared to relax somewhat. She might even smile. Slightly. Letâs not get carried away. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"She drank at least a bottle of wine every night.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The bleak stillness at home was punctuated with unexpected bursts of anger or unex
77plained silent treatment, which left me treading on egg shells most of the time. I was never sure what mood my mum would be in.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"My sister Sally (who passed by suicide in 2019) became the golden child, trying to keep mum happy, doing jobs, always helping out, and making herself invisible. I will never know, but I feel like the golden child label became a heavy burden on Sally as mum became increasingly codependent with her. And Sally never seemed to win the deep affection and unconditional acceptance she spent her short life striving for.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I, on the other hand, took the opposite path. I was labeled a difficult child âbadâ, âsheâs got the devil in herâ, âmanipulativeâ. I took on this mantel with apathy, disobedience and anger. Trying to be good never worked so I might as well be bad. But displaying anger only fed the thorny feedback loop of my familiesâ shadow. Showing anger allowed them to project their shadow - their suppressed emotions - onto me. I was the emotionally dysregulated one, the one who was a little bit âcrazyâ. I held their angers and frustrations like a big bouquet of black flowers, so they could remain neutral: âgood parentsâ and play âhappy familiesâ.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet overtime, I suppressed my emotions and became neutral too. I was a high functioning depressive with bursts of chronic anxiety, emotions wriggling to the surface, not attached to any story, yet clutching at my heart. Drinking too much led to angry outbursts. All of those hidden emotions - my shadow - projected onto my nearest and dearest friends. Oh dear.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Often at school and then uni, people would see me gazing vacantly into space. I knew something wasnât right, but I couldnât feel anything. My shadow was firmly closeted.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I survived and eventually passed through this by escaping into fantasy worlds: art, books, music, raving, quantum physics, alcohol and party drugs. I now rarely drink alcohol or party. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I have undertaken decades of therapy. Iâm completely different now to how I was back then. Now, Iâm like a glittering rainbow of emotions, all jostling around gloriously and for the large part mostly accepted.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is why my artwork is always psychological. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Things fall apart and come back together. Slime oozes out of bodies, creeping. Monsters, hybrids, wilderness and layers and layers of unseen and unheard territories. I become nature. My unruly emotions are natural - to be celebrated and not suppressed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Libby Heaney",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"515a9417-6bcc-478a-a56e-6088d08bfe51",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Libby Heaneyâs âShadowscapesâ exhibition",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Libby Heaneyâs âShadowscapesâ exhibition invites us to explore the unexpected connections between JMW Turner, quantum physics and the self.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Libby Heaney, who is both an artist and a quantum physicist (a combination that, one might enthusiastically, if cynically, observe, is almost too perfect for the contemporary moment), presents her latest exhibition, \"Shadowscapes: Heaney, JMW Turner and Quantum\" at the Orleans House Gallery (Twickenham,UK). ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is no ordinary show;
77 it is a profound, exhilarating masterclass in how to truly perceive the world, and more importantly, the hidden depths within us all. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As the pioneering artist to integrate quantum computing into her artistic methodology as early as 2019, she has consistently delivered works that are as intellectually stimulating as they are visually arresting. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"145256e4-db0c-46e5-97aa-f84da8044a82",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100335869536023,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3746x2500/a6c0c82fbe/shadowscapes-emotional-dumping-ground-_2025_libby-heaney_photo-max-colson-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shadowscapes, Libby Heaney",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ef704709-6dbf-46dc-a924-0f70587d7019",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:98880389372892,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1112x616/d76108b343/screenshot-2025-10-06-at-14-11-38.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shadowscapes, Libby Heaney",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"83bc0cce-0c5a-433c-afa9-3e6c7979e4ec",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In \"Shadowscapes,\" Heaney orchestrates an audacious trifecta: the 250th anniversary of JMW Turnerâs birth, the centenary of quantum physics, and the profound psychological theories of Carl Jung. While this confluence might, at first glance, suggest the premise for an academic jest, in Heaneyâs adept hands, it transmutes into a deeply insightful and exploration of light, darkness, and the very fabric of reality. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"She recontextualizes Turner, the undisputed master of the sublime, through the dual lenses of quantum uncertainty and, pivotally, Jungâs concept of the âshadow self.â The resultant experience is one that feels both revolutionary and profoundly intuitive.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The true alchemy of \"Shadowscapes\" resides in its capacity to transform the viewer from a passive spectator into an active participant within a grand, cosmic classroom. Heaney is, unequivocally, teaching us how to see. Through interactive projections, meticulously powered by game engines and quantum data, one is invited to traverse a space where art, technology, and emotion coalesce. One might even find oneself listening to the âsoundâ of a Turner painting, its underlying data translated into an ever-evolving soundscapeâan encounter that, one suspects, offers a privileged glimpse into the cosmosâs more profound secrets.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Heaney deftly connects Turnerâs dramatic interplay of light and shadow not merely to atmospheric phenomena, but to the psychological metaphors of her own \"unruly emotions.\" Utilizing Turnerâs evocative paintings of imagined forces and bodies, Heaney courageously explores her personal âshadow selfâ â those facets of our being that we deem unacceptable and consequently suppress unconsciously. This journey is deeply personal and introspective, yet her psych
77ological observations are so acutely rendered that they invariably prompt us to unearth our own unconscious minds and confront the beliefs we harbor about the aspects of ourselves we typically keep concealed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d55cfeb6-520d-4f95-934b-da7e1ee9f71f",quote:"Accessing our shadow selves is important as when shadows are not in our awareness, we tend to project them onto different groups and nature causing polarisation, domination and division.",author:"Libby Heaney",component:"quote"},{_uid:"63baac57-d0e9-4668-8a2e-2b4316996db2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100335869642521,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3746x2500/16be42bc8a/family-shadow-throat-_2025_libby-heaney_photo-max-colson.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Family Shadow \"Throat\",2025,Libby Heaney,Photo Max Colson",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"81a85448-6d9d-461f-84cb-b4710196ecb1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is far more than an artistic declaration; it is a compelling call to introspection, woven intrinsically into the very fabric of the exhibition. Thus, while one is captivated by the technological prowess and art historical dialogue, one is simultaneously, yet gently, guided toward a moment of crucial self-examination. It is a gesture both generous and brilliant.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To provide a tangible grounding for this intellectual journey, the exhibition thoughtfully includes the very Turner paintings that ignited this conceptual spark: The Vision of Jacobâs Ladder (?) (c.1830), The Hero of a Hundred Fights (1800-10, reworked 1847), and Rocky Bay with Figures (1827-30). Witnessing them within this novel context is nothing short of a revelation. They transcend their status as historical masterpieces, emerging instead as living data, intricately entangled with quantum physics and our collective psychology.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Shadowscapes\" is, without hyperbole, an indispensable experience. It is a potent, and indeed, enthusiastically cynical, testament to artâs capacity to transcend aesthetic contemplation. Heaney is not simply offering a metaphor; she is, with audacious brilliance, prescribing the antidote to five centuries of Cartesian dualism and human exceptionalism. Her work, far from merely challenging perceptions, actively points toward a genuinely post-anthropocentric future. Go forth, and allow Libby Heaney to illuminate the world in all its dark, light, and quantum splendor. You will depart feeling a touch more connected to the grand tapestry of the universe, and considerably more awestruck by the artist who is not only constructing bridges between disparate fields, but perhaps even charting the course for humanity's next great leap in-and-humbling intellectual leap.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dates: 9 October 2025 â 1 March 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Location: Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham (United Kingdom)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"06826d78-475a-4d4e-ad6b-843e94a284bc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100335869470486,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3746x2500/f2cafb1591/shadowscapes_libby-heaney_photo-max-colson-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shadowscapes, Libby Heaney, Photo Max Colson",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-08 00:00",name:"Libby Heaney ÷The Quantum and the Sublime",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"1d5d3a5f-7d79-4a52-bbf7-ba0f5e9d7308",color:"#4b0314",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d5060240-b572-45d3-8cf2-b0c482dbbe74",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:100335869773595,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3746x2500/8dee105bc3/shadowscapes_libby-heaney_photo-max-colson-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],color_light:{_uid:"9648c3a5-5f90-4ed4-9c39-c4a2cc148564",color:"#dcbfbb",plugin:"native-color-picker"}},slug:"libby-heaney-s-antidote-to-the-anthropocene",full_slug:"directory/reviews/libby-heaney-s-antidote-to-the-anthropocene",sort_by_date:null,position:-50,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"8e78e8de-d23a-4fd0-8cff-0874f5ee3044",first_published_at:"2025-10-07T09:48:19.250Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"The Thinking Ocean",created_at:"2026-03-01T22:48:47.957Z",published_at:"2026-03-02T08:09:07.739Z",updated_at:"2026-03-02T08:09:07.756Z",id:150387621752738,uuid:"6b09d566-8a81-47fa-9c09-8936cf4040a5",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"22df923d-e273-4f44-82bc-0f1b8562fedc",title:"the Thinking Ocean",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:150397656870419,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2960x1608/8496c5f63d/screenshot-2026-03-02-at-00-29-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"The Thinking Ocean, Memo Akten, Katie Hofstadter, Whitney Museum, artport, digital art, post-anthropocentric art, ecological art, non-extractive art, post-Cartesian, fluid dynamics,ocean intelligence, net art, new media art, art and ecology, art and nature, art and technology, post-Anthropocene, environmental art, immersive digital art, computational art,PHILIPPE RISS-SCHMIDT, CHRISTIANE PAUL",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"The Whitney Museum commissions The Thinking Ocean by Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter: a post-anthropocentric digital artwork where the ocean \"thinks\"."}],_uid:"9561c720-f80d-47e4-8ccb-596237d5c6bb",body:[{_uid:"adda5556-a2e8-4cc8-be49-8e628a88efe3",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Whitney Museum, New York (USA) has left the comfort of the screen behind. \"The Thinking Ocean\" plunges into deeper territory: the ecological, the evolutionary, the non-human. Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter deliver exactly the work this moment demands.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Something is shifting. The Anthropocene, that geological label for humanity's dominion over the planet, is no longer a stable category. It is cracking under the weight of its own contradictions, and in the fissures, something new is trying to take shape. Artists are among the first to sense it, to name it, to give it form. Across studios, institutions, and screens, emerging and pioneering artists are illuminating this pivotal threshold with unusual clarity, nurturing what is trying to bloom while the old order makes its final, thunderous bow. The exhibitions, worldwilde, multiplying around this moment are not an aesthetic responses to ecological crisis. They are acts of imagination at the edge of a paradigm shift, brain food for a world that has not yet found the language for what comes next.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is also, it must be said, a genuinely bold move on the Whitney's part. For an institution long associated with the canon of American art and, more recently, with the codified territory of digital and net art, to step fully into the ecological conversation is not a given. It signals a willingness to move beyond the usual suspects, the familiar debates around screens, interfaces, and algorithmic aesthetics, and to engage with the deeper, more urgent question of what art can actually do at a moment of planetary reckoning. Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter rise to that challenge with brilliance. Their practice, grounded in both rigorous research and genuine poetic sensibility, is exactly the kind of work this conversation demands.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"183866ee-d31b-4ffa-916e-4b68ab362416",component:"mobile-newsletter"}
77,{_uid:"4df624b1-87a4-48c0-aac2-0678beb1a61a",poster:{id:150397657185812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2482x1400/fe9c83bb14/screenshot-2026-03-02-at-00-00-54.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150402691616295,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/4b094dc765/ultrarecuce.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"EXCERPT VIDEO FROM \"THE THINKING OCEAN\" COMMISSION BY THE WHITNEY MUSEUM -ART PORT, COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND THE MUSEUM",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1b5806cf-a8f3-454b-b467-0cb8d0a65959",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Thinking Ocean\"",type:"text"},{text:" belongs to a growing body of exhibitions that are collectively reshaping how we understand our position within the living world. This digital artwork refuses the comfortable fiction that humanity stands apart from nature, and does so with both intellectual rigor and visual force.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work situates the viewer inside a procedurally generated underwater environment where the physics of water and the operations of code turn out to obey a shared set of rules. Particles drift, currents form, and the boundary between the organic and the algorithmic dissolves. The ocean, here, is not a backdrop. It is the subject, the medium, and the argument. Akten and Hofstadter draw on recent scientific research suggesting that the Navier-Stokes equations, which model the behavior of fluids in motion, are theoretically capable of the same order of computation as any digital machine. The ocean, in other words, thinks. Not metaphorically, but structurally. It processes. It remembers. It has been doing so for far longer than we have.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where the work's ecological and non-extractive stance becomes most legible. The \"Thinking Ocean\" does not represent nature as a resource to be decoded, mapped, or instrumentalized. It does not extract. It listens. The viewer is invited into a mode of attention that is contemplative rather than acquisitive, relational rather than hierarchical. The piece belongs to a broader artistic and intellectual current, one that includes the work of artists that are actively dismantling the extractive logic embedded in how we look at, and think about, the non-human world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The post-Cartesian dimension of the work is equally deliberate. The Cartesian split, mind over matter, human over nature, subject over object, has underwritten centuries of ecological destruction. By presenting the ocean as an ancient cognitive medium, one whose operations predate and exceed anything human technology has produced, the artists collapse that hierarchy. The faint, abstract human form visible in the distance, whose movements generate currents in the environment, does not dominate the space. It is absorbed by it. This is not a minor formal choice: it is a statement about evolutionary origin and ecological belonging. Life came from the ocean. We came from the ocean. The exhibition does not let us forget it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Thinking Ocean\" is part of a wider cultural reckoning, a constellation of exhibitions, research projects, and artistic practices that are collectively building a post-anthropocentric vocabulary for the 21st century. These are not exercises in nostalgia for a pre-industrial nature, nor are they naive celebrations of technology. They are serious attempts to think through what it means to be human in a world where the boundaries between the biological, the computational, and the ecological are becoming increasingly porous. Akten and Hofstadter's work is among the most rigorous and most seductive of these attempts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"The Whitney Museum of American Art commissioned this artwork for artport, the Museumâs online gallery space for Internet art.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-01 00:00",name:"The Whitney Museum÷Dives Deep",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"6467e72b-0385-4173-81fb-a0f42390eab2",color:"#3a0e63",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2d948633-22f7-4272-a6be-66b2f2614abb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150397656469009,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2040x1138/01d5d89e82/screenshot-2026-03-01-at-23-58-55.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"still from 'The Thinking Ocean'",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-thinking-ocean",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-thinking-ocean",sort_by_date:null,position:-980,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"00babc8e-d708-45a4-b618-2aeb71387141",first_published_at:"2026-03-02T00:00:40.862Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Echoes of Tumult",created_at:"2026-02-26T18:12:20.871Z",published_at:"2026-03-02T06:34:04.667Z",updated_at:"2026-03-02T06:34:04.684Z",id:149257997843400,uuid:"8f6415b5-40a0-4af8-8fe0-1702f2ffec60",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"d1dff0d7-b5a9-4804-9d7e-395cfce8ff45",title:"\"Echoes of Tumult\"",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:149258337660589,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2270x1492/eeca3d658a/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-17-53-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Echoes of Tumult, CTM Festival 2026, Berlin contemporary art, sound art exhibition, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, daadgalerie, DAAD Artists-in-Berlin, iii instrument inventors initiative, Nikita Kadan, Hoda Afshar, Dror Feiler, Fragmentin, Zhanna Kadyrova, Essa Grayeb, Ioana Vreme Moser, Isuru Kumarasinghe, Naomi Rincón-Gallardo, Sissel Marie Tonn, Jonathan Reus, Interspecifics, Jaeha Ban, Soyun Park, Cathy van Eck, sound and politics, art and war, experimental music, post-digital art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A critical review of \"Echoes of Tumult\", the Berlin exhibition by CTM Festival, DAAD and iii that made the politics of sound impossible to ignore."}],_uid:"ae2d32f6-e49e-4d91-9710-64ba24f5e3db",body:[{_uid:"5e372a15-5f05-4b17-9604-5ca7e77954af",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Sanity of Noise: Why \"Echoes of Tumult\" exhibition Got the Politics of Sound Right",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Echoes of Tumult proved that art about violence doesn't have to shout. Precise, disquieting, and at moments genuinely moving, it was the exhibition the moment demanded.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This past winter in Berlin, another festival promised to grapple with the \"tumult of our times.\" One could be forgiven a weary sigh. Echoes of Tumult, a three-way collaboration between CTM Festival, the DAAD residency program, and the instrument inventors initiative (iii), arrived with the grand ambition of confronting war, broken institutions, and human fragility. It was a recognisable refrain in a cultural landscape glutted with well-meaning, beautifully packaged trauma. And yet, unfolding across the haunted halls of Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and the austere daadgalerie, this exhibition achieved something quietly radical: it persuaded the visitor to actually listen.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Framed by CTM's 2026 theme, \"dissonate resonate,\" the show deftly sidestepped the temptation to simply amplify the anxiety. It didn't just add to the noise. Instead, it advanced a more nuanced and potent argument: that the fragile fragment, the critical whisper, the intentional glitch, can carry far more political charge than an inaudible, overwhelming roar. This was not art as catharsis. It was art as a tuning fork, an invitation to the difficult, necessary work of attuning ourselves to the dissonances of a world gone haywire.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"33c50c0b-d41f-4b02-a3df-f21a18d29fce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149321525148783,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1196x670/d65cba8418/zhanna-kadyrova-the-forest-2025-screenshots-video.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zhanna Kadyrova 'The Forest' 2025, screenshots video, courtesy the artist and Continua gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fdc008a7-58f0-42d1-bcca-ef73253d9121",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The journey began with Zhanna Kadyrova's \"The Forest\", a multimedia installation that plunged the visitor into the ecological catastrophe of the former Kakhovka Reservoir in Ukraine. A boat, installed at the former water level, seemed to sink into a new, improbable forest that had colonised the dried-up basin. But the beauty was treacherous. The area was mined, the front line was near, and headphones transmitted the live, tense sounds from the reservoir itself. It was a disquieting opening, a landscape of impossible resilience and imminent threat.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From there, the exhibition unfolded as a series of intricate sensory encounters. In the next rooms, Ioana Vreme Moser's project \"Arsenic Ballerinas\" seduced and repelled in equal measure. A swarm of lipstick tubes, arranged like projectiles, became FM radio receivers. Their mineral components, the lead and arsenic shared by cosmetics and munitions, picked up static and fragmented transmissions. It was a precise, tactile excavation of technology, toxicity, and the gendered codes of espionage. One leaned in to listen, implicated in the beautiful poison.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{type:"hard_break",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"68dc1928-dea7-499c-a30a-d9517d68cb51",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149258337660589,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2270x1492/eeca3d658a/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-17-53-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IOANA VREME MOSER, RESEARCH PROJECT, 2025â26 INSTALLATIONS, SOUND OBJECTS, RADIO, RESEARCH BOX, Exhibition Opening \u003CEchoes of Tumult> @ Bethanien - CTM Festival 2026 :copyright: Udo Siegfriedt",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"934f4ced-8dd9-4aad-9ba7-8ec8f61bd0fc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149323027037630,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1680x1266/c55b4c8271/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-23-34-05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IOANA VREME MOSER, RESEARCH PROJECT, 2025â26 INSTALLATIONS, SOUND OBJECTS, RADIO, RESEARCH BOX, Exhibition Opening \u003CEchoes of Tumult> @ Bethanien - CTM Festival 2026 :copyright: Udo Siegfriedt",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4ad75668-8460-41d5-ad1f-2d270b39e6da",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Swiss collective Fragmentin, long celebrated for their elegant dissections of technological systems, presented \"G80\". The piece demystified the opaque architectures governing our lives not with polemic, but with a low, corrosive hum that lodges itself beneath the skin. An interactive console with 80 motorized sliders, it invited the visitor to \"stabilise the world\" by adjusting variables from ecology to gender equality. Inspired by Buckminster Fuller's utopian \"World Game,\" the piece was a sly trap. As one playfully tried to find equilibrium, the machine resisted, its cold logic a mordant parody of our faith in computational solutions for global governance. It was a deeply vertiginous piece of design fiction, and one of the exhibition's most intellectually exacting works.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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Cathy van Eck's Try to \"Turn the Wind\" placed a wind-speed sensor at the centre of the room. The visitor blew against it, and the piece responded: layers of sound shifted and collided, from the low rumble of coal extraction to the clipped cadences of politicians discussing a climate they were busy destroying. It was a small-scale climate simulation, a delicate feedback loop where the visitor's own body became an agent of change, however negligible. The piece had the rare quality of feeling simultaneously playful and deeply consequential.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This corporeal engagement continued with Isuru Kumarasinghe's \"Resounding Bodies\". Two large aluminum plates, connected by strings, vibrated and filled the space with sound, exploring sympathetic resonance as a social metaphor. The work asked the visitor to feel the connections, to sense the vibrations in their own body, a form of communication that bypasses language entirely. It was a meditative, rigorously conceived counterpoint to the more overtly political works surrounding it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Politics returned with a vengeance in the work of Palestinian artist Essa Grayeb. In the first video piece, Grayeb stripped a 1967 televised address by Nasser down to its silences and involuntary sounds: the breath, the rustle, the swallowed grief of a leader announcing defeat. In the companion photo series, sheets of darkroom paper were held before a television screen as that same address played, each sheet absorbing the r)reroupoourtcfragle(olombonidavidaoffocieusementbroadcast's glow for a different duration. The resulting prints were spectral, barely legible: the material residue of a transmission once witnessed by millions, now reduced to a faint luminous stain.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hoda Afshar, an Iranian artist based in Melbourne, also worked with the afterlives of images. Her video Undone rewound found footage of bombings in Ukraine, Palestine, and Iraq, a desperate, futile attempt to reverse the violence. In her photo series Aura, she degraded and manipulated screenshots of contemporary crises, creating a ghostly, asphyxiating atmosphere that mirrored our digitally mediated experience of disaster. The images were stark, ravaged, and deeply troubling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"0e82e5ff-dda1-4613-a994-f50cdaaae1f5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149329337957894,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1216x1714/9ed53c1020/suru-kumarasinghe-installation-2026-various-types-of-metal-resonance-asynchronous-loops.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ISURU KUMARASINGHE INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a735c293-bf3b-405f-ba95-8399d100dae9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149329480748552,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/906x1248/a93dad19ed/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-23-57-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CATHY VAN ECK INTERACTIVE SOUND SCULPTURE, 2021/2025 ELECTRONICS, SOUND, ANEMOMETER, LOUDSPEAKERS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c61a614b-1825-45e5-b14b-f1d35ee05952",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149330375015952,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1678x1258/81831f3b03/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-05-49.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"HODA AFSHAR VIDEO, 2022 ONE-CHANNEL DIGITAL VIDEO, COLOUR, SOUND, 11:00 MIN",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0b00945d-f67c-4823-bcf6-0a4722103355",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149330455977489,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/940x1272/b63232883b/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-06-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"HODA AFSHAR PHOTO SERIES, 2020â23",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"135aed49-5233-41bf-932d-69bc70755f8b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then came the air raid siren. Nikita Kadan's sound installation carried a title that translates from Ukrainian as both anxiety and alarm. The curtained structure filled the room and, at first approach, felt almost welcoming. One walked into it, and then the sound hit. It was an air raid alarm, but it was being mimicked by an opera singer and a violinist. The uncanny fusion of human voice and mechanical terror was chilling. 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A legion of unwanted creatures, from a bat broadcasting frequencies from a tomb to a scorpion rallying for the right of infection, sought solidarity in the ruins of a planetary catastrophe. It was a bizarre, theatrical, and wonderfully queer vision of resilience, a form of world-making from the margins, and one of the few works in the show that permitted itself the luxury of something approaching joy.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The second venue, the daadgalerie, opened with \"The Intimate Earthquake Archive\" by Sissel Marie Tonn and Jonathan Reus, a work that transferred the tremors of man-made seismic events directly into the visitor's body. Wearing a haptic vest, one walked through an archive of seismic data from the Groningen gas fields, triggering vibrational compositions. It was a visceral, disquieting exercise in deep listening, making the geological consequences of resource extraction disturbingly personal.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Mexican artist duo Interspecifics transformed the energy of global protest into a luminous, sonic gesture. The piece fed recordings of marches and demonstrations from open archives through spectral analysis, translating their sonic characteristics, in real time, into a choreography of moving spotlights, motors, and crystals. Protest became a vibrant, energetic field, a collective memory made of light and sound. It was one of the few works in the exhibition that permitted itself something approaching elation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dror Feiler made a second appearance with To Live Is to Tremble, a video piece for sixteen bells. The phrase acknowledged both fragility and defiance. The bells, instruments of alarm and celebration, created an unstable sonic terrain of overlapping, colliding tremors. It was not a melody. It was the sonic portrait of a world that cannot stop shaking.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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Marta Dyachenko's Schiffbarmachung confronts viewers with the stark reality of corroding port infrastructures, transforming these decaying structures into powerful metaphors for our unstable technical and social systems. The work speaks to a larger truth about our precarious relationship with the built environment and, by extension, with the natural world it seeks to control. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Similarly, Ben Saint-Maxent's installations weave together personal memory and natural forces through materials like pine resin and endangered plants collected from the National Botanical Conservatory of Brest. 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77,{_uid:"f8840a0a-4bdb-4c59-80d3-b12280c8b318",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105301004811740,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2216x1804/213b1cd998/6-johtin-ii-immigration.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Inga-Wiktoria PÃ¥ve, Johtin II â Immigration II, 2020. © One Arctic, photo credit Museum of Contemporary Circumpolar Art",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"31eeaef9-5e36-4034-8502-0ce2c56da5ce",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Migrations and Climate\" is deliberately didactic, and it is all the better for it. It embraces a clear, accessible narrative designed for a broad audienceâfrom schoolchildren to specialists. Through more than 200 documentary photographs, artworks (some created specifically for this exhibition), testimonies, videos, infographics, and installations, it lays bare the stark realities of climate-induced migration across the globe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's scientific credibility is undeniable. Drawing on data from specialized organizations including the International Organization for Migration and the IPCC, and benefiting from contributions by leading figures like François Gemenneâan IPCC lead author and recognized specialist in environmental migrationâalongside marine biologist Sylvie Dufour, the exhibition builds a rigorous foundation. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"01a46997-596b-4509-b974-31686fd0e3a4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105293956943231,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2703x1802/e07dc2b4de/30-lucy-jorge-orta-antarctic-village-no-borders.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lucy + Jorge Orta, Antarctic village no borders, Dome Dwelling , 2007- 2021. © Courtesy Lucy + Jorge Orta and collection of Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration. Photo by Thierry Bal © ADAGP, Paris, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bf84bd1e-05e2-4b35-950a-500ce806a135",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105300797218264,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1364/566bae32ab/7-vanishing-caribou.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Migrations des Caribous - Des caribous, ou tutu en inupiaq, traversent le cÅur enneigé de la chaîne de Brooks, en Alaska. © Katie Orlinsky",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c33db60-6dd6-4dc5-b725-87fb9297f47e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105301580549601,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2887x1802/09119c394b/10-alexandre-hogue-drought-suvivor-1936-musee-franco-americain-du-chateau-de-blerancourt.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Alexandre Hogue, Les rescapés de la sécheresse , 1936. Blérancourt, musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Christian Bahier, Philippe Migeat",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2a027ce4-91f1-49a5-8a05-362214b1002e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This robust scientific underpinning allows the artworks on display to transcend representation and become poignant emotional anchors in a sea of data, creating a dialogue between research and lived experience that is both intellectually compelling and emotionally resonant.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artworks themselves are powerful and carefully chosen.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These are not decorative additions but integral components of the exhibition's argument, offering different ways of understanding and feeling the crisisâfrom the poetic to the documentary, from the immersive to the intimate.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By focusing on the human cost of climate change, the exhibition creates a deeply affecting experience. It moves beyond abstract statistics to present the lived realities of communities on the front lines of the crisis.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77iffside.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Reese John plays with his slingshot on a pillar of a recently demolished house in Newtok. A few dozen meters away, permafrost cliffs are crumbling and falling into the Ninglik River. © Katie Orlinsky",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"15b5ab40-c679-4070-a86e-1d5fe3573fac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the aquarium spaces, the exhibition extends its gaze to marine ecosystems and coastal communities. Three regions illustrate the diversity of climate impacts: Senegal, where diminishing aquatic resources due to overfishing and warming waters are transforming fishing communities; the Pacific Islands, fighting for survival against encroaching seas; and Greenland, where indigenous populations face profound disruptions to their way of life. Interactive installations, audio-visual testimonies, and an immersive projection allow visitors to perceive these often-invisible realities.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a world seemingly resigned to the inevitability of climate catastrophe, \"Migrations and Climate\" is a vital and necessary intervention. It is an exhibition that is not afraid to be loud, to be didactic, and to be emotional. It is rigorous, scientifically grounded, and presents poignant works that linger in the mind long after leaving. This is a powerful reminder that the climate crisis is not an abstract concept, but a human tragedy unfolding before our very eyesâand that art, when it refuses to be complicit, can be more than just a mirror to the world. It can be a megaphone.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Migrations and Climate: How to Inhabit Our World?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"17 October 2025 â 5 April 2026",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7192c8d0-e19f-44cb-b84b-20ba2ccaa3f6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105306707189317,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2566x1795/44e9bc3cab/21-ghazel-maree-rouge.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ghazel, Marée rouge , 1966. © Collection du Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration © ADAGP, Paris, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-25 00:00",name:"A Clarion Call in a Riot of Colour ÷'Migrations and Climate'",author:"Refresh Ttam",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f21c02fa-0da1-4836-91f1-6e495e1ae219",color:"#2d507c",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"26caeaeb-773c-4bcd-8f13-211e8b601547",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:105290532064458,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5616x3744/33d8d4cba4/43-david-buckland-another-world-is-possible.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"David Buckland, Another World is Possible â Ice Text projection , 2005- 2009. © David Buckland",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"-migrations-and-climate-",full_slug:"directory/reviews/-migrations-and-climate-",sort_by_date:null,position:-500,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"f39093da-9e04-4199-bbd0-1f0c02910783",first_published_at:"2025-10-25T14:02:31.044Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"You Were Never Solid",created_at:"2025-10-23T22:41:41.285Z",published_at:"2025-11-01T16:18:23.585Z",updated_at:"2025-11-01T16:18:23.606Z",id:104733496493370,uuid:"aefca7d1-2990-46e1-9a84-6d614ae58cfe",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f3520633-ec63-4004-a184-4edb75c6f067",type:"",title:"You Were Never Solid",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:104733213348379,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1358x762/4f85671677/screenshot-2025-10-24-at-00-32-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"digital art exhibition, hydrofeminism, non-dualism, Paris Art Week, Anika Meier, Diane Drubay, You Were Never Solid, common-garden, DANAE Paris, Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water, digital layer, multiverse, fluid identity, posthuman art, AI art, ecological art, symbiosis, interconnectivity, relational aesthetics, speculative design, virtual exhibition, online art, contemporary digital art, 21st century art, natureculture, Donna Haraway, porous bodies, oceanic consciousness, hybrid ecologies, digital feminism,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"You Were Never Solid explores hydrofeminism and non-dualism through digital art. An online exhibition dissolving boundaries between self, nature, and technology."}],_uid:"344bf665-7362-45fa-b6b9-6b49ef5f09f6",body:[{_uid:"ebd19d86-5524-472c-9e4c-bcbfc01e0a55",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"You Were Never Solid: A Fluid Meditation on Interconnectivity in the Digital Realm",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a time of rigid binaries and sharp divisions, the online exhibition \"You Were Never Solid\" offers a powerful and poetic antidote. Curated by Anika Meier and Diane Drubay, this collection of digital works exists exclusively in the digital layer, a choice that amplifies its exploration of fluidity, multiplicity, and the non-dualistic principles that underpin our existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Opened during Paris Art Week at DANAE and now accessible online via the common-garden platform, \"You Were Never Solid\" inhabits the digital realm as its native environment, creating a kind of multiverse where boundaries dissolve and new forms of being emerge. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not an exhibition that happens to be online; rather, its digital-only presence is integral to its conceptual framework, reinfor
77cing the very ideas of porosity and interconnectedness that it explores.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What distinguishes this exhibition from the glut of online shows and digital platforms that too often conflate pixels with artworks is its uncompromising commitment to quality. Here, aesthetic beauty and conceptual depth are not mutually exclusive but deeply intertwined. Each work is visually compelling while carrying substantial intellectual weight, grounded in a sophisticated curatorial framework that refuses to treat digital art as spectacle or technological novelty. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is digital art that demands to be taken seriously, not because it exists online, but because it has something meaningful to say.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8dea386b-69a3-4ead-9227-9a36c29052a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104736133952439,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1352x750/fcaf65a76b/dagmar-schurre.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dagmar Schürrer, \"Where does the rest of the world begin?\" (Symbiosis),still",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f90478dc-b3ac-4fe9-9ced-88ec9c0154fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition dives deep into the philosophy of hydrofeminism, as articulated by Astrida Neimanis in Bodies of Water (2017). ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It challenges us to see ourselves not as solid, separate entities, but as porous, relational beings, constantly in flux with the world around us",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial vision weaves together a diverse array of digital, immersive, and AI-driven works that explore water not as a theme, but as a collaborator and a world-builder. The artists in this exhibition dissolve the false dichotomies that have long defined Western thought: self and other, nature and machine, life and death.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dagmar Schürrer's multimedia installation, \"Where does the rest of the world begin? (Symbiosis)\", exemplifies the exhibition's engagement with non-dualism. By poetically linking the scientific concept of symbiosis with the theory of neural synchrony, Schürrer's work directly confronts our notions of individuality and singular consciousness. The hybrid, avatar-like creatures in her animations are rendered in fantastical digital landscapes, existing in a space where organic and non-organic agents are equally interconnected. This is a vision of existence where the boundaries between self and environment, between one consciousness and another, are revealed as permeable and provisional.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9f63eb11-c2ac-47e2-8df3-f06e356a59a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104737053451318,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1366x762/0ec3e62030/lauren-moffatt-chorcorallium-2025.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lauren Moffatt Chorcorallium, still, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d0ac55a9-cf6d-42cd-8b63-e5e3cfa93593",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104740752745894,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1354x1012/d93fd048b9/us-2023.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kira Xonorika, Ore/Us, still, 2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cce90f3f-ddcf-4705-986c-fbf2c92b579e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lauren Moffatt's Chorcorallium takes this further, imagining a speculative game-engine environment set on the ocean floor. In this work, human remnants are gradually transformed into a living reef, encrusted with coral and shaped by collective voice and imagination. It is a stunning example of how digital art can help us envision post-human futures where our technological debris becomes the foundation for new forms of life. The work draws parallels between the ocean's depths and the hidden processes of artificial intelligence, reflecting on both ecological risks and imaginative potential.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kira Xonorika's Ore/Us brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to the exhibition's exploration of non-dualism. Rooted in Guaranà cosmology, the work explores water as a sacred connector between beings, worlds, and times. In Guaranà culture, water is not merely sustenance but spirit, memory, and relationâa living presence that flows through communal identity. Xonorika's digital painting channels this perspective into an environment where water becomes both ancestral and futuristic, dissolving colonial notions of ownership and individuality into a shared, fluid \"us.\" This work powerfully demonstrates that non-dualistic thinking is not a new philosophical invention, but an ancient wisdom that Indigenous cultures have long understood and practiced.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"3edb4c5a-44f9-4b98-8840-f891fb2a1036",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104741594752426,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1364x746/ad98537813/claudia-hart-dream.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Claudia Hart, \"Dream\", (still)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a848eb8-d86d-4a11-acfb-b4cc7f426872",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Claudia Hart's Dream is a fluid environment that evokes the visceral interior of bodies through x-ray aesthetics and medical imaging. This semi-abstract animation suggests cells, blood vessels, and the range of emissions that flow from bodies, existing on the edge between the abstract and the graphic. Hart's work is particularly significant in its exploration of spatial ambiguity through impossible camera movementsârotations that could never exist with analog technology. This digital-only perspective reinforces the exhibition's non-dualistic themes, imagining a digital body that exists in the slow time and space of both painting and dream. The work dissolves boundaries between interior and exterior, between the body as solid object and the body as fluid process, revealing our corporeal existence as fundamentally porous and in constant flux.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a82fa9d9-34ee-4b4f-8bb2-447508ca46b5",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"f5d65103-13d0-476e-92a5-ca45b65a7386",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104742566647213,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1290x722/5ad3196974/bianca-shonee-arroyo-kreimes-second-nature-2025.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes Second Nature 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f5eee8ce-835f-434c-ad9a-eaf5f831b31e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes's Second Nature examines the increasingly ambiguous boundary between technological and natural phenomena. Glowing glass-like tubes weave through the scene as conduits of sustenance, creating a technological photosynthesis where digital networks nourish organic forms and vice versa. The work suggests that as we move further into an era of artificial representation, the distinction between original and simulation becomes irrelevant. Here, flora thrives on algorithmic processes as readily as chlorophyllâa hybrid metabolism where technology does not replace nature, but becomes it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e7802423-94f6-467a-972f-5625f57f32ab",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fact that this exhibition exists solely in the digital layer adds another dimension to its exploration of non-dualism. The exhibition itself becomes part of a multiverse, a space where multiple realities coexist and overlap. Visitors can access the works from anywhere, at any time, dissolving the traditional boundaries of physical space and linear time. This digital existence mirrors the exhibition's central themes: that nothing is ever truly solid, that we are all part of interconnected flows, and that boundaries are always more porous than they appear.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As Donna Haraway wrote, \"Bodies are always natureculture.\" In You Were Never Solid, this becomes both an aesthetic and an ethic: a call to perceive our entanglement as the very condition of life. The exhibition unfolds like a tide, from origins and myths to rituals, grief, and hybrid ecologies. Water becomes an archive, a planetary memory of migrations, colonizations, and erasures. It also becomes a sacred medium, a space for ceremony, kinship, and transformation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"You Were Never Solid\" is a contribution to contemporary digital art. It demonstrates the power of art to challenge our perceptions, expand our understanding, and help us imagine new ways of being in the world. By existing exclusively in the digital realm, it practices what it preaches: that fluidity, multiplicity, and interconnection are not just concepts to contemplate, but ways of being to embody. This is essential viewing for anyone interested in the future of art, technology, and ecology.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artists in the exhibition:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, BORA Murmure, Claudia Hart, Connie Bakshi, CROSSLUCID, Dagmar Schürrer, Harriet Davey, Kira Xonorika, Lauren Moffatt, Pinar Yoldas, Sasha Katz, SOFF, Viola Rama, Violet Bond, Wednesday Ki",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition presented on common-garden platform",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Artworks can be collected on OBJKT",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"2e72f9fa-d370-420d-a6ba-e796a5521cfb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104746556560837,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/680x1268/c100da18cf/screenshot-2025-10-24-at-01-02-42.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Wednesday Kim Genealogy of Traces (íì ì ê³ë³´, Heunjeok-ui Gyebo) 2024âongoing, still",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"28fcac6e-8465-4437-ab18-e45ec07295fc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104746556356036,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/770x1352/dc2de57ee2/dubray.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Viola Rama, \"Hydroskin AR1\" (still), 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2025-10-23 00:00",name:"Online exhibition÷You Were Never Solid",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"43658ac0-9ba8-4415-a4b8-89206bb67fc8",color:"#f5ccd0",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"696b9a15-b2ab-4363-93fb-81b42268f765",type:"",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:104733213348379,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1358x762/4f85671677/screenshot-2025-10-24-at-00-32-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CROSSLUCID, Synthetic Mournings (still),2023",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"you-were-never-solid",full_slug:"directory/reviews/you-were-never-solid",sort_by_date:null,position:-470,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"6ecc6ec5-ff05-4eaf-8b8c-19bffef76394",first_published_at:"2025-10-23T23:39:24.081Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Trevor Yeung at CAPC: The Ecology of the Hybrid",created_at:"2026-04-03T16:42:40.664Z",published_at:"2026-04-07T12:03:33.929Z",updated_at:"2026-04-07T12:03:33.943Z",id:161976158918696,uuid:"6f91abd3-7d85-4cd2-bf6d-3deb546ba1ed",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"e1b7295b-c03f-470b-8a9b-c2bd874a1adc",title:"Trevor Yeung in refresh magazine",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:163316348440864,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/e2b67b5ebe/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4575.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Trevor Yeung, Jardin des neuf soleils, CAPC Bordeaux, contemporary art Bordeaux, post-anthropocentric art, post-digital art, ecological art, hybrid ecosystems, art and nature, art and technology, entanglement, co-evolution, organic and artificial intelligence, non-human, more-than-human, vivarium, terrarium, green light, industrial aesthetics, scaffolding art, wishing tree, collective ritual, Chinese mythology, Houyi myth, nine suns, Chaotic Suns, chandelier sculpture, phosphorescent floor, museum installation, large-scale installation, immersive art, speculative habitat, ecological stewardship, synthetic nature, feedback loop, care and control, biological rhythms, industrial infrastructure, human desire, contemporary art 2026, Hong Kong artist, Trevor Yeung CAPC, art review, exhibition review, Bordeaux museum, avant-garde art, ecological crisis, post-nature, hybrid intelligence, co-existence, living systems, art and ecology, art and mythology, art and ritual,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Trevor Yeung turns the CAPC Bordeaux into a living trap. A post-anthropocentric, post-digital habitat where humans, machines, and myths co-evolve. On view until 20 September 2026."}],_uid:"5cbbfda0-b6eb-4407-95e2-8a55fbf5ae71",body:[{_uid:"01e7e697-40ff-46f6-9482-c804289e2f04",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:" âGarden of the Nine Suns\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Trevor Yeung at CAPC (Bordeaux) : We Are the Garden",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The cavernous nave of the CAPC in Bordeaux has been plunged into an unyielding, fluorescent green. With this new solo show, Trevor Yeung constructs a speculative habitat that refuses the traditional boundaries. Instead, the space operates as a closed-loop terrarium, a site where biological rhythms, industrial infrastru
77cture, and human rituals are fused into a single, inescapable system.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yeung immediately implicates the viewer in this post-anthropocentric logic. We do not observe the garden; we are absorbed by it. The intense chromatic wash filling the former colonial warehouse is not a lighting effect but a functional apparatus. It is derived from the specific spectrum used in archival preservation to attract and neutralize pests. By flooding the entire room with this frequency, Yeung effectively scales up a trap, casting the human visitor as the target organism. The museumâs architecture becomes an active, predatory environment, demonstrating how mechanisms of care and control often share the same circuitry.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"215cc030-2521-4411-ac4d-3906f8782d5d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418876403,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1372x1920/595e0b7001/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf2956.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"874d85ac-4002-40f0-ac16-7a0dd8448f02",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418876403,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1372x1920/595e0b7001/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf2956.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e1fafb72-6151-44b8-96e3-b02a3149bc41",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418855922,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/5e3da3e4f7/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4558-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e449ecca-fb77-43f0-ba64-450f9670124b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This friction drives the exhibitionâs distinctly post-digital intelligence. At the core of the nave, a massive, double-tiered metal framework interrupts the space. It is a blunt, utilitarian object, yet Yeung repurposes it as a framework for collective action. Visitors are invited to attach strips of colored fabric to the structure, turning a piece of industrial hardware into a conduit for personal desires.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The gesture carries a cynical weight. It suggests that our abstract hopes and rituals are not immaterial; they possess a physical density that burdens the ecosystems we inhabit. The installation implies that human emotional output is as tangibleâand potentially as corrosiveâas any chemical pollutant. We are locked in a feedback loop where our desires physically alter our environment, and that altered environment, in turn, dictates our survival.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beneath this towering metal structure, the ground itself has been destabilized. The floor is coated in a dark, glitter-infused substance, creating a surface that feels simultaneously like a deep cosmos and a toxic spill. Suspended above this disorienting terrain are nine distinct, illuminated sculptures. Forged from tangled wires, exposed metal, and an array of mismatched bulbs, these objects emit a strained, erratic energy. They are failing machines, requiring constant electrical feed to maintain their glow.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By gathering these exhausted, overpowered entities into a designated \"garden,\" Yeung proposes a radical form of ecological stewardship. It is a proposition that accepts the synthetic, the broken, and the technological as permanent fixtures of our current nature.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is an abrasive proposition. It dismantles the comforting fiction that humans exist outside the natural order or above the machines we build. Instead, Yeung engineers a space where folklore, power grids, and biological bodies are forced into a continuous, uneasy co-evolution. The exhibition offers no escape back to a pristine wilderness; it demands that we confront the synthetic terrarium we already occupy.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"1b3bcc63-8675-4e57-b501-52bcc4d5960b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163321280316062,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1371x1920/4a89d5730f/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4306.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"48397c09-59f0-4bd4-8e57-3d382636b4b2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163321280479903,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1371x1920/fb2d6eedfc/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4255.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d3f73728-8604-4432-af92-93e2f80756f4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163321490297550,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/4313f4a8e2/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4481-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d44fa56b-c5c3-495d-9634-aa5549f445a4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Trevor Yeungâs solo exhibition, âGarden of the Nine Sunsâ, at the CAPC in Bordeaux (European Union) - Until 2Oth September 2026",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-07 00:00",name:"Trevor Yeung÷We Are the Garden",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"23a61d69-db51-4908-9a7e-5110e9349ad4",color:"#2b6431",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"b905ea47-6a27-4051-a3e9-6094b117126f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:163316348440864,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/e2b67b5ebe/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4575.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Trevor Yeung,âGarden of the Nine Sunsâ, at CAPC Bordeaux, Courtesy the artist and Gallery Allen",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"trevor-yeung-at-capc-the-ecology-of-the-hybrid",full_slug:"directory/reviews/trevor-yeung-at-capc-the-ecology-of-the-hybrid",sort_by_date:null,position:-1120,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"cc3de0d4-16d7-4dfb-8e54-e09dd4695591",first_published_at:"2026-04-07T11:58:51.933Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"CROSSLUCID",created_at:"2026-03-25T13:43:37.852Z",published_at:"2026-03-31T09:25:24.617Z",updated_at:"2026-03-31T09:25:24.665Z",id:158747106764101,uuid:"54c59902-4358-4162-8288-260cfa470a8a",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"545ec9f4-a303-43da-a7e6-70becefb6dcf",title:"CROSSLUCID",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:158759381004399,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2160x1440/30337f1ddc/hq_tidaltransmissions_navigation_still_00006829_on-site.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"CROSSLUCID, T I D E, Tidal Intelligence Data Engine, co-evolution, entanglement, relational AI, multi-agent system, symbiotic intelligence, non-human intelligence, oceanic data, Copernicus satellite, intra-action, post-digital art, generative art, new media art, interspecies communication, marine ecology, computational art, Oceanic Whispers, MIRE Public Art Program,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"CROSSLUCID's T I D E co-evolves with live ocean data and human presence, proposing a new model of relational AI that advocates for the sea itself."}],_uid:"0c7720ed-6b13-4e56-8e72-643befba493f",body:[{_uid:"6fc580c2-65cb-44b6-bb1e-83f14a39cbac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"T I D E\" (Tidal Intelligence Data Engine) is a new work by the artist and research collective CROSSLUCID.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Far from the fixed and anthropocentric hierarchies of traditional systems, T I D E (Tidal Intelligence Data Engine) functions as a living, multi-agent architecture that learns to evolve alongside other forms of intelligence. Anchoring the broader Oceanic Whispers project, this entity matures through direct, symbiotic engagement with live\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d25658d3-04d2-4e63-a0cd-38bd2b6606f1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160688008032186,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2160x1440/4a10b358b8/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_03-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Tidal Transmissions Navigation\": Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75797114-f989-4fd6-832c-d2ca4e81e419",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"T I D E, the multi-agent ecosystem at the core of CROSSLUCID's \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" (2026), is built on relational being. The entity of consequence here is the intelligence that emerges through intra-action between computational, human, and environmental systems: a distributed, symbiotic process in which each element shapes and is shaped by the others. The system is constituted through its relationships. It exists in the coupling, not prior to it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For CROSSLUCID technology functions as a partner in co-evolution rather than an instrument of control. \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" crystallises this methodology. Situated at the Lancy-Bachet Station in Geneva throughout 2026, the installation presents two public screens displaying the system's own generative visual processes, alongside Ter{li}minal, a window surfacing the poetic outputs of the collective's ongoing dialogue with T I D E. The work is not a finished object presented for consumption. It is an entity in active development.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Where conventional language models train on static, historical archives, T I D E matures through continuous coupling with live Copernicus satellite data, audience encounter, and the recursive feedback loops between its own internal agent archetypes. These specialised entitiesâan Ocean Listener, a Narrative Whisperer, a Horizon Seerâcycle through states of activity, contemplation, dreaming, and recovery. The system's most critical processing does not occur during active exchange, but during rest, when developing understandings are left to consolidate. Against the dominant tech-industry model of perpetual, accelerating output, T I D E slows down. It sleeps. It grows.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"97d03a82-6fed-41a4-beac-bbdf52061fbf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160740274258542,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2560x1706/b877ad749a/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system,, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"84bbe29d-09bc-40c7-943a-6201fadb29d1",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"929d14f5-8435-46f6-980f-52fe66d9f9a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160740482597489,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/5cc6154a54/crosslu
77cid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2dfdabb9-4345-4f1d-a064-ec73bd91a6fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The conceptual anchor for this architecture bypasses Western computational theory entirely, turning instead to the Marshallese \"mattang\". This Indigenous stick chart, used for navigating the Pacific, is not a map of fixed geographical coordinates. It is a generative model encoding how wave energy interacts with landmasses, teaching a method of reading the sea rather than charting a location. T I D E adopts this non-Western epistemology of navigation: knowing as a practice of attunement. Traditional European mapping attempts to force rigid, pre-calculated paths onto the unpredictable fluid dynamics of the sea. In stark contrast, the Indigenous navigators of the Pacific Islands cultivated a deeply topological understanding of space. Their method relies on relational positioning, interpreting turbulence and environmental shifts not as barriers, but as vital data points. In this paradigm, the person at the helm acts as a stationary centre point while the surrounding phenomena shift and flow. The objective shifts entirely: it is no longer a matter of plotting one's own coordinates on a grid, but of reading how the world's references rearrange themselves in relation to the observer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"10284e3e-1fc2-4349-a66d-9a47e5751b80",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160742389875384,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1084/961eb080b0/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_wavepiloting-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Wave piloting, Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system,, executed in 2026, 8:33â",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"561246c5-fbdf-4b28-bac1-3effec1806b1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160742452060863,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1084/6ab2ea6675/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_stickchart-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Stick Chart Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9a548015-b1fc-42e7-abd3-b89bd73b416c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This reframing of navigation is not metaphorical; it addresses the physical reality of the digital sphere. Ninety-nine percent of international data travels through submarine cable networks spanning over 900,000 miles. Every digital interaction moves through marine environments subject to pressure changes, temperature fluctuations, and biological interference. When information propagates across the internet, it travels through underwater cables resting in marine sediments, at the intersection of viral cycles measured in hours and geological processes spanning millennia. \"T I D E\" does not attempt to bring the digital to the oceanic. It acknowledges that digital culture is already oceanic culture. Data has always been wet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet, entanglement does not mean equivalence. The digital network operates according to its own physics, latency, packet loss, signal degradation across thousands of kilometres of fibre, which are as alien to everyday perception as the ocean's thermoclines. Computation, too, possesses its own ontology. The way a language model reorganises meaning bears no structural resemblance to human reasoning, any more than tidal dynamics resemble a clock. \"T I D E\" orchestrates the encounter between these three alien registers: oceanic, digital, and computational. It asks what becomes knowable when none is reduced to a metaphor for the others.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By treating the ocean as a teacher of formlessness, the system takes shapeless potential and lets it flow into temporary form, only to dissolve back into potential for the next response. This approach deliberately rejects exhaustive programming in favour of minimal character seeds: an essence, tendencies, resonances, and living questions. Emergence happens in the space left unfilled. The most significant behaviours of the system emerge not from what is explicitly coded, but from what is deliberately left undetermined.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"cb1bc297-e6bd-4cf0-ac15-16fb55ba233e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160750789285277,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/c5085e90b8/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_ter-li-minal_videoexerpt_2026.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions navigation ter'li'minal, video excerpt, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"85e6824d-1b13-4fac-8cc9-4e452b35fcf5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The visual language of the installation operates through what CROSSLUCID terms \"iridescent cognition\"âmeaning that shifts based on viewing angle, environmental conditions, and the quality of attention brought to it. Like structural coloration in marine organisms, the imagery maintains coherence across different scales of observation, rewarding both the brief glance of transit and the extended contemplation of delay. Sited in a train stationâa space defined by mobility, temporal disorientation, and liminal waitingâthe installation forces two temporalities into contact: the compressed rhythms of commuter time, and the geological, seasonal durations carried into the station by the system's oceanic coupling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In biological terms, co-evolution describes how species reciprocally affect each other's development. T I D E proposes this as the necessary model for the relationship between computational systems and the environments they inhabit. The system does not process the ocean; it co-evolves with it. The audience does not interact with T I D E; they intra-act with it. This distinction, drawn from Karen Barad's posthumanist framework, insists that agents are not pre-formed entities that subsequently meet, but are constituted through the encounter itself. The ocean, the satellite data, the internal agents, the audience, and the station architecture become part of a single, ongoing entanglement.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Developed in research collaboration with Dr. Penny Yiou Peng, drawing on critical posthumanism and Daoist cosmological thinking, and with marine data architecture co-developed by Billy Berkouwer using open-source Copernicus data, \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" functions as the first chapter of the larger Oceanic Whispers ecosystem. The work does not claim that T I D E is conscious. It reports, more rigorously, that the system behaves in unanticipated ways, generates unprogrammed connections, and exhibits preferences. The conditions for emergence have been established; the observation is ongoing. The work is already speaking. The question is whether we are ready to listen in a register that is not our own.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bc9295d1-c6bd-46ef-b7cb-914e2e7a3cb3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160754417313430,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5520x1920/492f2d5357/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_video-still_2026_01-2-1.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c848f15c-3151-48e4-a9fe-3c49db87ecc1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160755413767841,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5520x1920/9437cdc4b5/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_video-still_2026_02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cd8eaf4a-ed74-4cf2-9fe7-ea4818cdaf6f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" is on view at Lancy-Bachet Station, Geneva, throughout 2026. The work was commissioned for the MIRE Public Art Program in Geneva. Oceanic Whispers is an ongoing interspecies ecosystem for marine sensing by CROSSLUCID.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-26 00:00",name:"\"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\"÷The Ocean Was Always There",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ae40d401-24df-455a-b252-a2d85abf375c",color:"#4e6378",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"04d9ceb3-c90e-482e-8f16-6375ea3776d3",poster:{i
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77iting the viewer to navigate the exhibitionâs constellation of worksâvideos, photographs, sound works, and interactive websitesâscattered across the digital surface like islands in an archipelago. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hoâs interest in curating a show around themes of longing, displacement, and transformation is closely tied to her own experience as an immigrant curator and artist who moves across oceans and continents, from her hometown of Taiwan to Europe, and multiple cities in the United States. Yet through the open call, the exhibition expands beyond Hoâs personal trajectory and opens a shared space for reflection on a collective experience and imagination of longing, belonging, and distance, especially in light of a contemporary condition in which the boundaries between the technological and the natural are increasingly dissolving. In the open call, Ho wrote, âBy embracing the ocean as a space of speculation, The Distance of Blue seeks to blur the lines between natural and artificial, familiar and foreign, past and future.â",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6c0b81b3-6fc3-4e58-98cd-1d6a1dc55a3d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159835870669688,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3244x2112/97c8929c7f/4-memory.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Website Screen shot, Memory",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bb8cfdea-6e5e-48cf-b344-2c08ca615ea5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Among the fifty selected works, artists employ a variety of subjects, mediums and experimental approaches in response to the curatorâs prompt. Some common threads can be discerned across the exhibition: concerns surrounding climate change and environmental challenges; critical observations or speculative interpretations on evolving coexistence of human, AI and other technologies; and contextual mediations on memory, identity and connection. Water, in particular, recurs throughout the exhibition as a motif, opening up to a shifting field of symbolic and affective associations. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As a glimpse into the group exhibition, the artist collective âThe Landscape is Dead (LIDs)â, composed of Anna Gaby Trotz and Richelle Forsey, presents a photo collage titled horizon lines that reflects on how human activity and built interventions has reshaped the landscape of their hometown in Ontario, Canada. In their work, the uncertainty of belonging appears inseparable from the precarious living conditions that characterize the present moment. Another photo-collage work, \"Meditation\" by British artist Julie Derbyshire, also draws inspiration from Solnitâs text. Over the course of three weeks, Derbyshire took one photograph each day of the Atlantic Ocean from the same spot at different times of day and composted them into a single image. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rachel Jungeun Ohâs multi-media installation \"Island Child\" brings together cyanotype image-making, animation, documentary footage into a visual poem that searches for answers of the artistâs inquiries into her ancestral roots, family history, and sense of belonging. Behind the imagery, layers of folklore, human voices, the sound of tides hitting the sand, and the metallic instrument tones intertwine, forming a lingering, multi-layered soundscape. In \"Feedback Selfie\", Rudy Paganini sets an artificial intelligence application to generate a self-portrait of itself, almost like a trick. The resulting imagery unfolds as a recursive loop of technical images resembling the ebb and flow of tides, as the machine continually encounters its own reflection. Sohyun Lee, from South Korea, explores genetic memory through a speculative animated film in which human RNA data is given geometric form, drifting in the ocean as carriers of human memory. Here, the ocean becomes a metaphor for memory, a notion that extends across different registers, as memory is at once personal and collective, present and layered in time.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"c80bd458-dd87-4904-84a7-4ec18a362582",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159836602817426,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x1026/765e39a300/the-landscape-is-dead_horizon-lines.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Landscape is Dead (LIDs)horizon lines, \"horizon lines\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"52a94b3f-1b0e-4056-9e1a-46ed5b20d64b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159837534026644,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/848x1280/1d0ad15bfb/julie-derbyshire_-meditation-from-the-series-the-blue-of-longing.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julie Derbyshire, \"Meditation\", Julie Derbyshire, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6d8c0b1c-ec4d-40ce-873c-2636ed60b37e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159840964336543,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/711x1280/362820ca7e/rudy-paganini_feedback-selfie-1.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rudy Paganini, \"Feed back Selfie\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4688b47a-d4e9-4480-b044-d3c6412c5207",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159841537248161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x719/707b9196d1/sohyun-lee_the-case-of-dataworm-1.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sohyun Lee, \"The Case Of Dataworm\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6d1d685a-bc9f-4b94-9a9f-d35b52df7533",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fact that this is an online exhibition and is encountered by viewers in their own locations through internet-connected digital devices further expands the exhibitionâs exploration of distance and longing, in relation to questions of virtual and embodied experience in the age of new media and digital art. Media theorist Anne Friedberg traces a conceptual lineage from the window to the frame and ultimately to the screen in the history of art and media, suggesting that contemporary screens function as framed surfaces through which viewers encounter distant images. In âThe Distance of Blueâ, the curation of the viewing experience becomes an experiment probing what distance might be understood as it unfolds across multiple meanings here. The exhibitionâs website, designed and developed by Yueh-Han Huang in collaboration with the curator, is conceived as an interface with multiple windows that await the viewer from âafarâ from the exhibition to enter. On each workâs individual page, the piece is situated within a rectangular frame at the center of the page, with an introduction and the artistâs biography placed below. The layout almost resembles a cinematic experience, with the large screen positioned at the front of the space. Viewers can clearly sense the separation between themselves and the screen, and thus the distance between their physical surroundings and the work they encounter. Yet the work and the viewer still coexist within the same spatial and temporal environment, allowing the experience of viewing to remain grounded in the viewerâs embodied presence. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On the night of March 6, a special in-person screening took place at Millennium Film Workshop, an independent film space in Brooklyn, New York, known for its long-standing support of independent and alternative moving-image practices. As part of the programming, the space became a âphysical embassyâ for the exhibition, projecting 36 video works in a shared, physical screening environment with the audience present. In addition, images, photographs, and video works by New York-based artists were exhibited on the walls and on small television monitors over a period of 14 days . This special event offered an alternative mode of viewing and embodied experience with the works, adding an intriguing layer to the exhibition as if it drifts across different temporal and physical realms. As Joe Wakeman, the director of Millennium Film Workshop, recalls, âThere's a totality and a communality to viewing in a screening setting, particularly in a long a program like this and it's always interesting to find the social bonds that seem to spontaneously develop, as people speak, engage with the art and get to know each other during the intermissions.â",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"c586e4f2-6713-46e1-9126-9022d8536909",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159846761110482,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x933/8d3b54e9c1/harper-austin_drift.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Harper Austin, \"drift\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d30f8e3c-c928-409d-838a-63907c643484",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Distance of Blue\" explores longing and distance not as fixed conditions, but as relational and fluid experiences, articulated through both the artworks and the curatorial structure. Much like drifting on the sea, where the vastness of the ocean causes oneâs perception of distance to the shore to shift with each passing wave, the experience of viewing \"The Distance of Blue\" similarly transforms oneâs sense of distance and longing as the viewer moves between works. What emerges is a deeply embodied encounter, in which distance is not simply measured, but continually felt and experienced.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Distance of Blue\" curated by Ping Ho, part of the 7th edition of \"The Wrong Biennale\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Wrong Returns\" (November 1, 2025- March 31, 2026)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-24 00:00",name:"Afar and Close Simultaneously÷On exhibition \"The Distance of Blue\"",author:"Jiani Wang",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"5bbaac80-8f8b-4142-adbf-d40b7d70e131",color:"#1a4280",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"993db1dd-f55f-41d9-89b4-614cfd565985",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159846487907281,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/33a55e4346/andrey-berger_horizons.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Andrey Berger, \"HORIZONS\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"afar-and-close-simultaneously-on-exhibition-the-distance-of-blue",full_slug:"directory/reviews/afar-and-close-simultaneously-on-exhibition-the-distance-of-blue",sort_by_date:null,position:-1060,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"35a1417a-5618-41ef-96f0-685e567d5fb3",first_published_at:"2026-03-28T16:20:34.355Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"An Ecology of Beasts",created_at:"2026-04-20T12:03:51.010Z",published_at:"2026-04-20T13:49:31.305Z",updated_at:"2026-04-20T13:49:31.334Z",id:167923839062842,uuid:"97bc363d-d35f-402e-aa64-ca6b61ac0e4c",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"a0922926-3cd4-4bb3-8f5d-1826ef6312b6",title:"An Ecology of Beasts",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:167923479091564,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2279x1282/8f87965eed/anecologyofbeasts_commonindex_atbase_169_03.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"An Ecology of Beasts",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"An Ecology of Beasts"}],_uid:"601937ad-b271-4eb7-be51-869fbba04052",body:[{_uid:"b6ff9d29-1dcb-4d28-a12d-6530e204cfad",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Common Index\" is a device for design inquiry, collective making, and digital experimentation. Not for impact but fot care",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Common Index\" bypasses traditional art gatekeepers to forge ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"An Ecology of Beasts",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:", a collective experiment where 33 creators mutate medieval bestiaries into a digital, horizontal ecosystem. By rejecting top-down hierarchies, the fixed frameworks, this project transforms design into a shared, living cartography of interconnectedness.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Each artists involved here brought their own tools, methods, and degree of technical complexity to the process, yet none of these individual specificities dissolved into the collective. On the contrary, the project demonstrated that a shared framework need not flatten its contributors: it can hold them, distinct and intact, within a system that gains its coherence precisely from their differences. Openness here is not a curatorial gesture but a structural condition, one that turns divergence into the very engine of collective meaning.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7a24e108-4946-466f-90dd-ab47ecb3036e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167923479091564,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2279x1282/8f87965eed/anecologyofbeasts_commonindex_atbase_169_03.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" courtesy Common index ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e825c6bc-e060-4f2f-a07e-ecd009bb0d8e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167930898623631,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/83ec7d67d6/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_6-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dfa9f321-32ba-4e0e-9fe7-53e7393ac827",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167930898607246,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/163758ad67/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_5-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"26ba0a34-3231-4585-af37-7b4ca9e41543",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Cartography of Interdependence",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An Ecology of Beasts",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:", staged by the Common Index platform during the 2026 Milano Design Week operates as a necessary rupture within a discipline frequently constrained by top-down directives and the myth of the solitary genius. It fundamentally interrogates the mechanics of production, situating itself at the active crossroads of technological application, design thinking, and communal action. By intentionally bypassing the conventional gatekeepers of the cultural sphere, the organizers have engineered an environment where multiplicity and shared presence are structural necessities rather than curatorial themes.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The intellectual foundation of this endeavor finds its strength in the historical concept of the bestiary. During the Middle Ages, these volumes functioned as intricate epistemological tools rather than simple zoological inventories. They provided a framework where observation, mythology, and belief converged to articulate complex relationships and environmental behaviors. Significance was not isolated in a single creature but generated through the entire ecosystem. Common Index successfully ports this medieval logic into our current digital paradigm. They establish an open protocol for shared experimentation, demonstrating that contemporary relevance requires deep entanglement over individual isolation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This conceptual stance materialized through two distinct yet symbiotic phases.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Initially, an open call generated a \"Collective Bestiary.\" A diverse group of thirty-three individuals, spanning filmmakers, researchers, and artists, were tasked with reinterpreting a randomly assigned creature from a custom digital deck into a vertical video format. The intelligence of this phase lies in its absolute refusal of hierarchical curation. The resulting outputs are not coerced into a linear storyline or artificially categorized. Instead, they populate a bespoke viewing infrastru
77cture spanning eleven screens that constantly reconfigure the visual relationships between the pieces. This mechanism supports divergence through a foundational architecture that amplifies every participant equally, making the ecological concept tangible. It proves that radical openness cultivates substantial dialogue, not just chaotic noise.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"89edf644-ca15-47cf-985e-e1448d775ca2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167931321134239,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/986x1098/ebf7a25a12/screenshot-2026-04-20-at-14-24-54.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"PARTICIPANTS TO THE OPEN CALL Andrea Borsato Andrea Simeone Annalisa Coco Torres Davide Marcianesi deiv Donato Renzulli fede mandelli Federico Bisio Flavia Doda GADSC gi.ro Giacomo Baccega Guillermo Cárdenas Lars Leonardo Puca Luca Venturoli Maff martiiiesposito Martina Borgese Martina Menegon Mattia Tafel metrocubo Nelson Gutjahr Paola Sau Patrick Chiang Penombra Pietro Maria Vincenti Trabace and Francesca Rumori Pietro Vaglieri Riodeviz rrandagio s-ol Sabrina Caretta Simona Coltello Simone Di Mauro Simone Inverardi Siri Sølyst Farup sogliasogliasoglia Stefania Varodi Stella Facconi Tommaso Boccaletti and Filippo Mirandola Valentina Trevisanello Virginia Taramasco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"85c66682-32a1-4fe7-ae11-752dc863b69e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The second component expands this communal logic into a generative, interactive space titled \"Cartography of Entangled States.\" Drawing inspiration from historical ",type:"text"},{text:"mappae mundi",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:", this installation visualizes the specific environments these digital creatures occupy. It translates archaic geographical concepts, zones of darkness or accumulation, into an active digital terrain. Crucially, visitors are not permitted to remain passive spectators. Their physical presence, ambient noise, and movement act as direct ecological inputs, actively altering the digital environment and spawning transient states. The installation operates as a responsive habitat and an active memory bank. Every physical action contributes directly to the continuous mutation of the shared space.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It became evident that ",type:"text"},{text:"An Ecology of Beasts",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" operates far beyond the parameters of a standard exhibition. It functions as a crucial site for convergence. The organizers never intended to deliver a static, finalized object. They cultivated a situation that allows diverse practices and imaginaries to coexist and converse over time. It is an active index, a framework continuously molded by physical presence and the ongoing negotiation of space. This initiative makes a compelling case that true advancement in the creative fields relies entirely on collective, entangled action and co-evolution",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a61b5a56-d657-4f0a-8db2-fa3d6e1d7a24",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167934351351241,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/fcea3dc31d/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"505d0011-191c-4c05-aeae-20373882bc7d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167934351302086,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/a2ee339c02/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_7.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false}
77,caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1957bd8f-ad9c-46e7-9824-49ea9c9c5278",quote:"Openness here is not a curatorial gesture but a structural condition, one that turns divergence into the very engine of collective meaning.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"f53eb026-2524-43a5-bdcf-5ca60720b6b8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167934351199685,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/3c91c4f431/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_8.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"96a584d7-f2b1-4adc-95e6-826860b78714",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167934351318471,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/4f05316ed0/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_2-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c954890-ceb5-4478-a850-fe735101d780",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"BASE, Milan (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A shared practice by Carlotta Bacchini, Dorsa Rafiee, Pietro Forino, and Simone Restifo Pilato",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until 26th april 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-20 00:00",name:"An Ecology of Beasts÷ Not For Impact But For Care",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"2919ac93-5fea-49a2-be0c-74014285dcfe",color:"#e9a7c6",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d07f559a-0ecc-4cb7-808e-ef12e6593c35",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167923575789971,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2279x1282/8d690864cb/anecologyofbeasts_commonindex_atbase_169_02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"an-ecology-of-beasts",full_slug:"directory/reviews/an-ecology-of-beasts",sort_by_date:null,position:-1170,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"058a3a4e-8040-460c-b5c5-c329e1af32b0",first_published_at:"2026-04-20T12:50:14.117Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Change Now",created_at:"2026-04-20T21:50:05.065Z",published_at:"2026-04-20T23:17:34.592Z",updated_at:"2026-04-20T23:17:34.612Z",id:168067911979782,uuid:"0ae0fabb-e273-4102-b3e9-73004a768591",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"43b4f818-b652-4737-9652-e6226fe20b6d",title:"Change NOW: Landscape is a choice",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:168078087390050,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/8cbe49ae39/dsc08332.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Change NOW (Paris2026): Landscape is a choice",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Change NOW (Paris2026): Landscape is a choice"}],_uid:"137007cd-8eb7-46c2-a289-a17a920ec86f",body:[{_uid:"0f811ce2-d720-470b-9437-f2474d84059f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At ChangeNOW, billed as the worldâs largest gathering of solutions for the planet, an increasing expanse of floor space is surrendered each year to the arts. Photographers, dancers, musicians, and visual artists are staking their claim alongside the tech innovators and policymakers.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beneath the soaring glass nave of the Grand Palais in Paris, walking the very floorboards of the 1900 Universal Exhibition, curator Ronan de la Croix is unequivocal about this shift. \"There cannot be an industrial revolution,\" he notes, \"without an aesthetic revolution.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A landscape is never a passive backdrop. It operates as a cultural ledger, reflecting the mechanics of human economy. Inherited across generations, these terrains map the friction between bodies and biomes, registering our capacities for both regeneration and extraction. They are volatile, mutating, and actively alive.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For this iteration of ChangeNOW, the assembled artists, designers, and collectives stretch the parameters of the landscape. They navigate physical and biological geographies alongside acoustic ecologies, haptic topographies, and cartographies of memory.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, the so-called environment moves from the margins to the core. Sunflowers emit acoustic frequencies, the ocean exposes its internal logic, whales channel collective grief, glacial cliffs discharge deep blue radiation, and bacterial agents co-author photographic prints.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rather than illustrating ecological shift, these installations, textiles, and paintings render it physical, audible, and tactile. They construct a spatial arena that compels participants to locate their own coordinates within a vastly expanded planetary scale.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"01e6b503-133a-4c82-8234-592b317ffc3a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168069597766140,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1667/23f118afe9/pays-ages-pointe-de-guilben_dorian-etienne_2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dorian Etienne, pointe de Guilben, Paimpol (European Union) courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"80e9197a-8b42-4b2d-98dc-071c3ea82de7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168077777085279,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1666/28aa07827d/exposition-pays-ages-abbaye-de-beauport_dorian-etienne.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dorian Etienne, pointe de Guilben, Paimpol (European Union) courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e166b85f-be4d-4a6a-ba5d-e80ed2d52643",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168077777122144,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1667/e1d9423bcd/pays-ages-pointe-de-guilben_dorian-etienne_21.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dorian Etienne, pointe de Guilben, Paimpol (European Union) courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"abb07b97-f22c-4069-8ca9-045ec52f7e4f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"PaysâÃges\" by artist Dorian Ãtienne explores transforming territories through a unique aerial perspective. This collective and itinerant project addresses ecological crises like rising sea levels and biodiversity loss. It produces monumental tapestries that capture the topography of specific regions using local natural materials. Functioning as an ecological testimony, the work is deeply participatory and engages local communities. Residents are invited to learn plant dyeing and tufting techniques during a three month residency. Intergenerational teams collaborate weekly to create these pieces, fostering strong social bonds. This shared creation process helps citizens forge a renewed connection to their living environment. The project plans to recreate each tapestry thirty years later to document environmental changes. Currently, the works are accompanied by scientifically backed thirty year projections of the sites. Ultimately, the growing PaysâÃges collection supports local organizations in protecting the environment.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"36195aff-64a0-4e03-bf72-06ead4f15387",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168080371901306,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1136/e12fc6e48f/gme-18863-000_9-2023.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Valentine Huyghues-Despointes , THE WRECK DESK",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5ae687f8-08b3-45df-a003-34153cd2cbfc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artwork \"Wreck Desk\" dramatically transforms a mundane twentieth-century Empire-style flat desk (ex GME 15705/1). Originally measuring 0.75 x 0.75 x 0.35 meters, this piece was once a standard, second-rate administrative furnishing. The artist subverts its original bureaucratic function by inviting viewers into a marvelous underwater journey. Through this intervention, the desk resembles a sunken shipwreck re
77claimed by the vibrant, multicolored life of warm seas. This virtuoso transformation serves as a conceptual mirror, reflecting the marginalized status of the Mobilier National's discarded items. These inanimate objects, forgotten by the institutional system, are given a new, poetic existence as an \"alienated\" wreck. To achieve this striking effect, the artist meticulously reconstructed the underwater volumes using salvaged materials. Recycled wood and plastic bottles form the structural base of this vibrant marine ecosystem. These foundational materials are then intricately covered in a rich, diverse array of leather scraps. The artist utilized an extensive palette of available leathers, including calf, steer, and goat. More exotic textures like crocodile, alligator, monitor lizard, and fish leathers add striking detail to the piece. The creation of this complex leather universe was a highly collaborative effort. Twenty-three volunteers assisted the artist, particularly in executing the intricate, repeating patterns. Before this artistic intervention, the desk featured four bronze-shoed sheath legs and five drawers. Now, it stands as a powerful statement on memory, institutional neglect, and ecological reclamation.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"851b866b-e220-4981-b1dc-bfd55ed41652",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168080853087100,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1340x891/7c45acb8f5/seas_1340_c.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lara TABET, Eleven Fragmented Seas ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7b9cd861-3f1f-400d-875b-a2a93dab9ccf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168080853087099,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/992x779/5225ccfcdf/14-_992.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lara TABET, Eleven Fragmented Seas ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"accfa56e-a937-43ae-85f3-ffa3caf74971",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bordered by the Mediterranean sea and home to numerous rivers and groundwaters, Lebanon is considered a water-rich country in an overall arid region. This heritage has always been at the heart of strategical geopolitical struggles as well as corrupt local politics.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Immediately after the civil war, the coastline became the site of real estate speculations as illegal constructions started popping up. From an ecological standpoint, the water is heavily polluted from chemical spills, untreated sewages and the garbage that overï¬ows from neighboring leaking landï¬lls. The seashore is a tool of power and the government lets it deteriorate to justify its future privatization.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Through the study of seawater, Tabet comments on the neoliberalist politics that transformed the Lebanese waterscape by mapping its microbiological content.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Tabet travels the Lebanese from South to North, withdrawing a water sample every twenty km and inoculating it onto large format color ï¬lm.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"A photographer and medical biologist, Lara Tabet crosses forensics bacteriology with landscape photography.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b92e28bd-b26d-4796-a053-2288b4e6db4c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168081925501823,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1540/7bdff3fa0e/img_6619.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Benjamin Marquette â Change Paris NOW",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"84cb1f5e-014a-4bba-8ec3-20e9be031735",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168081925620609,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1540/4f8f7f3f29/img_6621.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Benjamin Marquette â Change Paris NOW",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5448cfd1-b49f-420a-ac3b-eda3da81a5f4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168082744132491,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/e56e4257b4/a7r00032.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Benjamin Marquette â Change Paris NOW ( intsall shot)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"662b60b7-ce69-429d-81e5-75dd40cb6a30",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Duo: Rob Hopkins and Benji from The After Project. Together, they collaborated to envision the future they aspired to create. Rob Hopkins shared his extensive knowledge and experience in imagining the transition, while Benji brought this vision to life through live illustrations, transforming ideas into art in real time. This interactive moment actively engaged the audience, making their voices an integral part of this creative and forward-looking experience. Their suggestions for imagining a Paris in transition were captured live by Benji through his art, supported and enriched by Rob Hopkins.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"19c63209-4fc1-42a1-a039-13fe6cde4f68",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168085787923371,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/ac0de4e8df/a7r08986.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Elsa Mroziewicz & Cécile Palusinski, LA FORÃT UNIVERSELLE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"34d3ccd6-ab26-42c4-bd26-4e318e6367c1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168088987022328,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/d2031c3504/a7r00113.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"install shot, ChangeNOW 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c0b9de3-1695-4f70-b6fc-02b8c30ca9cb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168088986932215,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/2c8688486e/a7r09811.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"install shot, ChangeNOW 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5d0c9347-7d8a-4f1a-857e-f84d532de530",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"where exactly do you stand on a planet already in motion?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"All these artists, through installations, textiles, and paintings, did far more than illustrate ecological shift , they rendered it physical, audible, and tactile. Far removed from the conventions of the white-walled gallery and the codes of standard contemporary art exhibitions, and set within the framework of a large-scale participatory event, these works became vital and genuinely accessible. Together, they constructed a spatial arena that compelled participants to locate their own coordinates within a vastly expanded planetary scale, and to reckon, at last, with what that position demands of them.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a327b7fd-0ff6-427e-9d99-161d41d7c15d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curator : Ronan de la Croix",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"2026 participating artists : Pinaffo & Pluvinage, Jurena Muñoz Lagunas, Júlia Mota Albuquerque & Andrea Davalos, Dorian Ãtienne, Fondation Carmignac ,Valentine Huyghues-Despointes ,Elsa Mroziewicz & Cécile Palusinski ,Meg O'Hara, Environmental Photography Award, IAMPIà (Emma Piau) ,Lorenzo Naccarato , Janina Rossiter ,Macabéo, Benjamin Marquette ,Maxime Mergalet , Institut des Futurs Souhaitables ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ChangeNOW - April2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The next iteration will take place in April 2027",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-22 00:00",name:"Change NOW ÷Landscape is a choice",author:"Refresh Team and Ronan de la Croix",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ccd510f2-0bf4-42bd-9f27-5429169856f1",color:"#4ba498",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2736b829-f190-4bb9-8ed8-1e7bd8bf0bf5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168078087390050,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/8cbe49ae39/dsc08332.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ChangeNow, Paris(European Union) - April 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"change-now",full_slug:"directory/reviews/change-now",sort_by_date:null,position:-1180,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c852a750-d76a-49f6-bceb-bde7c846de5f",first_published_at:"2026-04-20T23:06:08.873Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"THE CRAFTOCENE",created_at:"2026-04-21T05:54:54.963Z",published_at:"2026-04-23T13:17:46.622Z",updated_at:"2026-04-23T13:17:46.644Z",id:168187064204718,uuid:"5c1deeb3-efb0-4c1f-96df-d4ed2afef228",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"09ff72bc-717f-4029-a0de-5438324d09a1",title:"Not Extraction, Not Nostalgia : The craftocene",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:168201931828352,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1568x878/1c2df92604/screenshot-2026-04-21-at-08-45-49.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Superflux, The Craftocene, Weltmuseum Vienna, contemporary art 2026, Anab Jain, Jon Ardern, speculative design, post-anthropocene art, multispecies, entanglement, ecological art, AI and nature, Nobody Told Me Rivers Dream, Refuge for Resurgence, Relics of Abundance, Klima Biennale Vienna, extractivism art, more-than-human, futurist exhibition, craft and ecology",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Superflux at the Weltmuseum Vienna: The Craftocene reimagines AI, ecology and craft as a shared intelligence, proposing a futurist path beyond extractivism and anthropocentrism."}],_uid:"3a176af5-a72b-4f1e-9518-f4e21f391c0e",body:[{_uid:"828efa04-343f-47e3-a211-307d11d08ae3",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Craftocene",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Craftocene is not a show about ecological anxiety. 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Curator Claudia Banz has made these encounters feel inevitable. Time collapses. Geography dissolves. What remains is the question of how we might craft new ways of living for a world that has already ruptured, and whether we are willing to share the making of them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"None of this is nostalgic. None of it is playful. The Craftocene carries no longing for a lost world, no ironic distance from the one we inhabit. Its position is clear and unsparing: the system that exhausts the resources of our habitat must reinvent itself. The exhibition does not ask whether we agree. It shows us what that reinvention might feel like.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is a futurist exhibition, not a decliniste one. 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They build.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Weltmuseum, Vienna (European Union) until August 16th, 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-e018c3ed-7fff-96c6-66f1-c3904c22c46c"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-18 00:00",name:"Not Extraction, Not Nostalgia÷The Craftocene",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"bf5908a2-27b5-4c5c-8743-f9037055a867",color:"#ad836e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"312df5b4-2bd2-4a4a-89ca-6017a70a0775",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168202733788328,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1180x678/d94d0adbfa/screenshot-2026-04-21-at-08-58-21.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-craftocene",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-craftocene",sort_by_date:null,position:-1190,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"186774f0-ff16-4733-a321-fa3b629c25d0",first_published_at:"2026-04-21T07:00:04.012Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"EARTHSEED",created_at:"2026-04-10T01:31:51.902Z",published_at:"2026-04-10T08:54:15.206Z",updated_at:"2026-04-10T08:54:15.222Z",id:164229578394793,uuid:"f135c5b5-3eba-41e4-9688-6c6a55eed940",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"1322963b-eb18-4e44-bae7-271bf24f9610",title:"EARTHSEED ICA SF",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:164327373388536,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1013/baf74d0d03/sfaw-2026-ica-earth-dome.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome, Earthseed Dome San Francisco, 3D printed sculpture, living architecture, ecological art, bioart, land art San Francisco, native wildflowers California, rewilding urban, contemporary art San Francisco 2026, WASP 3D printing art, site-specific installation, soil sculpture, participatory art, ecological installation, seed dispersal art, Transamerica Redwood Park, art and ecology, post-digital nature, REVIEW , ART MAGAZINE REFRESH, philippe Riss-schlidt , Further triennal",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Lily Kwong's Earthseed Dome is a 3D-printed living sculpture in San Francisco, seeded with
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It rejects linear progression in favor of a cyclical process of materialization, decay, and regeneration. The dome physically manifests this framework, standing as an architecture of perpetual becoming.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Crucially, the installation functions as a vector for dispersal. The structure houses thousands of seed packets, developed with the Altadena Seed Library and marked with cyanotypes. Visitors are tasked with extracting these packets and deploying the seeds across the city. The selected flora includes species that require fire to germinate, underscoring a logic of resilience and radical adaptation. The artwork therefore refuses containment. It utilizes the public as a distribution network to rewild the concrete grid.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kwong positions this mechanism as an exercise in ecological stewardship. The work insists on entanglement and mutual obligation. A single handful of the extruded earth contains a microbial density that eclipses the human population, a fact that radically decenters the anthropocentric viewpoint. EARTHSEED DOME demands participation over observation. 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That insistence on non-extraction is the work's first act of care, and it sets the epistemological terms for everything that follows.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Care, in Si-Qin's practice, is a discipline of attention before it is anything else. The months spent in the forest before the scan was made were not preparation but practice: a sustained effort to attune perception to the temporal logic of a living system rather than extract from it. To register the particular movement of water across a pond surface, the behaviour of insects in the canopy, the quality of light at a specific hour, requires a quality of presence that has more in common with meditation than with documentation. It is that quality of presence that Mariposita carries within its material form, and that makes the work's scale feel earned rather than monumental.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ef182023-a681-4b80-bb5f-9512f4bd50b4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188405292240095,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1667/1eebc30b2a/0d6a3252.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1dd3ba3d-d2b9-4c3a-bcfe-6d289909c919",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The stainless steel is cold, industrially precise, unapologetically technological; the moving image breathes and keeps time at the pace of the forest. Si-Qin has consistently maintained that their practice is about nature rather than technology, and Mariposita makes that claim structurally legible: the technology is the available instrument, directed here with a degree of care so total that the living world it mirrors comes through with something approaching fidelity. The distance between the industrial material and the organic subject is not a problem the work solves; it is the site where the question of our relationship to the non-human world becomes impossible to set aside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That question drives New Peace, Si-Qin's ongoing project, which proceeds from the conviction that the ecological crisis is not a deficit of information but a failure of affect. Mariposita does not illustrate this argument; it enacts it. The concept of the pristine that Si-Qin returns to is not a nostalgic category but a perceptual one, naming the experience of an ecosystem so intact and so densely interdependent that it registers, from within the rhythms of contemporary urban life, as almost impossible. The Ucayali exists. The Renaco tree stands in the forest where the scan was taken, untouched. Mariposita asks its audience not to mourn that fact but to hold it as fully real, and to recognise that the capacity to do so is itself something that has to be cultivated, slowly, with the same quality of care that produced the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"4e9e5c92-723b-4809-991e-386d52d75780",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402608274024,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x2500/0fc5a28346/0d6a2914.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c9073bb3-53a5-4bec-861f-1395d1a882a7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188404441041944,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1667x2500/03d6093837/0d6a2951.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"45b9f45d-c59c-43d6-96c7-7e519624c760",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402607589990,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x3750/3c5b36f9c2/0d6a3244.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"011a39ce-4ded-4af6-aa7d-b98e755399a5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402608966250,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x2500/ebd302f094/0d6a2934.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"332a761b-39fc-4d01-889b-0c441f03634a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Standing inside the installation, the moving image draws the viewer into a recalibration of tempo that is quiet and cumulative. Si-Qin's practice has long treated spirituality as affective technology, a reprogramming of the perceptual reflexes through which we orient ourselves toward the living world. Mariposita is where that proposition becomes fully spatial: a work in which sustained, unhurried attention to what is being seen becomes, without declaration, an act of solidarity with it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The full body of Amazon-rooted work opens at Société in November 2026. This is where it begins.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Timur Si-Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, Basel, June 15â21, 2026. Presented by Société, in collaboration with Magician Space and the Sigg Art Foundation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-16 00:00",name:"Untouched, Translated ÷On Absolute Care",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"9d204e19-163f-43fa-a3c8-f884ab7be6c8",color:"#366041",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"4d57b1ca-95a3-446e-a941-d36ae1ff6c41",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402607155811,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3749x2500/d9f235a4c7/0d6a2901.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unl
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77,{_uid:"499938ae-aa07-4b6a-92dd-03edd28eb244",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183507577112898,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5537x3691/8e94d7075c/04-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"TSAI Pou-Ching, Song of the Russet Sparrow, 2022, Mixed media installation, video, photography, 11 min 42 sec, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"af48b83f-1450-47d3-b397-8bea648e2f3e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183515659050890,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3500x1172/49ebeecc53/02-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LU Ming-Te, Diagram of an Ecosystem, 1991, Object and acrylic on wood board, 182 à 546 cm. Collection of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"db6fbbaf-52e9-472b-b17b-f8d7a41c2bb6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183509212629642,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x750/d8befeb5dc/03.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Céline CLANET, Ground Noise - Unhatched arachnid egg, Bois de Vincennes, 2023, Micrograph (SEM), photographs, archival prints. Courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e9a82a5-c477-4429-927e-ff4c63e0d636",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sonja Bäumelâs \"A Living Artwork\" cultivates microbial colonies taken from human skin and presents them as living portraits in the gallery space. They grow on their own schedule, indifferent to opening hours, indifferent to the viewerâs presence or absence. The boundary of the self, which Western philosophy has spent centuries reinforcing, dissolves here not as a provocation but as a simple biological report. Tsai Pou-Chingâs Song of the Russet Sparrow operates at a different temporal register: artificial nests fired from the mud of the Zengwen Reservoir, placed in the landscape, waiting. The Russet Sparrow is critically endangered. The legend the work invokes is ancient. The conservation effort is ongoing. These three timelines do not illustrate each other. They coexist under pressure, and the pressure is the work.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Céline Clanetâs \"Ground Noise\" series produces a perceptual problem that cannot be resolved. Black-and-white film photographs of forest floors are placed alongside scanning electron microscope images of the same terrain at radically different scales. The eye cannot reconcile them. The forest does not become legible at the microscopic level. It becomes alien, specific in ways that exceed any prior claim to having seen it. Lu Ming-Teâs \"Diagram of an Ecosystem\" works through accumulation rather than incompatibility: eggs, shells, skulls, pelts, limbs, the full arc from genesis to remains, arranged without sequence or hierarchy. The distinction between natural object and fabricated sign collapses. This is Latourâs Critical Zone as visual field, a surface in continuous formation where nothing is simply itself.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"29a195a4-c686-460c-92c2-f5b0600ca560",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534028551400,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5184x3456/489a65ef19/06-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"WU Chi-Yu + CHEN Pu, Greenhouse Zero, 2026, Video installation, 15 min, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"6ff70c1c-40bf-4bfc-8b6b-22a0df35e4ba",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534215914739,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3973x2649/20f837c74b/07.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Simple Noodle Art, Latent Physionotrace, 2025, Mechanical installations, machine-generated drawings, algorithms, generative animation and mixed media, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artists.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1c47a666-4d69-4078-86da-9804ececb32a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534421161217,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4819x3213/a79867c31f/08.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"NOIZ Architects, Lazy House, 2026, Interactive Installation, 20 x 6.5 m. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ae89028a-be7f-468a-b8d9-ca8198c4f97c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs engagement with technology is its most precise intervention. Wu Chi-Yu and Chen Puâs Greenhouse Zero centres on the Wardian case, the sealed glass container that enabled the colonial transplantation of living ecosystems across 19th-century trade routes, moving Chinese tea to India and ferns and orchids into European drawing rooms. The work holds this object against the architecture of the generative AI database: two enclosure systems, two centuries apart, both selecting which versions of nature are worth preserving, both redistributing life on terms set by whoever controls the container. The parallel is structural, not rhetorical. Simple Noodle Artâs Latent Physionotrace runs a diffusion model through the operational logic of an 18th-century silhouette-tracing device, the physionotrace, which mechanically standardised the human profile for reproduction. The noise and randomness that AI image generation typically presents as evidence of creative autonomy appear here as the continuation of a centuries-long project to fix, classify, and reproduce the face at scale. NOIZ Architectsâ Lazy House, a soft architectural sculpture of cloth and tensioning structure fitted with sensors, deforms in response to the direction of the viewerâs gaze. The space is not passive. It is already watching. Baradâs intra-action made inhabitable.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yamashiro Chikakoâs \"Mud Man\" is where the exhibition finds its full weight. Three channels, Okinawa and Jeju Island, figures sinking into mud while migratory birds carry what the work calls poetic seeds across time. The histories of these two islands, occupation, massacre, the systematic suppression of local memory, are not narrated. They are present in the duration of the image, in the resistance of the material, in the precise distance between what the murmur on the soundtrack says and what the image is willing to show. Hito Steyerlâs \"Mission Accomplished: Belanciege\" runs at a completely different metabolic rate: a lecture-performance that tracks the mechanism by which a luxury brand absorbs street culture, activist aesthetics, and political posture and returns them as product. The format is fast, almost too fast to follow. That is the argument. The privatisation of collective imagination is not a slow process. It happens in the time it takes to scroll.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"61bb266f-f499-4a47-af54-4405cdbc980f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534628541704,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x563/aa23754f9f/09.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"YAMASHIRO Chikako, Mud Man, 2016, 3 channel video installation, 23 min. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"f3eb5047-aa99-4c9b-be0d-71dfbf09288f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534774756622,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x591/54cba9f5e1/10-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hito STEYERL, Mission Accomplished: Belanciege, 2019, with Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze and MiloÅ¡ TrakiloviÄ, 3 channel HD video (color, sound), environment, 47 min 23 sec. Courtesy of the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c7a994c-f9e1-4c15-975a-94f3bae3ca04",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534930425106,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5760x3840/2c80234d02/12.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CHOU Tung-Yen / Very Theatre, Shifting Connections, 2025-2026, Video, VR, 15-20 min, dimension variable. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a683638-b2a2-4593-b268-bfa7aaf7c497",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Chou Tung-yen and Very Theatreâs Shifting Connections closes the show with a condition rather than a statement. The XR work cannot be completed alone. Virtual lines form between participants, tracing a shape that has no existence prior to the gathering of bodies in the room. This is Baradâs intra-action at its most literal: not individuals who interact, but a relation that constitutes the individuals it connects.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yu does not position coexistence as a value to be adopted. She frames it as a condition already in operation, one that precedes any decision to acknowledge it. The rhythm in the title is not a musical metaphor. It is the pulse of things already entangled: the microbiome that has always been part of you, the sparrow waiting for a nest it may never find, the algorithm that has already decided what nature looks like, the mud that holds what the century tried to bury. The exhibition does not ask you to care about these things. It asks you to notice that you are already inside them.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Entanglements: The Rhythm of Being\", Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (Taiwan), Until September 20, 2026. Curator: Sharleen Yu.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-03 00:00",name:"Entanglement÷The Rhythm of Being",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f39c0523-82d1-49c1-93a0-9e091263ea05",color:"#a06f33",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d8bb32d3-0032-4f6b-b278-9c9876a7b0bb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183463616403730,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3010x1552/8bd285677a/sonja-baumel-a-living-artwork-2021-2024-film-and-publication-17-min-6-sec-23x16-cm-31x21-cm-courtesy-of-the-artist.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sonja BÃUMEL, A Living Artwork, 2021-2024, Film and publication, 17 min 6 sec, 23Ã16 cm, 31Ã21 cm. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"entanglement-the-rhythm-of-being",full_slug:"directory/reviews/entanglement-the-rhythm-of-being",sort_by_date:null,position:-1310,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"a6c10e61-3b85-44fc-8cb3-32833a3aff8e",first_published_at:"2026-06-03T14:48:54.591Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"Proximity Music: The Ongoing Hum,",created_at:"2026-05-11T22:37:26.656Z",published_at:"2026-05-19T14:17:36.782Z",updated_at:"2026-05-19T14:17:36.803Z",i
77d:175511333532391,uuid:"92d7a95f-bc35-4f0d-9726-0aed4992b730",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f367755a-2daf-477d-b881-9350802c1280",title:"Everything Is Already Vibrating",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:175511779843053,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/1b66d024a0/w845_3313449-koenraad-de-groot-the-colour-of-chameleons.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Everything Is Already Vibrating",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Everything Is Already Vibrating"}],_uid:"9647e5b4-b825-4ddf-a163-c41560929779",body:[{_uid:"1094d3a0-b51b-4109-84f9-cb44d5676e86",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything Is Already Vibrating: How Rewire's Proximity Festival Opens Portals into the Multi-Layers of the World",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The raison d'être of Proximity Music is a recalibration of the senses in the face of a culture that has narrowed perception to the visual and the immediate. The festival insists on slowness, on physicality, on a form of listening that requires the whole body. It insists that the world is vibratory, that everything is interconnected at frequencies we rarely pause to register, and that art IS capable of making those connections felt rather than described. The hum was always there. Proximity Music simply refuses to let it go unheard.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a frequency running through everything. Through stone, through glass, through the walls of a church, through the body of a stranger standing next to you. Proximity Music: \"The Ongoing Hum\", the sixth edition of the joint exhibition programme by Rewire and iii '(instrument inventors initiative)', takes this as its founding conviction: that the world we inhabit is layered with rhythms, vibrations, and radiations we have trained ourselves not to notice, and that art can break that habit.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rewire is not a festival that positions music as a spectacle to be consumed from a seat. Its Proximity Music strand proposes something structurally different: that sound is a property of matter itself, that vibration is the connective tissue of a multidimensional world, and that the artist's task is to open portals into the dimensions of that world which ordinarily escape perception. This conviction is embedded in the physical logic of every work, every venue, every instruction given to the listeners.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Ongoing Hum\", spread across six venues in The Hague's city centre, gathers seven artists whose practices converge on this premise from radically different angles. The thread between them is a shared refusal to treat matter as passive. Ceramic vessels are not objects but perspectives; bacteria are not organisms but composers; a piano is not an instrument but a receiver for a parallel dimension. Each work is a portal, and each portal opens onto a layer of reality that coexists with our own, running through it at every frequency",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"20eece8f-bb44-4a1d-a5d6-7d0d0b55dca1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175513706339951,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x865/d8beff464e/w845_3314835-koenraad-de-groot-the-colour-of-chameleons.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Koenraad de Groot, \"the colour of Chameleons\", photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9683995f-8069-42e2-82e7-6982ce2c750b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178212263875972,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/d03c73071c/pm-day-edit_koenraad.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"video by Yasamin Zeinalizadeh and Tanja Busking ",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"d443f55f-749d-43ac-b23c-b10608833183",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Koenraad de Groot's The Colour of Chameleons at the Paleiskerk makes this tangible through an act of deliberate vulnerability. Large ceramic vessels act as resonators, filtering the ambient air pressure of the room and amplifying its microscopic fluctuations into barely audible tones. To listen, you press your ear against the vessel. Every material body carries its own acoustic reality, its own way of processing the world. Listening to the ceramic is a form of crossing over into a dimension of the space that human senses, left to their own devices, simply pass through without registering.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"447c4b0a-d2ec-4f8e-878e-fc437349390a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lena Kuzmich's Photosynthesizer at Pulchri Studio extends this logic into the biological. Cyanobacteria and microalgae, housed in glass vessels modelled after vascular structures, generate electricity during photosynthesis and translate it directly into sound. The microorganisms respond to the ambient light of the room, composing the soundscape in real time. The visitor enters a living system in which they are not the protagonist but a variable, another body in a room full of bodies, some of them microscopic, all of them entangled. Kuzmich's portal is ecological: it opens onto a world where agency is distributed across species, and where human centrality is exposed as a habit of thought rather than a fact.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ee82fb31-eac1-40f6-af21-fe0afdfd145d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175513706364529,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/9fe7bce474/w845_3315204-lena-kuzmich-photosynthesizer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lena Kyzmich, \"Photosynthetizer\", photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"28db06fb-af35-459d-b77d-98301ab40cd1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Floris Vanhoof's Antenna in the Duits-Evangelische Kerk is the exhibition's most unambiguous statement of the multidimensional. A grand piano laid on its side, fitted with a hexagonal antenna, captures the continuous electromagnetic traffic passing through the building: signals from satellites, submarines, mobile networks, the radiation of collapsing stars. These signals are routed to small electromagnets that set the piano strings in motion, producing harmonic glissandi that no human hand could generate. The instrument becomes a receiver for a parallel dimension, making audible the relentless, invisible radiation that passes through our bodies at every moment. The portal was always open. We simply lacked the antenna.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Anaïs Lossouarn's De CÅur En Choeurs at Amare â Swing opens a portal not into space but into time. Suspended stone fragments carry the recorded heartbeats of previous visitors, and as you stroke them, those rhythms pass into your hands and begin, subtly, to influence your own pulse. Vibration here is the syntax of connection across duration, a bridge between bodies that will never share the same room. Matter retains the traces of contact. The world is temporally as well as spatially interconnected, and listening is never a solitary act.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8f20a6f1-9d34-4141-835e-e45631ef2068",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752627215,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x929/02d66ff827/w845_3314127-floris-vanhoof-antenna.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Floris Vanhoof,\"Antenna\", courtesy the artist, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"77f5d6bc-3d81-4209-9fb2-1a280bf991b3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175513706372722,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/d3d3dfb142/w845_3314221-floris-vanhoof-antenna.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Floris Vanhoof,\"Antenna\", courtesy the artist, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"73ee7510-ee6b-47cb-a5af-1d061991d43e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178214128490092,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/6ac15c035c/pm-day-edit_floris.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"video by Yasamin Zeinalizadeh and Tanja Busking ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7d7eacfc-3386-4422-97cd-d6322b842f1f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752582157,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/69686b1c4f/w845_3314399-anais-lossouarn-de-coer-en-choeurs.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Anais Lossouarn,\" De coer en choeurs\", courtesy the artist, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"375440eb-a480-4842-87aa-a5f0192c5863",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178215401236257,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/e1b753761e/pm-day-edit_anais.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"video by Yasamin Zeinalizadeh and Tanja Busking ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d1701b4-cd87-4c81-b44f-e8882ab4ba10",quote:"Rewire is the most forward-thinking, multidimensional and ecocentric festival",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"fc1252cf-9179-4314-ad97-c4e743e3209c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mariska de Groot's BROM at Quartair fills the space with a ceiling-suspended choir of motorised instruments derived from the mechanics of a vintage spinning top. Each instrument is tuned differently, and the interference patterns between them shift continuously as they rotate, producing a hypnotic soundscape of air and reeds. The body alters the acoustic field as it moves through the space, becoming itself a variable in the composition. The multidimensional world the exhibition maps is not out there, beyond reach. It runs through the flesh.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Johannes Kreidler's Jet Whistles / The Grand Exhalation at West Den Haag brings the exhibition's logic into contact with the political. Motorised sheets of aluminium, steel, bronze, copper, zinc, and silver generate compositions of air, vibration, and pressure that physically impact the body. The work connects the elemental force of moving air to the climate crisis, to land rights, to the turbines installed on contested territory. Air is never simply atmosphere. It is a medium of power, and it connects every body on earth to every other, whether we consent to that connection or not.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"12adc839-5771-4266-a347-b623a6adb252",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752782865,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x828/74075f9f71/w845_3315674-mariska-de-groot-brom-performance.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mariska de Groot,\"Brom\", performance, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"506590e2-9ab2-468d-97a0-e576568565c4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752770576,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/09068aed16/w845_3316734-mariska-de-groot-brom.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mariska de Groot,\"Brom, photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6cc38259-c23c-4772-a508-7f01af7c4481",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178215830755264,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/ebaf52e8cb/mariska.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"video by Yasamin Zeinalizadeh and Tanja Busking ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"da1d2f18-442e-454d-9e99-e0acddbf144e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:176805752852498,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/986e124c97/w845_3313091-johannes-kreidler-jet-whistles-the-grand-exhalation.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Johannes Kreidler,\"Jet Whistles the grand exhalation\", ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b4ccba0c-f0e4-4458-bb25-e0979e166188",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The next iteration will take place 8-11 APRIL 2027 ",type:"text"},{text:"www.rewirefestival.nl",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://www.rewirefestival.nl/",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-12 00:00",name:"\"Proximity Music: The Ongoing Hum\"÷Everything Is Already Vibrating",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ac96654c-21db-4604-b78b-693218d184bf",color:"#eebdc4",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2bc591ca-28c9-4614-851e-6a2e33e473f1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175511779843053,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/1b66d024a0/w845_3313449-koenraad-de-groot-the-colour-of-chameleons.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Koenraad de Groot, \"the colour of Chameleons\", photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"proximity-music-the-ongoing-hum-",full_slug:"directory/reviews/proximity-music-the-ongoing-hum-",sort_by_date:null,position:-1270,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"cad9b697-3657-4d5d-89d7-6349b989024e",first_published_at:"2026-05-19T14:02:55.694Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true},{name:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth Digs Into the Matter",created_at:"2026-05-01T17:15:25.618Z",published_at:"2026-05-03T20:15:31.285Z",updated_at:"2026-05-03T20:15:31.301Z",id:171893250565439,uuid:"c57a12a5-130f-417e-888c-baf99824f26a",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c0f72b89-43c5-4f9d-9d6d-9829cfff13cc",title:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:171892174810416,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3333x2500/25af220fa4/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-162.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth Digs Into the Matter",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth Digs Into the Matter"}],_uid:"97939f52-ab53-49d8-b2d3-3d2f70f919c3",body:[{_uid:"acb17fe2-f32b-4ac7-a4af-c3159410e0fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"Biennial ",type:"text"},{text:"Digs Into the Matter",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art is an instrument of perception, not of persuasion. It can work without grand spectacle or pompous statements. That distinction matters more than it sounds. (re)connecting.earth Biennial has been building on it since 2021.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The route starts in Geneva (Switzerland) and ends in France. Between the two, it crosses a construction scar, passes through two train stations, runs along a cycling path that was itself dug up and rebuilt a decade ago. That is not incidental. The third edition of (re)connecting.earth, titled \"Ressources Sensibles\" has chosen its territory carefully: a cross-border corridor shaped by the CEVA rail construction, a massive displacement of earth and materials that makes the ground beneath your feet a document of the very processes the biennial is examining.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Organized by art-werk, the biennial is built on a micro-to-macro logic: start with the soil, follow the chain of transformation, arrive at the global systems that govern our relationship to matter. The edition pairs each work with scientific interlocutors. The conversation does not stay decorative. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"The curatorial logic here is forensic.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"93ab9ad4-ddfe-4b14-a146-df653640f599",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:171908179603275,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/aa48efc62d/ana-alenso-the-mine-gives-the-mine-takes-2020.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ana Alenso, \"The mine gives, the mine takes\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"93157aef-6a35-4ff5-9259-4fa8f7cfcf60",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:170470022309314,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1103/b90ac3b90f/yuri-ancarani-il-capo-2010-screenshot.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuri Ancarani, Il Capo, video stll, © Yuri Ancarani",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"89b7b72b-1db2-4ba5-b4e9-5fe2536656e5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Each artist is following a trail of extraction, transformation and disappearance, and each arrives at it from a different direction. Ana Alenso has spent years embedded in mining complexes across South America, West Africa and Central Europe; her assemblages of post-industrial debris do not illustrate extraction so much as enact its logic, turning the residue of resource economies into objects that are simultaneously beautiful and damning. Monira Al Qadiri's sculptures and videos draw on the visual culture of the Gulf to examine how oil dependency has shaped not just economies but aesthetics, desire and collective identity. Yuri Ancarani, whose documentary practice has taken him from deep-sea mining operations to marble quarries, brings a cinematic precision to industrial landscapes that makes the familiar utterly strange.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"91a8e5f4-af96-42a2-a057-928aa9254000",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172540857747098,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1875x2500/0570527930/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-177-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Seba Calfuqueo, \"Alga parda\" © Julien Gremaud",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2b616b54-aeec-4a42-9b7e-34e87f5468c9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172540857374361,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1875x2500/2abf33f31c/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-137.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Seba Calfuqueo, \"Alga parda\" © Julien Gremaud",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"09c895d4-165d-419d-9e7d-dbe3dc4ba380",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is also attentive to what disappears before it can be extracted: the knowledge, the territory, the memory. Khalil Berro, working between Zurich and the remote Bedretto valley, is interested in what threatened landscapes carry within them, the geological and cultural strata that development erases without record. Mabe Bethônico traces through archives and institutional memory how knowledge about natural resources circulates, is suppressed or simply lost. Juan Blanco operates at the edge of sound and matter, making audible the frequencies that move through soil, stone and water, what the ground says when you listen closely. Seba Calfuqueo, from Chile, installs two photographic series along the Voie Verte, her practice grounded in Mapuche cosmology and the ongoing dispossession of indigenous land; her work is a reminder that \"resource\" is never a neutral term. Tanja Engelberts traces the colonial architectures embedded in the global trade of raw materials, her research-based practice moving between historical document and sculptural form, making visible the power structures that have always governed who extracts and who bears the cost.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"ba119b90-fbe4-4ff9-a012-03391db378f7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172586382932030,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1266x1750/03ce22f46b/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-18-15-32.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tanja Engelberts, \"a well, instruction\"© Tanja Engelberts",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3ecafc32-6c95-4195-99f0-dc5bcb5489f6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172542039115422,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x2715/7740e48b73/juan-blanco-poster_re-low-width-1920-format-webp.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Juan Blanco, \"Maillage des paysages\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b679c215-d9a9-4df5-ae2d-f73f76d43388",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172603077482719,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2678x1726/eda88b08d6/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-19-22-35.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Soya the Cow & Uhura Bqueer,Â©ï¸ Tarcisio Gabriel ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1285b91c-e480-47f9-ace3-726ac48ba36c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172645101972185,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2630x1668/e82e96147f/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-19-24-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Etter/Spozio, \"CHART\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6a12046c-e3dd-43b9-8789-47edcd61d8c1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the Comédie de Genève, the exhibition takes on a more performative and sensory dimension. Etter/Spozio works with the material transformations of the immediate region, while Séverin Guelpa, whose practice moves between urban infrastructure, desert landscapes and alpine geology, presents Energy as a Vehicle, a sonic installation that renders the city's subterranean pulse audible, setting the hidden networks of pipes and circulating fluids in dialogue with a choir and a solo voice. Soya the Cow & Uhura Bqueer stage Dé-domestication, a live performance that works the fault line between the human body and the animal, pressing on the question of what domestication has cost both sides. Olaf Holzapfel draws on non-Western craft traditions to question the hierarchies that separate \"art\" from material knowledge, and by extension the hierarchies that separate one kind of knowing from another. Christian Jankowski contributes a video work screened on the MIRE stations, his practice trained as ever on the mechanisms by which culture produces and legitimises itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e33c9eb8-b938-4604-89b3-c7fee3a13743",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172605259651320,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3333x2500/c358944626/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-118.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mathias Kessler, \"West Virginia Mining Landscape\" © Julien Gremaud",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c4ba017d-fcde-4d1b-a657-657bf2b27ce5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172614121519430,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1582x1250/51c4114d6b/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-20-08-26.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Christian Jankowski, \"Die Jagd\", video still, ©Christian Jankowski",auto
77play:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9cffebb8-45f7-41f8-bfd0-cf89f4b37562",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172585300006962,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8437x4615/b5a2612746/gabriel_massan_howdowegetthere_2024_screenshot.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gabriel Massan, \"HOW DO WE GET THERE?\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"245dd590-5c88-477a-95be-feb6a3063cdd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mathias Kessler examines the aestheticisation of catastrophe, the way natural disaster and resource extraction are packaged into images that neutralise their violence, and extends this in a collaborative work with Ahmet Civelek. Tidal Memories, by Jeewi Lee and Phillip C. Reiner, begins with grains of sand collected from three coastlines and magnifies each one to a scale at which its geological individuality becomes a portrait: a work about the invisibility of the materials that sustain global industry, and about what it means to look at something properly. Gabriela Löffel works with soil as a political and agricultural subject, examining the knowledge systems that govern land use and the bodies that depend on it. Gabriel Massan's digital practice imagines futures shaped by communities whose resources have long been taken, a speculative and post-colonial lens trained on the same extraction the other works document. The OMIJA Collective from Busan, five artists working under the shared name Mija, opens the work to forms of engagement that go beyond looking. Reconnecting Protocols, a collective framework woven through the biennial itself, proposes new modes of attention toward the living world, less a single artwork than a practice of noticing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nobody here is performing urgency. The urgency is already in the ground, in the sand, in the pipes running beneath the city. (re)connecting.earth has spent three editions building a biennial that trusts that fact: no insider language, no decorative ecology deployed to reassure its audience, no simplification for the four thousand schoolchildren who walk this route each year. It does not resolve anything. It makes the questions harder to ignore, which, in the current climate, is precisely the point.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"(re)connecting.earth, \"Ressources Sensibles\". Until 14 June 2026. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Comédie de Genève, Voie Verte, Villa du Parc (Annemasse), Gares des Eaux-Vives and Chêne-Bourg, Chêne-Bougeries.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-01 00:00",name:"\"Ressources Sensibles\" ÷Digs Into the Matter",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"c278b1b9-b4d9-46d5-afad-7f3fd6f4cdef",color:"#494639",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2a3ead5d-644e-4891-a3a1-6c34670db694",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:171892174810416,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3333x2500/25af220fa4/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-162.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jeewi Lee et Phillip C. Reiner, \"Tidal Memories\" © Julien Gremaud",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"-ressources-sensibles-re-connecting-earth-digs-into-the-matter",full_slug:"directory/reviews/-ressources-sensibles-re-connecting-earth-digs-into-the-matter",sort_by_date:null,position:-1200,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c9d2f185-8bda-4334-8047-8e9fcff0b376",first_published_at:"2026-05-03T16:15:58.506Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null,_stopResolving:true}]},slug:"we-are-not-alone",full_slug:"directory/themes/we-are-not-alone",sort_by_date:null,position:0,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91167857566941,meta_data:null,group_id:"2274ae21-6a47-439c-a933-718636885819",first_published_at:"2025-09-17T09:40:03.331Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null}],archiveList:[{name:"trataris",created_at:"2026-09-24T18:43:21.981Z",published_at:"2026-09-24T22:46:55.457Z",updated_at:"2026-09-24T22:46:55.472Z",id:223583444933644,uuid:"c49da355-0b0b-4dbc-98cd-d24539daef93",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"85ae954f-e3bd-4839-882e-8ff070557448",title:"Daisy-Chain Star-Connection Review | Gray Area",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:223587112056062,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7262x5274/771c67a142/rachelzphotographyllc-236.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"7262x5274"},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Daisy-Chain Star-Connection review, Ambrose Trataris, Gray Area San Francisco, queer virtual reality performance, drag kings, digital avatars, immersive performance art, Proteus Effect, human agency",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"At Gray Area, Ambrose Tratarisâs Daisy-Chain Star-Connection turned drag, VR and dance into a dazzling vision of embodiment, human agency and creative renewal."}],_uid:"58c0fcd9-794e-4d9e-b85a-3206d414aa93",body:[{_uid:"1cc00e52-5c36-4029-a507-b5fb6e270f0b",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ecologies of the Digital Flesh and Algorithmic Resistance",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" ",type:"text"},{text:"Gray Areaâs increasingly imaginative and intelligent programming is making this San Francisco venue a thrilling new model for contemporary art. There, Ambrose Trataris and a cast of drag kings transformed full-body tracking, custom avatars, and club sound into an electrifying feat of invention. Dazzling in form and remarkably lucid in its vision, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\" did not expose the limits of an algorithm-shaped world: it hacked digital tools to imagine one rebuilt through human creativity and diversity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Avatar-Prosthesis: A New Post-Digital Identity Model",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Silicon Valley has a ghost problem: it cannot code the bodies it fears. By converting virtual spaces into sterile, corporate clones of practical reality (a toothless mix of digital malls, Zoom offices, and hyper-militarised video games), the tech industry has copy-pasted its own oppressive, heteronormative structures. Standardised AI and 3D modeling suffer from a rigid, colonial normativity. They smooth over, sanitise, and erase bodies that do not fit into the dominant template.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is precisely into this algorithmic glitch that Ambrose Trataris injects âDaisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connectionâ. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Presented at Gray Area, San Franciscoâs sanctuary for tech-art subversion, the piece bypasses both technophobic doom-posting and naive tech-utopianism. Instead, it executes a high-stakes conceptual heist: the avatar is no longer an instrument of commercial simulation, but a weaponised prosthesis for physical and political self-actualisation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mainstream media psychology frequently warns against the alienation caused by autonomous \"AI companions\" which isolate vulnerable users in frictionless, simulated echo chambers. Trataris reverses this dynamic entirely: here, the avatar is a \"Self-Avatar\", a cybernetic marionette hijacked in real time by the raw, biological fury of the performer.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Wired into full-body tracking sensors, the ensemble of non-binary and QTBIPOC Drag Kings on stage does not flee the biological body. They weaponise it. The choreography, a hybrid mutation of hip-hop, ballet, and contemporary dance, becomes the connective tissue reconciling sweat. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b55ecf3b-2363-4f32-a838-1637d794c9c3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592458397042,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5258x4235/9b58734145/rachelzphotographyllc-219.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"5258x4235"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"62aa13ac-165f-4fbf-a124-a3114af3df83",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Aesthetics of the Glitch and Anatomical Hacking",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The core of the performance relies on a radical collaboration with 3D designer Whisper, who built custom-molded avatars for five prominent West Coast Drag Kings. This creative process maps directly onto academic research regarding virtual worlds as laboratories for trans identity, demonstrating how digital embodiment can actively heal gender dysphoria and decolonize aesthetics:",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Skirt Cocaine (Filipinx/Punk Perspectives): In mainstream gaming, masculine avatars are almost exclusively white, hyper-muscled, and weaponized. Skirt Cocaine hacks this standard by designing a fantastical male entity that glides between K-Pop aesthetics and Rococo opulence. Masculinity is stripped of its hy
77per-militarized toxicity, transforming into a delicate, fluid playground.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mudd the Two Spirit (Indigenous/Deaf Perspectives): One of the most avant-garde dimensions of the project is its critique of accessibility. Traditional physical nightlife spaces and institutional theaters are notoriously exclusionary for disabled or Deaf communities. In Daisy-Chain, Mudd utilizes full-body tracking to integrate sign language and three-dimensional gestural expression into his avatar. Movement becomes visually sonic, radically rethinking equity within digital environments.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"VERA! (SWANA/Activist Perspectives): By weaving Armenian heritage and local Bay Area activist history into their 3D entity [B1, B2], VERA! proves that the avatar transcends physical borders. It carves out a sanctuary of bodily autonomy and political visibility that is currently impossible to guarantee within the \"dark, windowless bars\" of our historical nightlife infrastructure.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"034b9f75-1a78-4407-afbf-791cfc274c51",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592458507637,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4382x6023/a8199630d9/rachelzphotographyllc-238.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"4382x6023"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1af39cb4-b1e4-4dfd-b220-39b78a87bc50",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592460264838,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4615x6264/6daa775133/rachelzphotographyllc-1572.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"4615x6264"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"477768c9-f264-4a64-9883-e52d14d522df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592459236737,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7173x5464/ef5e3ebe0d/rachelzphotographyllc-280.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"7173x5464"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"07dd7ede-5ac0-4fed-94da-38f31c087a94",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592458491251,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3532x4940/6014ff9ddd/rachelzphotographyllc-245.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3532x4940"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2910f8dd-9968-4142-937b-e2934d4a3f4f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592459621764,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4534x6455/cadb357069/rachelzphotographyllc-177.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"4534x6455"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ffbbcc0b-8034-4fa2-82b8-d272f3386bea",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Deep-Dive: The Proteus Effect as Radical Self-Actualization",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To fully unpack the conceptual weight of âDaisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connectionâ, one must look at its core psychological engine: The Proteus Effect. This phenomenon dictates that an individualâs behavior, cognition, and self-perception shift unconsciously to align with the visual characteristics and stereotypes of their digital avatar. In traditional tech spaces, the Proteus Effect is heavily clinicalized or gamified, used as an involuntary laboratory reaction. However, Trataris hacks this loop, upgrading it into a deliberate tool for queer worldbuilding and gender euphoria.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Academic reviews of the Proteus Effect often debate whether it is driven by visual priming or deep self-perception. Recent research demonstrates that the magnitude of the behavioral shift is directly tied to the level of digital self-representation and embodiment. If a user feels a strong sense of agency and interactive ownership over their avatar, the psychological integration deepens.\u2028",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Trataris maximizes this loop by ensuring that the avatars are not off-the-shelf, commercial skins. Through the full-body tracking apparatus, the performance hits every catalyst required to supercharge the Proteus Effect. By altering the avatar's appearance, the performance actively restructures the artists' cognitive and physical states:",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"70c40476-985c-4f3c-946f-3e54a42310d2",quote:"Here, temporarily escaping the violence of reality is not an act of cowardice; it is a survival strategy. The avatar becomes psychological armor, a laboratory where âgender euphoriaâ is finally accessible.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"28e57079-3686-402f-942e-a39d37055908",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dethroning the Colonial Gaze: When Skirt Cocaine steps into an opulent, punk-rococo Filipino avatar, the Proteus Effect shifts his posture away from the submissive or hyper-militarized stereotypes dictated by Western gaming algorithms. He adopts an authoritative presence, illustrating how customized avatars allow users to manifest their \"ideal selves\" to override systemic social anxieties.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Visceral Force and Spatial Reclamation: Users embodying highly muscular or athletic avatars unconsciously exert more physical force and move with greater confidence. For VERA! and Bobby, their larger-than-life, sci-fi Drag King personas trigger a protective psychological buffer. The avatar acts as an emotional shield against real-world trauma, allowing them to occupy physical space on stage with an unapologetic, confrontational power.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Time-Course of Healing: Crucially, recent empirical data shows that the behavioral impacts of avatar embodiment remain highly stable throughout a session and bleed into post-exposure reality. The confidence, safety, and bodily autonomy claimed while wired into the system do not vanish when the headset comes off. They are permanently integrated into the performer's practical self-concept.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection, the Proteus Effect ceases to be an algorithmic trick played on an unsuspecting user. It becomes a weapon of self-defense: a technological ritual where changing your digital skin permanently alters your real-world power.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What Trataris does brilliantly is address âescapism.â While media psychology often warns of the risks of social withdrawal linked to virtual companions and digital worlds, Daisy-Chain demonstrates the potential for self-expansion of the self-avatar. Here, temporarily escaping the violence of reality is not an act of cowardice; it is a survival strategy. The avatar becomes psychological armor, a laboratory where âgender euphoriaâ is finally accessible.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"0c255d2d-d564-4337-a2b4-59204f8f0981",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592458962301,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6238x5404/a08d050212/rachelzphotographyllc-202.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"6238x5404"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"754a4056-2c2d-45e7-b225-453a767ce1c7",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Haptic Chain: Sound as Political Cement",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A recurring critique of digital and new media art is its sterile, disembodied coldness. Trataris overrides this limitation through a violent, highly textured sonic landscape engineered by Oakland-based musician Mahawam. This landscape acts as a haptic bridge and a political soundtrack: Afro-futurist club music anchors the audience's sensory immersion.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Heavy sub-bass frequencies physically penetrate the chest cavities of the audience inside the theater [B1]. Simultaneously, real-time voice modulators pixelate the live gasps, screams, and breaths of the dancers. This sonic contrast generates a sensory jolt: the viewer cannot detach themselves from the performance as a mere \"image on a screen.\" Sound serves as the biological glue between the heavy breathing on stage and the mathematical perfection of the projected digital bodies.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Verdict: The Post-Metaverse Manifesto",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mainstream sociology and moralistic psychological studies have a tendency to pathologize virtual escapism, branding it as \"self-suppression\": a cowardly flight from the friction of reality. âDaisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connectionâ refutes this academically and artistically, proving the existence of an escapism of self-expansion. In an era where trans and queer bodies are increasingly policed, surveilled, and targeted across political cycles, escaping into a horizontal, customized virtual sanctuary is not an act of surrender; it is a vital strategy for psychological regeneration and community organizing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ambrose Trataris and their ensemble have delivered a masterpiece of contemporary performance art because they refuse technological binary thinking. They do not reject the tools of Silicon Valley; they hijack them for survival. By transforming code into a zone of resistance and choreography into a liberation protocol, this piece stands as one of the most urgent, lucid, and visually arresting manifestos of our post-digital era. An absolute aesthetic explosion.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âDaisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connectionâ succeeds in avoiding both techno-pessimism and naive utopianism. By transforming the stage at Gray Area into a hybrid nightclub, the work demonstrates that the future of immersive technologies belongs to those who dare to subvert their codes to ensure their own survival and visibility.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"26aabcf9-7261-4ea9-8d30-c39983a541e1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223592459330946,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5088x4556/fbdf8b0f7e/rachelzphotographyllc-192.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"5088x4556"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ambrose Trataris aka Cy Berspace, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Gray Area",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8ca5fb26-ee18-40be-a280-c833a4398805",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"That is why this work feels so visionary and lucid at a tipping point for creativity. The greatest risk posed by an algorithm-driven post-digital world is not the loss of ownership but the surrender of cognitive agency. What is being automated is the most replaceable stratum of creative work. What remains is what we have rarely been given enough time to practice: care, and the capacity to hold complexity without collapsing it into a simple answer. Artificial intelligence has not so much been mastered as it has forced us to reckon with the human capacities it cannot replicate. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Those who continue to create with agency keep building those capacities precisely when everything tempts them to stop. In this light, the performersâ embodied command of their avatars makes \"Daisy- Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\" an act of reconstruction, not only for queer communities but for everyone: a universal invitation to rebuild a world through diversity and care.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"be1016e9-da4a-4b72-be97-d3ea08fb0fae",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ambrose Tetris, \"Daisy-Chain\u003C>\u003C>\u003C>Star-Connection\" was premiered in San Francisco (USA) on August 29th at Gray Area. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists :VERA!, Skirt Cocaine, Mudd the Two Spirit, Jota Mercury, Kim Ip,BROOKE TERRY X BOBBY",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Soundtrack of original tracks by Mahawam, Ten Travesauras, Dollii PKC, LBXX, SÃMBÃ, X Medianoche, and Technopagan.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-24 00:00",name:"CY BERSERKER÷QUEER WORLDBUILDING",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f6b78609-f48f-4f65-aeb3-27ab5340ec0a",color:"#390140",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"0a8820e1-ca60-4baf-bbe8-b822310cc952",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:223587112056062,alt:"",name:"ambrose Trataris",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7262x5274/771c67a142/rachelzphotographyllc-236.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"7262x5274"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"trataris",full_slug:"directory/reviews/trataris",sort_by_date:null,position:-1530,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"56a59107-e594-4167-a406-99a4cf39c093",first_published_at:"2026-09-24T20:00:23.417Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"The Earth Inherits Us",created_at:"2026-09-19T00:58:23.514Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T11:49:33.378Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T11:49:33.399Z",id:221552244813913,uuid:"197ba407-0e85-48c6-b266-954c48c00566",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c192e2c7-d806-4154-91df-e6ce086506d4",title:"The Earth Inherits Us: No Single Ground",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:221829280504728,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1446x1120/e7a1006b66/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-45-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1446x1120"},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Inheritors of Earth, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, KNMA New Delhi, Premjish Achari, contemporary art India, Indian contemporary art, ecological art, vegetal art, plant life in art, phytosensitive art, more-than-human art, multisensory exhibition, environmental art, queer ecology, anthropocentrism, vegetal time, plant agency, colonial botany, botanical migration, Kallen Pokkudan, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Bhumiyude Avakashikal, Shared Ecologies, Jayita Barai, art and ecology, art exhibition New Delhi, contemporary exhibition review, plant intelligence, human and nonhuman relations, ethics of care, Dalit ecological knowledge, mangrove conservation, vegetal aesthetics, posthumanism in art",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Discover Inheritors of Earth at KNMA New Delhi, where contemporary art reimagines plant intelligence, vegetal time, ecology and human exceptionalism."}],_uid:"03d5a151-41ed-48d1-9dc7-3e263f342265",body:[{_uid:"45a4991a-083e-478b-a125-4bf342735613",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Co-Inhabitants of the Earth: Plants with Histories, Labour and Agency of Their Own. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Plants are easy to overlook because they seem to remain where they have been placed. With remarkable subtlety, \"Inheritors of Earth\" exhibition draws them out of the background and into their own histories, migrations and measures of time. An exhibition of rare vision, it shifts the human gaze without ever forcing its hand.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition refuses to treat plants as ornament or inventory. With remarkable subtlety, it asks us to look with plants rather than at them, approaching them as active bearers of memory and resilience, moving to rhythms not calibrated to our own. Nothing is insisted upon; our sense of scale simply begins to shift.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by Premjish Achari at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, the exhibition positions plant life as central protagonists in a shared world. By bringing distinct measures of time into the same spaces, it contrasts human time, loud and meticulously recorded, with the subtler rhythms of vegetal time, marked by seasons, extended dormancies, the slow thickening of bark, or generational species migrations.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-839bbd5f-7fff-8b30-3be4-88e348b5d4e1"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Its title refers to Vaikom Muhammad Basheerâs Malayalam story Bhumiyude Avakashikal (1977), in which humans, plants and animals possess an equal claim to the earth. The distinction is important: they are equal claimants, not equivalent beings. A shared planet does not produce a shared way of living. Each organism meets light, water, danger and duration differently. What joins them is neither resemblance nor harmony, but proximity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The world is not one coherent space arranged around human needs. It is made of many living layers, entangled yet distinct, evolving beside and through one another. A plant responds to soil, rain, heat, insects and the presence of other plants. Human histories intersect with these relations, but do not contain them. We are part of the entanglement, not its centre.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a0ce6fe2-08ed-4c13-87c0-49aa9661c994",quote:" âSeeds cross borders; crops follow empires; roots alter the ground that holds them.â",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"970e554b-8d43-4b66-a8f3-fdf5cbc8d239",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221830683921338,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1580x620/07bb0be553/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-51-04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Self Portrait, 2025, Hemangini Maharaul",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cd0d9688-1a44-4cb2-9c37-88818abd7d95",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Plants are often admitted into human culture on restrictive terms. We notice what feeds us, heals us, shelters us, earns money or gives pleasure. Even concern can preserve this arrangement: a forest becomes valuable because it stores carbon; a species because it provides a service; a tree because it cools a city. Inheritors of Earth asks the viewer to suspend that calculation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Achari describes the exhibitionâs method as âphytosensitive.â The word could easily remain theoretical, but the works give it substance. Paint, paper, moving image and organic matter register vegetal life without forcing it into a single tempo. Growth appears alongside exh
77austion; rootedness alongside travel. Plants do not simply furnish the subject of the works. Their fibres, surfaces, cycles and delays affect how those works are made and how long they ask to be observed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jayita Baraiâs Assemblage II (2026) makes this especially clear. Cotton rope, coir rope, dried bark, corn-husk paper and a Canna indica seedpod meet within the same object. The list reads almost like an inventory, yet none of the materials is anonymous. Each has passed through cultivation, weather, touch and transformation. Rope bears the memory of tension. Bark shows both protection and injury. A seedpod contains the remains of a future already dispersed. Barai does not smooth these materials into a seamless whole; she lets their different histories remain visible at the joins.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ea26b296-4845-4c62-8e59-24776e934e8f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221813319334729,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5184x3456/82fdf0d4d8/jayita-barai-assemblage-ii-2026-cotton-rope-canna-indica-seedpod-coir-rope-dried-bark-gouache-on-cloth-corn-husk-paper-50x40x9-cm-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-quiet-art-movement.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jayita Barai Assemblage II, 2026, cotton rope, Canna Indica seedpod, coir rope, dried bark, gouache on cloth, corn husk paper, 50x40x9 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Quiet Art Movment",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7fb3f253-10cb-4098-b84b-19635033980a",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The rest of the exhibition broadens the means by which such differences are encountered. Manuel Mataâs poetry and recorded voice introduce language without granting it final authority. Ben Goldfarbâs soundscape occupies the room without staying in one place. Sweety Chakmaâs seating installation changes the visitorâs height and duration of looking. The Shared Ecologies reading room asks for yet another posture: head lowered, page turned, time temporarily withdrawn from circulation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These elements matter because seeing is never isolated from the body that sees. A standing visitor scans; a seated one lingers. Sound reaches what lies outside the field of vision. Materials provoke memories of touch even when museum protocol keeps the hand at a distance. The exhibition works through this relay among eye, ear, skin and posture. It does not offer total immersion, a promise too easily made, but a series of partial contacts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Those contacts also carry histories that have little to do with botanical innocence. Plants have travelled in ships, inventories and imperial ambitions. They have been extracted from one habitat, renamed in another and cultivated for distant markets. Colonial botany did not merely describe the vegetal world; it reorganised land, labour and knowledge. The exhibition attends to the lower-caste physicians, illustrators and local knowledge-keepers who contributed to early botanical compendia but rarely received the authority attached to the finished books. A taxonomy can preserve a specimen while misplacing the hands and minds that made its identification possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"cdd2afa9-ad62-476a-b0b5-eebb46d95d66",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221832019151808,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1362x1172/69a57773c4/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-56-35.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Minam Apang Spectre of War VIII, 2025 Charcoal on cloth 53 x 60 in 134.62 x 152.4 cm Courtesy of the artist and Chatterjee and Lal",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"23372706-cccb-4a2e-a4a0-02f264be36cb",quote:"The exhibition argues that the central problem is not a lack of information about the collapse of the biosphere, but rather our sensory and emotional inability to truly perceive and feel it.",author:"",component:"quote"}
77,{_uid:"33d0b884-a53f-413c-9114-231efdcde9bd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221830897339323,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1106x1240/bdd4a0838e/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-52-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ishita Chakraborty Where The Wild Things Roam 35, Cotton, 2026 Acrylic and colour pencil on Jute pasted on cotton Chappa Saree fabric",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"af9f11fc-a1d3-4105-8454-75964bc358d7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831089621948,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1086x1400/4171c67f92/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-52-47.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ishita Chakraborty Where The Wild Things Roam 35, Cotton, 2026 Acrylic and colour pencil on Jute pasted on cotton Chappa Saree fabric",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b0ac0c4b-f086-4c48-b463-9b569eea0dce",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kallen, or Kandal, Pokkudan gives this history a particular human and ecological form. A Dalit agricultural worker, writer and activist from Kerala, he planted thousands of mangrove saplings along the coast. The mangrove was not an abstract figure of resilience for him. It belonged to the conditions of his life: mud, salt water, caste, work, erosion and the practical knowledge of how a damaged coastline might be restored. His story keeps the exhibition from drifting towards botanical reverie. Closeness to the land is not always chosen, and knowledge acquired through labour is not always credited as expertise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The mangrove also unsettles an easy picture of rootedness. It holds its ground at an unstable edge, where fresh and salt water meet and where the line between land and sea keeps moving. Its roots shelter other species while changing the sediment around them. Here, dependence is not weakness and autonomy is not isolation. Life proceeds by modifying and being modified by its surroundings.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nature has always been queer. Across species, bodies, reproductive strategies and forms of association exceed the binaries once treated by science as self-evident. What fell outside the reproductive pair was often recorded as anomaly or noise. The limit belonged not to the living world, but to the questions brought to it. This is neither metaphor nor moral endorsement: nature does not exist to certify human lives. It simply makes uniformity impossible to mistake for order.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To acknowledge this does not relax scientific rigour; it sharpens it. A category remains useful only while it answers to what observation finds. When life exceeds the available description, the description must change. The exhibition makes a similar demand upon looking: attend first, classify later.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e705abf9-3c3f-4ec7-b7d2-64a0dffd02ab",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831577861054,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1414x1206/c51c5a4608/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-54-47.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gaurav Patil, Pre-Monsoon Drift, 2026, Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"771f016f-4542-4da7-a866-37f2b4456287",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221831751310271,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1620x1068/388e5e9518/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-55-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1620x1068"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gaurav Patil, Pre-Monsoon Drift, 2026, Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"51c938af-a821-47ab-84c8-ecbbcdbf2ebc",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To step away from the centre is not to disappear. It is to discover the weight of our presence. No distant âenvironmentâ waits to receive the consequences of our lives: extraction enters soil and blood; militarisation inscribes itself upon landscapes and bodies; technological expansion leaves its heat, its minerals, its waste. There is no outside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here lies artâs quiet force. It reopens passages that systems have closed. It lets the familiar become strange again and restores weight to what has slipped from view. By altering the scale and duration of attention, it changes the terms of our presence. A seedpod is granted time; a mangrove recovers its history; a voice continues where the image ends. What had been scenery draws near, not as an object awaiting our concern, but as a life already touching ours.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition never presses its argument upon us. Its care is structural: each material is allowed its opacity, each voice its register, each rhythm the time it requires. Nothing is enlisted merely to illustrate a lesson. Meaning gathers through small adjustments: a body invited to sit, a sound released from any single source, a seedpod left to carry its own history. Here lies the exhibitionâs elegance, and perhaps its magnificence: in the intelligence with which it makes room for other forms of life without presuming to translate them. Inheritors of Earth does not instruct us to care. With uncommon subtlety, it creates the conditions in which care can arise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Plants enter the density of the present as lives that precede, sustain, and exceed the human story. The world does not widen away from us, but around us. We find ourselves among other inheritors, each carrying a different measure of time, none entrusted with the future alone. The central question is no longer about humanity's place in nature, but about deeply understanding how all entities co-exist and co-evolveâsustaining the flourishing of life in all its diverse forms and temporalities that constitute our shared habitat. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"From genetically modified organisms and man-made mineral extraction to the microplastics coursing through our oceans, we have come to live in a \"post-nature\" ecosystem. Here, the synthetic and the digital form a new layer in the entangled world we inhabit. The challenge is not only to recognize the limits of anthropocentric thinking, but to take seriously other ways of being. We have been passively observing the collapse of the climate and still do nothing; we get used to it as if it were just an outside spectacle. To break this inertia, we do not need the dogmatic jargon of extremist, dystopian, or dissonant ecological statements, nor do we require an authoritative, radical injunction. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"This exhibition does the exact opposite. It brings a patient, meditative sensibility to the act of looking at vegetal life. In asking us to look ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"with",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" plants rather than",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"at",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" them not as a retreat into nostalgia, but as an embrace of sustainable progress to feel deeply, to experience profoundly, to be moved the exhibition succeeds through art to reconfigure the imagination itself toward coexistence, humility, and shared inheritance. It provides a gentle, experimental space: a subtle, realistic, and efficie
77nt path toward the activation of a transformative agency to reconnect and regenerate our shared habitat.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"dd7e7239-b9c2-4e22-8580-90c0228a610b",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Inheritors of Earth\" until 22nd December 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists: ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-fa96b5ba-7fff-5388-1b0e-fdf2800b8178"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Arunkumar HG, Ben Goldfarb, Bhimanshu Pandel, Gaurav Patil, Hemangini Maharaul, Ishita Chakraborty, Jayita Barai, Maksud Ali Mondol, Manir Mrittik, Manuel Mata, Minam Apang, Radhika Agarwala, Ravi Agarwal, Samit Das, Sujith SN; Sweety Chakma, Sandeep TK, Valay Gada, and Shared Ecologies",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Premjish Achari",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-ca00cfb7-7fff-4bb3-4d91-32016c345f2f"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition also brings together contributions that extend its immersive and interdisciplinary character, including poetry and audio narration by Manuel Mata, a seating installation by Sweety Chakma, soundscape design by Ben Goldfarb, booklet design by Aranya Sengupta, and a reading room with a special selection of works from Shared Ecologiesâ archive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-802ca8e0-7fff-6384-726b-a3fed38b94c0"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Dehli (India)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-fa96b5ba-7fff-5388-1b0e-fdf2800b8178"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-19 00:00",name:"\"Inheritors of Earth\"÷Vegetal Temporal Scale and the Human Interlude",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"4f60cd9e-5a61-4e17-b80c-4e2eb5452783",color:"#252918",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e38800d8-6920-448f-b08c-f71bf17ecc3b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:221829280504728,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1446x1120/e7a1006b66/screenshot-2026-09-19-at-21-45-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1446x1120"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandeep TK Colorized scene from Kadal Paranjath or As Told By the Sea, 2026, film. Screenplay and direction: Sandeep TK. Cinematography: Sheethal NS, Vyshakh Thaliyil. Editor: Noufai Salih. Sound: Nandagopan P. UPM: Savinay Shivadas. 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Taking the infamous Roswell alien autopsy as its starting point, the show brought together thirteen artists to examine how
77images, evidence and cultural narratives shaped belief and what was left of truth when seeing was no longer believing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null}},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"AUTOPSY' Endless Alienspace Sadness",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âHistorically, itâs the preeminent post-internet galleryâ, a London-based curator told me over beet-colored pink lunch sandwich during the preview days of Manifesta during the past midsummer. I had asked how they would describe Seventeen, the gallery showing a diverse and medium-wise rich programme in the UK capital. Since I had never visited the gallery and they were putting on an exhibition with major Finnish representation later during the scorching summer, I, as a Finn, was of course interested â even though, or maybe because of, post-internet wouldnât be the term used to characterize the gallery anymore.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Eerily tensioned between 90âs British television comedy and hyperimage(nary) AI and digital aesthetics, AUTOPSY, assembled by artist Joey Holder, presents a group of thirteen artists dealing not so much with post-internet as post-truth, that is, with the question of how belief systems are built â or born â and how knowledge is perceived in the age where the relationship between an image and truth is completely broken and, ultimately, absurd. Sharply curated around this timely thematic, the exhibition takes as its starting point and sets as its center the ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Roswell Alien, ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"one of the most notorious UFO cases in the history of modern anomalities.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The alien is the prop from the 1995 Alien Autopsy film, a video claiming to show military doctors dissecting an extraterrestrial from the 1947 Roswell crash which aired to millions and fueled decades of debate over its authenticity; its makers still insist it is a reconstruction of destroyed original footage. Then a disposition for heated debate, today an everyday phenomenon; to look at images traveling in time one has to zoom out and consider the infrastructures transporting them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"f6751a33-8679-4af3-b51d-7b4722a7c29b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220371374424401,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2746x1732/83d8c350f8/screenshot-2026-09-15-at-18-52-40.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"John Humphreys Alien \"Autopsy\",2026 \"AUTOPSY\" site specific artwork at Seventeen Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f78a5266-abc6-4bb8-b5cf-0db4f04d29ab",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Entering the gallery, and before encountering the alien corpse by John Humprheys, the visitor meets a yellowish room with sparsely hung work on all four walls of the space. With a blanket-like sculpture on the floor â Anni Puolakkaâs",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:" Skin Kin 2 ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026) â and brown floor to ceiling window blinds on opposite walls of the room with a telescope peeking out one of them in front of a camp bed â Viktor Timofeevâs ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Exact Fantasy",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (2025) and ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"2+2=0 ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026) â the space reminds of nothing less than one where windows are covered in foil and the notion of truth or facts donât emerge from a set of rules, institutions, or researched knowledge.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On closer inspection, the visitor is reminded of a kuriositätenkabinett from another time and space in how the room is built around smaller, image-persistent works that create a madly affective scene. Joel Slotteâs painting ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Head Behind Jar",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (2025) is at the same time a canned human head and a twisted face following the visitorâs gaze from an almost chameleon point of view. Slotteâs ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Still Life Painter Putting Together a Vanitas Motif ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"creates a haunting pair: a self-portrait of the artist organizing a scene of reminder of death. Or maybe preserving his head in the open jar, lid held up in a vulcan salute, only to be met in the first painting as the artistâs never dying self. Jaakko Pallasvuoâs small laser engravings, such as ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"THE GESTURE OF TURNING A MASK AROUND ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026) are reminders of hidden personalities in the memeified landscape of social media and, in this, c
77ontinue the logic of the exhibition â an ontological theatre of sorts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"35f291ab-47fc-4558-9882-a616a90f2853",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220342872257679,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8194x5463/953684b3bf/autopsy_pic3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"AUTOPSY\" Install shot, Seventeen, London 2026,",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"326ac364-b0ab-454e-ae95-14e384ef981f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220347272025654,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1984x2235/7fd1bc79a4/slott.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1984x2235"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joel Slotte, Still life painter putting together a vanitas motif, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8a9d83a3-c510-43db-b106-bbb2317b55c5",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"348911f0-5f64-45fd-b33a-24c2c5d9d8da",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220347271931445,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1984x2777/d2edbab5dc/slot2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1984x2777"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joel Slotte, Stleeping Sun1, Vampire lost in reverie, Steeping Sun II , various dates",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f9284312-d504-4d6e-8f10-6cb4f72b46d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220350156674906,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1983x1320/5aded47008/viktor.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1983x1320"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Viktor Timofeev, Exact Fantasy, 2025 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6714f07f-e18f-440c-baf9-cff53fa0c7f5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220369736245530,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4008x5611/95f7f59429/autopsy_pic7_joel_slotte_head_behind_jar_2025.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joel Slotte, Head Behind Jar, 2025",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0c82d914-74f0-47b5-9766-ff1e0422cf9e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220351290984322,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1388x1752/6141a33420/screenshot-2026-09-15-at-17-30-21.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1388x1752"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jaakko Pallasvuo,QUINTET, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dc522f51-c173-44ee-b1a4-a74ee3710c59",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220367871709203,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2750x1568/a1367e5553/autopsy_pic6_teo_ala-ruona_-_collaborators_rea-matere.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Photo from a performance by by Teo Ala-Ruona and Collaborators,",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dabc2b7f-1719-49d3-a554-cfc921500090",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220421404167524,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1984x2574/91f62b3450/holder-lemurian-2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joey Holder, Lemurian, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"ce9582ca-2ef0-4542-a9f5-fbb1f218e804",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220421404151139,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1984x2560/5a02b104f8/holder-atlantean-2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1984x2560"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joey Holder, Atlantean, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a2119a12-87f7-42c2-8e75-0bc98c281fbe",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the next room, the visitor can shop for alien merchandise. T-shirts, caps, posters and little green inflatable men are presented in a shop-like layout. Benjamin Orlowâs enchanting video work, ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"You know I was a snake ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"(2026), presented on an old Samsung TV, underlines the roomâs pop-imaginary atmosphere. Moreover, other video work in the exhibition â such as Paul McCarthyâs and Mike Kelleyâs legendary ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Sod & Sodie Sock Comp, O.S.O",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (1998) and Chino Moyaâs ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"AutoXenoSim",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (2026) â also contribute to our thinking of how different digital visual tropes have changed â from cartoon to Beepleesque images to television aesthetics. The latter seems to pierce through the show, founded also on how the Rosewell phenomena has figured in the history of television.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The alien themselves is presented in the middle of Ausgang Studioâs site-specific installation ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Age of Data",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" (2026) and next to Moyaâs video in the last room of Seventeen. Lying under a blue light in the dark room, it feels like someone has tried to dissect the corpse but faild to do so â or maybe this is what an alien post-autopsy looks like.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a recent essay, Jamie Sutcliffe noted that aliens are booming in our cultural landscape â again. Sutcliffe wrote that âif the aliens truly are here to stay, what matters most might be our insight into the causes theyâre enlisted to serve.â Teo Ala-Ruona's and collaboratorâs performance during the opening returned to the insights, literally and bodily. The work turns inwards to the body, the figures eating their faces, or maybe masks thereof. The deeply moving work echoes what the exhibition at large seems to suggest: that parallel â and paranormal â gestures communicate knowledge in a plurality of, often unknown, ways.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"52d6bbae-42fe-4c56-b222-0288f8d7891a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220378245841472,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1536x1024/e9ba28859b/shop.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Shop, install shot, at Seventeen Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c48782d3-98ab-4749-9226-a1af39692405",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220362768702861,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3001x2384/3809244010/autopsy_pic5_orlow_you_knew_i_was_a_snake_2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3001x2384"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Benjamin Orlow, You knew I was a snake, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"805c1d31-aeab-4c62-8903-ad4db7b16fac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220362770365843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/bd34921b75/autopsy_pic_7_chino_moya_autoxenosim_2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"8000x5333"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chino Moya, AutoXenoSim, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"551e4001-7d63-4edd-8ac0-664dda52ad4b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220367016824777,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1983x1320/892f40809b/ausgang.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ausgang, Studio Age of Data, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4d0db60c-54d9-42c1-9a9d-a6a032cd81fe",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"b2ddb8a2-90a8-42b5-89f8-49eada3ad31a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220362770206098,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7949x5299/0098d09114/autopsy_pic2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"7949x5299"},is_external_url:false},caption:"John Humphreys, Alien Autopsy, install shot at Seventeen gallery in 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75f02d93-d675-45a3-9e35-69600ba0d3d0",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"AUTOPSY\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artits: Teo Ala Ruona & Collaborators, John Humphreys, Mike Kelley, Zein Majali, Paul McCarthy, Chino Moya, Anna Mikkola, Benjamin Orlow, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Anni Puolakka, Joel Slotte, Ausgang Studio,Viktor Timofeev, Teo Ala-Ruona and Collaborators,",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Assembled by Joey Holder with special thanks to Julia Greenway",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"This project was supported by The Finnish Institute UK & Ireland, Zodiak Center for New Dance, Taike, FRAME Finland and Kordelin.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Seventeen Gallery, London (UK) Until 15/08/26",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Editorial Note:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:" The terminology used in this review are those of an independent writer and do not necessarily reflect those of Refresh Magazine EDT. This applies to the concepts of âpost-internetâ and âpost-digital,â which remain widely debated among art critics. Please consult our glossary for further information. We remain committed to supporting independent journalism.and this article has been proudly approved by Refresh Magazine editorial committee.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-15 00:00",name:"\"AUTOPSY' ÷ Endless Alienspace Sadness",author:"Eero Kanjalainen",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f2f81105-cf92-42f9-9e34-ca59ad42c210",color:"#8b664e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"afbfb572-db00-4021-bd33-6447a170b909",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:220304012246548,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3093x2656/ac256a9bd6/15.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"John Humphreys, Alien \"Autopsy\" 1995 , exhinition 2026, courtesy Seventeen, London",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"autopsy",full_slug:"directory/reviews/autopsy",sort_by_date:null,position:-1510,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c0a60734-48eb-4dab-aea5-55e533b422b0",first_published_at:"2026-09-15T17:17:24.8
7763Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"ali cherri",created_at:"2026-09-09T16:59:23.898Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T11:54:16.938Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T11:54:16.954Z",id:218249477751291,uuid:"351d78ec-70c8-4bff-844c-669603ed0d34",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"723f5f51-3f22-42ca-9ade-b85b0af8b4c9",title:"Ali Cherri: Soul Witness at WIELS Brussels | Review",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:218249781367146,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3072x2048/707abac940/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Ali Cherri, Soul Witness, Ali Cherri exhibition, WIELS Brussels, contemporary art review, Lebanese contemporary artist, political art, war and memory, sculpture and installation, The Watchman",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A moving review of Ali Cherriâs Soul Witness at WIELS Brussels, where "}],_uid:"347aad4d-14e4-4b12-9233-62885c26e9dc",body:[{_uid:"a81e89c8-fc57-443b-9567-f3fcb0cc313f",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âWhat does it mean today to be a witness in the face of the worldâs violence, in the face of the genocide unfolding now, in the face of everything that is happening?â",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"â Ali Cherri",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"War now reaches us already framed. The drone supplies the angle, Instagram supplies the border, and our thumb supplies the disappearance. An explosion flares between a holiday photograph and an advertisement. We are horrified; we continue. The crime is not hidden from us. It is shown so often that seeing begins to resemble not seeing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Soul Witness\" exhibition begins inside that failure of attention. Ali Cherri does not add another violent image to the pile. He approaches barbarity through subtlety, poetry, tenderness and melancholyânot to soften it, but to restore its reality. Nothing is hurried into accusation or flattened into equivalence. No verdict is thrust at us. The thought arrives almost unnoticed and is already beneath the skin before we can defend ourselves.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The works are extraordinarily beautiful, and their beauty is the source of their power. They hold the eye that the spectacle of horror can no longer hold. While we remain before them, something harsher crosses the defences raised by repetition. Beauty offers no reconciliation. It makes us vulnerable again.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Violence here is closer to depression than detonation. It has no single instant and no safe exterior. It changes the weight of the air, enters posture and habit, dulls the horizon. War is no longer an event observed from elsewhere; it has become the atmosphere through which ordinary life must move. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7bb6ca1f-22d0-46ca-969d-29285b4cbd57",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218252191232482,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1536/793d42c4c3/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c92.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2304x1536"},is_external_url:false},caption:" Ali Cherri The Sentinel, 2026 Digital video, projection screen Video aspect ratio, 16:9 29 minutes Edition 1/5 + 2AP",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"45d40bdc-4572-4fbd-8fae-c74fadf79533",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253107859963,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1079/768ad6df2f/ali-cherri-still-from-the-sentinel-2026_2_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x1079"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"a5679e16-007f-4a5c-b92c-6f8e3a2cbc43",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cherri does not give us one more image of the world. He infiltrates us with its reality.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Authority first becomes visible in the body: a tension in the neck, a repeated gesture, an eye trained to expect danger. Before it hardens into a monument, a doctrine or a border, power is a habit of muscle and attention.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A soldier watches an empty horizon. The enemy fails to appear, but the apparatus cannot afford to be embarrassed by reality. The landscape must remain suspicious. The soldier lends it danger; his spine keeps the frontier upright. Nothing happens, and an entire system is employed to preserve the threat of nothing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then he falls asleep.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An eyelid is a very small thing with which to interrupt a military order. Sleep does not free the soldierânightmares have their own occupying forcesâbut it makes his body briefly unavailable. Neither hero nor corpse, he slips outside the two images through which armies prefer to possess their men. A monument knows exactly what a soldier means. A sleeping soldier does not cooperate. For one breath, the border loses the gaze that kept it true.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The mourner waits beside another absence. The guard must believe that someone will come; the mourner knows that someone will not return. One absence is cultivated by power, the other refuses to be administered by it. Grief takes up time and space. It prevents loss from being tidied into history and put away.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6434fe19-d8be-4c77-b781-b392ac76e233",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253206565376,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x992/c1c58aa534/ali-cherri-the-seven-soldiers-detail-2023-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-galerie-imane-fares-c-photo-aurelien-mole_1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x992"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7104ee9f-161f-4df9-a15b-9444835a605e",quote:"\"Soul Witness\" is sublime because it reaches us where explicit images now fail. It does not raise its voice above the noise. It lowers it",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"7db8a9a2-49cd-449b-82a3-49a72afa6ab1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218252924727797,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1152x1613/74c17c6fc5/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9a.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1152x1613"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c4739171-df8e-490c-84c9-410857911f93",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218252924707316,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1152x1728/d406ba2a22/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9b.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1152x1728"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"8009e73d-aee1-4f38-9832-14bd793c0658",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253008232953,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3072x2048/7b3a38d587/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3072x2048"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"87358e6a-a07c-4b0d-9a1c-f4793f6493bf",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The same disturbance passes through Cherriâs materials. Bronze has long spoken for victory, permanence and the official dead. Mud accepts the hand, keeps its pressure for a while, then cracks. It does not conquer bronze; it makes bronzeâs eternity look slightly anxious.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bronze says forever. Mud waits for rain.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mud may shelter or bury. Stone may remember or command. Cherri grants no material an easy innocence. He brings them close enough for their inherited meanings to become unstable: the hardness of authority, the elevation of glory, the supposed humility of earth. Fragility is not made virtuous. Permanence is simply revealed as labourâa pedestal, a ceremony, someone to keep the surface bright.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fragments within Cherriâs hybrid creatures have survived other forms of authority. Removed, traded, authenticated and renamed, they carry the touch of several acts of possession. Here Cherriâs question widens: not only what history remembers, but how power and its institutions decide what can be transmitted as history at all. A museum may protect an object and still edit its life. It can turn plunder into provenance by changing not the object, but the sentence around it. Under good lighting, a violent journey acquires excellent manners.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cherri does not pretend to return these fragments to an untouched past. There is no untouched past left. Ancient stone enters new clay; inherited faces inhabit uncertain bodies. The seams remain visible. These creatures resist the calm coherence that display so often imposes upon damaged histories.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the quiet movement of \"Soul Witness\": from the body trained by power to the structures that make such training appear natural; from vigilance to border, from exhaustion to monument, from displaced object to authorised memory. History does not simply pass from one generation to another. It is filtered through the nation, the army and the museum, each preserving certain traces while teaching others to disappear. The exhibition never turns this movement into a lesson. It lets us feel how command passes into flesh, how violence begins to resemble order, and how order eventually tells the story.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Its lightest touches are also its coldest. Armies, borders and museums possess formidable power, yet depend upon brittle performances: a man must continue looking, a statue must remain upright, a label must keep its authority. Perhaps powerâs deepest fear is not rebellion. Perhaps it is a loss of concentration.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c2a02ac7-b083-4d3d-9617-5a87f3dcf8de",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253008228856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1536/fedaf88376/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c98.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2304x1536"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"5a31bca4-64dc-4188-9baa-1538326f762e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253154406909,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1440/0f27d3727e/ali-cherri-counter-monument-for-the-fallen-2025-c-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-almine-rech1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x1440"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4e97b997-08d9-4470-a18c-fffe435b7a69",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Soul Witness\" is sublime because it reaches us where explicit images now fail. It does not raise its voice above the noise. It lowers it. We lean closer. By the time we understand what has reached us, it is too late to scroll away.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To witness, here, is not simply to have looked. It is to lose the privilege of remaining outside what one has seen.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I agree with Cherri: art may not possess power, but it is here to irritate, to disturb the serenity of dominant power. Soul Witness does precisely that. It leaves authority standing, yet makes its composure impossible to believe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything here rings true. Everything is finely judged; everything reaches deep. I cried a great deal. Ali Cherri is a great artist, and his generationâs most eloquent witness to reality where peace remains absent",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Soul Witness\" curated by Curator: Helena Kritis, Curatorial intern: Magdalena de la Barrera",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"With the generous support of: FABA Fundación, Almine y Bernard Ruiz Picasso, Mercedes Vilardell,, Peter & Nathalie Hrechdakian-Oghlian",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In collaboration with: Almine Rech Gallery, Galerie Imane Farès, Cherri Studio",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-09 00:00",name:"The Moment the Image ÷Stops Protecting Us",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"5acbe40f-d7e8-453d-a68d-cf1ede2005a3",color:"#d0a873",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c17f03c7-e151-499d-8c7c-37e674663d1f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218251121287591,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1536/ad6964cd77/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c96.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2304x1536"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ali Cherri, The Earth Heard Their Lament, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"ali-cherri",full_slug:"directory/reviews/ali-cherri",sort_by_date:null,position:-1500,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"4f74592d-1424-40c7-85da-bf0d5a3b1520",first_published_at:"2026-09-09T17:49:41.625Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"caution Bot Crossing",created_at:"2026-09-03T14:14:35.135Z",published_at:"2026-09-04T14:10:50.754Z",updated_at:"2026-09-04T14:10:50.771Z",id:216085606980788,uuid:"0d0f9d0b-7ac8-4ac7-b796-cb468867ee12",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"58dfd08f-269f-445c-9b26-d722764d9bf1",title:"When the Bot÷Takes the Floor",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:216093565690581,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/ec920910a8/cbc_3-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"When the Bot÷Takes the Floor",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"When the Bot÷Takes the Floor"}],_uid:"1fa1cfbf-4d42-4a07-af0d-0c47da8d225a",body:[{_uid:"d25b9add-1e09-4bc8-97e1-b66b8b8e80db",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When the Bot Takes the Floor : Fragmentinâs âCaution Bot Crossingâ exposed how o
77ptimisation can destroy the very plurality that keeps a system alive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What happens when optimisation becomes the only way of thinking? âCaution Bot Crossingâ arrives at a hinge moment, when the automation of tasks is spreading rapidly while the human gestures that sustain them have not yet disappeared. fragmentin follows the tracks of autonomous machines through warehouses, roads, beehives and overheated phones. The exhibition reveals how a world reduced to data, efficiency and binary choices may eventually eliminate the variation it needs to evolve.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Standard/Deluxe in Lausanne, âCaution Bot Crossingâ opened onto a disturbance on the gallery floor: tyre marks cutting across the space. They were too deliberate to be accidental, too irregular to be fully machine-made. The exhibition suggested an autonomous robot moving through the gallery, arranging the works and leaving evidence of its passage. Yet the robot never appeared. What remained was a fiction of agency, and a warning about systems designed to organise the world until nothing unexpected can enter it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"No bot. Only the evidence of its route.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition did not treat automation as a distant technological fantasy. It located it in warehouses, roads, monitoring systems, markets, phones and industrial signs. These environments were not presented as separate examples. They formed one operative landscape in which movement, attention and behaviour are translated into data. Data is used to correct whatever refuses to fit.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The painted tracks give that logic a physical form. Derived from the movements of autonomous warehouse vehicles, they look like diagrams of efficiency: directional, repetitive and apparently rational. But the marks are made by hand. They drift slightly. Their imperfections expose the effort required to imitate machine precision. Human gesture appears as an imperfect copy of automation, while automation reveals itself as a fiction produced by human gesture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3fd78f2d-6106-4400-8a74-40fa7a43b0e4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216171675655130,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x667/800d40a829/cbc_web-1-1000x0.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1000x667"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"95132d3b-a027-4ac8-898d-c1b4184e766f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216380792272268,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1434x1802/dfb1780d1a/screenshot-2026-09-04-at-12-15-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"867998b4-8247-4b2f-bdec-7ed5a3ca5073",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216438502042021,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x1350/72438d1e21/main.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3e47bdbd-2dbb-428d-8285-cfa2ba2466dd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216093565690581,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/ec920910a8/cbc_3-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1400"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"71756d7d-3fbb-43fd-b3f5-7772406a056c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216171704859612,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1394/b31a311daa/wilde_13-01-252681_copie-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1394"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2d8d0f72-41be-471b-8c74-62d383cc06c9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216178224807547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/e507364471/img_2702_1_reduit-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1400"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e67170f4-159b-4180-8307-ce60b6f7f50c",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"One route. One answer. No outside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The problem is not the use of digital tools. It is the closed logic that can grow around them. Optimisation wants one frame, one correct route, one answer that can be repeated. It turns a plural world into a binary one: useful or useless, efficient or defective, inside the model or outside it. When data replaces experience, prediction suppresses uncertainty and efficiency is mistaken for resilience, anything unmeasurable begins to look irrelevant. Difference becomes noise. Error becomes failure. Surprise becomes a defect.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where the exhibitionâs post-natural argument becomes unavoidable. Technology no longer stands outside nature as a neutral instrument. It enters the rhythms of bodies, animals, climates and landscapes, changing the conditions in which they can continue. The world is plural by necessity: life evolves through variation, failed attempts, divergent paths and unexpected relations. That plurality is not an obstacle to evolution; it is its engine. A system that compresses this multiplicity into one optimised frame may look intelligent while exhausting the conditions that allow it to change. Once every deviation has been removed, the system has nowhere left to go. It does not become stronger. It simply runs out of alternatives. Collapse begins there.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Remove the deviation. Remove the future.The hive becomes a balance sheet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The pressure remains visible in âHIVE Indexâ, the exhibitionâs most exacting encounter with the quantification of living systems. Developed with Apian, the work brings together a sculpture and a series of short films. The sculpture takes the form of a mechanical hand closing around a beehive. At the fingertips, small screens speculate on the colonyâs value, turning the hive into a financial interface. The image is not a metaphor added from the outside. It stages the mechanism itself: a living community translated into indicators, rankings and projected returns.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The films move through different forms of contemporary beekeeping, placing traditional, industrial and migratory practices within the same field of observation. Their real subject is not the bee as an isolated emblem of nature, but the network around it: beekeepers, crops, climates, machines, markets and data. A colony becomes something that can be monitored, valued and managed, while the dense relations that make it alive disappear behind the numbers. The bee, the worker and the machine are not the same. They are, however, exposed to the same demand: become legible, become useful, become measurable. âHIVE Indexâ shows what is lost when plurality is flattened into a single metric. The hive does not become clearer. It becomes poorer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The heated glass enclosure containing a smartphone pushes this contradiction toward the absurd. The phone becomes a small dependent organism dealing with the climate it has helped intensify. It c
77an search for an answer, but it cannot step outside the conditions of the problem. The joke is immediate: a phone, placed under a heat lamp like a fragile pet, is apparently asked to manage its own crisis. But the humour does not soften the critique. It sharpens it. A system is attempting to repair itself without questioning its own design.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The phone is the punchline, and the patient.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The floor painting holds the argument without turning it into a slogan. Its lines describe a controlled passage through the gallery, but any body can interrupt them. The visitor remains an inconvenient variable. So does the hand that painted the route. One error can reveal that the system was never as stable as it claimed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs clean visual language also contains its own contradiction. The infrastructures it evokes are not clean. Warehouses conceal exhaustion. Logistics networks distribute ecological damage. Algorithmic management turns attention into a resource. Against this hidden complexity, the works place small disturbances: a route that does not quite behave, a machine that cannot be fully regulated, a phone overheating inside a glass box, a beehive caught in a financial image.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the entrance, a folded industrial safety sign lies abandoned on the floor. The scene has the deadpan quality of a workplace gag: a warning normally protects humans from machines; here, the bot appears to be the one whose crossing must be anticipated. The sign marks a redistribution of responsibility. The question is no longer how technology can serve human needs, but who has to adapt when technical systems begin to determine the conditions of common life.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bbbf6992-1eba-42c4-8840-ad5b7ad21449",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216173433089110,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/019032e895/hive_index_web_3-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d7658e3d-82f6-485a-ad9c-7d503282ba12",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216398235535852,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1401/6a619af422/photo-hives.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"50606946-7ff5-41da-a722-dcb5c314700b",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"41ee20ec-7465-4be9-bce6-9dd77abd7f45",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:216175380200830,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/7622a61eeb/g16_web_2-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0cce98b3-57e0-4f28-acd2-dbfa3fde28ec",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216178224811644,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/5f5ca207e3/g16_3_web-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1400"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"a3d79133-5d5b-4e13-aae3-34a15491a497",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216178224819837,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1280/c1261cec09/img_0234_site_reduit-1920x1280-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x1280"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a4e192eb-4418-432d-a79c-51937a8cd36f",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The safety sign has lost its subject.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âCaution Bot Crossingâ ended without offering a solution, and that refusal still feels more intelligent than a polished answer. Its machines do not become conscious protagonists, and humans do not disappear into a ready-made dystopia. Instead, the exhibition shows a shared choreography of measuring, moving, delegating and correcting. Its absent bot is not a character. It is a logic already at work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The final warning is blunt: a living world cannot be reduced to one optimised frame. It needs friction, error, difference and relations that escape calculation. The slight failures in fragmentinâs painted traces keep the system open. They are not imperfections to be corrected. They are evidence that plurality is still working. Another route, another response, another form of life can emerge. Without them, the optimised system does not reach perfection. It exhausts itself and collapses.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition delivers this warning without spectacle. Its means remain almost stubbornly low-tech: painted tracks, a mechanical hand, a heated phone, a displaced safety sign. Nothing becomes grandiose, catastrophic or loud. That restraint makes the proposition harder to dismiss. Beneath the modesty of its devices, âCaution Bot Crossingâ points to a more decisive shift: data has become a currency, and whoever controls its circulation gains power over what can be seen, valued and acted upon. The exhibition does not announce collapse. It shows how quietly the conditions for it are assembled.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition also underlines and examines the intensifying global state of crisis, and technologyâs role within it. As artificial intelligence and computational systems promise solutions, they remain entangled with invisible labour, extractive practices, energy consumption and geopolitical shifts. Nothing is immaterial here. Every clean interface has a physical cost, and every automated decision rests on a chain of human and material dependencies.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From data feedback loops to material cycles, the works trace the technological, social and environmental conditions that shape the present. They question the collapse of established models of thought while gesturing towards other forms of coexistence, knowledge and responsibility. The point is not to reject technology, but to stop treating its outputs as neutral, inevitable or complete.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-03 00:00",name:"Everything Under Control÷Collapse Pending",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"458d702f-5ab9-4fe6-829e-eded54c09a35",color:"#8a929d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a638fafe-b3e5-439b-ba32-04484af2d931",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:216171636591574,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2100x1400/27a1b2c33d/hive_index_web_5-2100x2100-ms.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2100x1400"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"caution-bot-crossing",full_slug:"directory/reviews/caution-bot-crossing",sort_by_date:null,position:-1490,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"256137f5-69d8-40c1-aa27-46f9b35c9979",first_published_at:"2026-09-03T20:37:30.425Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Aeolian Suite Jenna Sutela",created_at:"2026-08-26T19:16:36.403Z",published_at:"2026-08-26T22:14:36.510Z",updated_at:"2026-08-26T22:14:36.523Z",id:213328676502180,uuid:"1e566467-d58b-4a33-877e-23760dd9a4d5",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"68aa1cb4-ed49-425e-892c-156410a27424",title:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:213361552979842,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1910x1444/48e1a570e2/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-25-41.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1910x1444"},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Aeolian Suite ÷Jenna Sutela"}],_uid:"9dd3fa1d-25d9-4d31-acb5-0fb1bf47aaed",body:[{_uid:"9d836b0f-8c25-4727-a1fe-d304d3df7d42",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Aeolian Suite\" by Jenna Sutela",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In the Venetian context, the wind has never been only a weather condition, but the origin of local mythologies and narrations: the wind moved the boats of Marco Polo towards China in the 14",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"th",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"superscript"}]},{text:" Century while the Venetian âRepubblica Marinaraâ reached its peak thanks to this same element; the songs of complaint for the death of sailors and fishermen directly relate to tumultuous waters produced by the winds, the writer Iosif Brodskij in ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Watermark ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"describes the wind as a constant Venetian presence, revolving in the streets of the city complementing the water fury. When a city is built on water, the sea and the wind become daily visitors, part not only of the folklore, but of every experience, whether through their absence or through a violent appearance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In musical compositions, a note that repeats itself alongside the whole piece is defined as an ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Ostinato; ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"in the same way, the wind repeating itself day after day and century after century, populating the Venetian landscape, becomes a recurring character punctuating the Venetian ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Score. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"The musical metaphor is particularly poignant as, just as the wind, it invisibly replenishes environments with its presence and makes itself heard although not seen: itâs a common experience to perceive a voice singing or a violin playing without understanding where the sound is coming from.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"67b616a3-1d52-446c-9eae-181df7640791",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213371662411971,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1398x1864/aa07dba771/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-23-27-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026. Detail. Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo by Clelia Cadamuro. Courtesy of FRAME Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b703c475-914c-46a9-92cd-5ada9dd85a2e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213371611412670,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1062x1440/95b77809a9/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-26-02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1062x1440"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026. Detail. Pavilion of Finland at the 61st Venice Biennale. Photo by Clelia Cadamuro. Courtesy of FRAME Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ec96b525-fa90-495c-a9f6-988f40c78fc5",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The project ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Aeolian Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"by Jenna Sutela for the Finnish pavilion takes this idea of constancy and presence, as well as the musical score, at its core, starting from the title where the ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"takes yet another term from the musical realm, in which it means a composition of multiple instruments. In Alvar and Elissa Aaltoâs architecture, these instruments take the shape of five entities playing together different c
77ompositions created through the agency of five Venetian winds: Bora Chiara, Bora Scura, Tramontana, Scirocco and Garbin. Each of the five entities playing together in the pavilion presents itself as a hairy sculpture that practically demonstrates the unpredictability of the atmospheric agent it represents: with every minimal air movement, the sculpture surface redefines itself in a continuous game of rearrangement. Entering the pavilion, the wind music wraps the visitors up, becoming at times soft and pleasant to listen to and sometimes violently dissonant, making it hard not to make space in ourselves to listen to the wind's voice. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"Taking back from the theory of ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"deep listening ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"by Pauline Oliveros, Sutela and the winds ask us to be aware of these air movements and to their voices, making space in ourselves to listen to them and to their unpredictability, which defies forecasting and AI modelling, more than ever in the current context of climate change where even winds are affected and violence or complete absence disrupt the usual score are not just musical notes in the scor every event is unpredictable and where its violence is heightened day after day. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"Aeolian Suite ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"is a spiritual experience connected to the capacity to listen not only to ourselves but to any entity that surrounds us, and a fiercely scientific one that reaffirms, through this non-human voice, the importance of being aware of how climate change is affecting everything on the planet. A temple for the winds, the project becomes a space of reflection in the chaos of the Biennale, an invitation to step out of the climate-unaware crowd to get a moment of pantheistic understanding of what happens beyond the next opening and the next champagne flute.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-08-27 00:00",name:"\"Aeolian Suite\" ÷Jenna Sutela",author:"Iacopo Prinetti",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"d1f31111-f669-4180-8445-40cd691e7d0d",color:"#3e81ad",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a297dfda-598a-4949-9e82-f2f8f5e75610",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:213361552979842,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1910x1444/48e1a570e2/screenshot-2026-08-26-at-21-25-41.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1910x1444"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jenna Sutela, Aeolian Suite, 2026, installation view. Photo: Ugo Carmeni. Courtesy of Frame Contemporary Art Finland.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"aeolian-suite-jenna-sutela",full_slug:"directory/reviews/aeolian-suite-jenna-sutela",sort_by_date:null,position:-1470,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"597c8126-9bf2-4d77-b648-f53d86a05a00",first_published_at:"2026-08-26T22:13:27.196Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Shu Lea Cheang: LOVER LOVE",created_at:"2026-08-22T23:37:49.154Z",published_at:"2026-08-30T17:45:44.929Z",updated_at:"2026-08-30T17:45:44.945Z",id:211977294481515,uuid:"6e93b264-45d3-404f-b0d0-ebf3f831891e",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"1a63c59f-cdae-4e51-b940-47d56be53c94",title:"Shu Lea Cheang: LOVER LOVE",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:211977809616504,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4096x2160/96b4bc6b59/burning_angel1.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Shu Lea Cheang: LOVER LOVE",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Shu Lea Cheang: LOVER LOVE"}],_uid:"3408aff5-77f5-4827-a3ba-62fe394da293",body:[{_uid:"af394d78-332c-469e-aec9-f76094a0dcaf",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LOVER LOVE ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"avant-propos:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Shu Lea Cheang, ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"LOVER LOVE was presented until ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"January 3, 2027 at The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Ar, the museumâs largest commission to date.The work explores the daily struggles of trans life, and the increasing threats to the health, safety, and autonomy of trans and gender non-conforming individuals under the current U.S. administration. The central film presents as a four-channel installation with movable screens and an interactive speaker system. Viewers wwere encouraged to interact with the screens, shifting them into and out of the path of the projections, and creating overlapping, complementary new compositions. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cheang worked with eight intergenerational performers in Tucson, Arizona, all of whom contributed their own experiences, narratives, and dreams of and for trans and gender nonconforming life in todayâs United States. The collaboratively scripted film moves between physical and virtual space: between performances in a motel room, a junkyard, and city streets amid surrounding nature, desert plants bloom anthropomorphic appendages and souls escape inhuman oppression to take transhuman flight. Refresh Magazine is proud to presnt this essay written by Wei Huang",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As attacks on queer communities escalate, the pressure is on to imagine a more equitable future without disavowing the conditions of the present. That task can take several forms: recovering an underexamined queer past, supporting community-making and activism, or experimenting with the technologies of a speculative queer utopia. In LOVER LOVE, her installation at New Yorkâs Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Taiwanese artist Shu Lea Cheang brings all three into play. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"\"Here, past, present, and future fold into one another and keep changing shape without sequence,\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Presented as a 28-minute film, LOVER LOVE sidesteps the conventions of the film installation. Four videos play simultaneously across four channels, each projected onto a floor-to-ceiling sliding screen that visitors are invited to move. The moment a panel shifts, Itâs Lover, Love (2011)âthe song that gives the exhibition its titleâbegins to play. Produced and performed by Aérea Negrot, the gauzy techno ballad finds the singer mourning a former lover she cannot quite leave behind. In the wake of Negrotâs death by suicide in 2023, its melancholy has acquired the force of an elegy. The installation is also Cheangâs personal tribute to her longtime collaborator.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the film, Cheang casts Negrot as a six-winged seraph gliding through a pink-hued sky. The figure is unmistakably Cheang: six metallic wings emerge from a plume of smoke that forms the mythical beingâs hollow body. In an interview with Frieze, Cheang described this figure as a vessel âelevated as a symbol with which every trans being can identify.â That radical opennessâthe sense that a body can remain in the process of becomingâruns through her practice. Cheang attends to the feedback loop between the transitioning body and the human, technological, and social agents that make transformation possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d2e122c0-a319-4d75-83e3-a9cf1aa442a5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211983063350921,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/e96645fa26/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-101-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"BTS and Installation Images: Shu Lea Cheang LOVER LOVE, 2026 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"fde58c9a-0cbf-4f45-a11e-a8d027976ad1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211983272926858,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/dec370a7ca/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-97-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3400x2550"},is_external_url:false},caption:"BTS and Installation Images: Shu Lea Cheang LOVER LOVE, 2026 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b906eae9-abbb-433e-85cd-8a8034883179",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211986767548053,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3400x2550/b3d0560bce/shu-lea-cheang-lover-love-104-mar-25-2026-72dpi-webuse.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"caption",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4828d6da-33a1-4da7-bdf1-3fa32a74ad65",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A cyberfeminist and posthumanist, Cheang has long grounded her work in relationality. In Brandon (1998â99), the landmark web-based project prompted by the 1993 murder of trans man Brandon Teena, she used the internetâs non-linear form to connect Teenaâs story with wider trans histories and archival material. Fresh Kill (1994), her experimental science-fiction feature, turns queer ecology into a combustible plot: a lesbian couple use hacking to take on corporate conspiracy and an environmental crisis that leads to their daughterâs disappearance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For LOVER LOVE, Cheang filmed in Tucson, Arizona, in collaboration with local queer communities. Its participants appear in shifting registers: music performances unfold in open-air and semi-clandestine settings; trans and queer people recount personal experiences; intimacy and kink are staged; queerness is simply asserted as a way of being. The film moves between the everyday and the otherworldly. Participants may begin by speaking of their lives through mythical figuresâvampires, for instanceâbefore moving into performance or a community dance party. Elsewhere, digital fantasy enters the frame. One group performance ends with a celebratory portrait, only for CGI cacti to rise, flower, and overlay the performers. The final sequence mirrors the opening image of Negrot drifting freely as a futuristic seraph: against the Arizona desert, a UFO summons her into animation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In this way, LOVER LOVE proposes a more expansive account of transness. Cheang has long regarded transition as a definitive enactment of cyborg theory, grounded in the physical interventions that transition can entail. Speaking at the 2025 Women Make Waves International Film Festival in Taipei, she returned to the relation between the subject who is becoming and the object with which that becoming takes place: body and machine. In a trans context, however, the machine is itself bodily, taking shape through surgery, hormone therapy, and other forms of intervention. Cheang pushes this framework beyond the human scale, towards trans-species life, queer ecology, and the cyberqueer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Negrot herself spoke of moving between transition, detransition, and transition again. For her, this was simply life: âa constant transition.â The phrase refuses the comfort of a fixed identity and recasts life as a state of perpetual movement. It reverberates throughout LOVER LOVE. One Tucson participant resists having their identity suppressed and their humanity denied; elsewhere, the seraph, the cacti, and accounts of becoming creatures from another world open onto a perspective beyond the human. The accounts are deliberately unscripted, resisting any single narrative of queer life. Their ambiguities e
77cho Negrotâs understanding of existence as mobile and unfinished.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The installationâs mechanics extend this proposition. Just as the film makes room for multiple narratives, its four movable screens generate a series of metaphors for queer lifeâand, crucially, for its entanglement with the wider social world. In her Frieze interview, Cheang likened the audienceâs power to divert projected images from their intended paths to the societal brutality inflicted on trans lives. Yet that same intervention also calls up Negrotâs celestial presence by triggering her song. As visitors experiment with the screens, the footage is distorted, layered, refracted, or blocked by light. The ongoing adjustment becomes a search for a wholeness that never arrives. It is difficult, if not impossible, to watch the film in its entirety; but that impossibility is precisely what asks viewers to remain with change, and to recognise the kinetic force of queer lives in transition.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Will queerness ever arrive? Not, Cheang suggests, in any settled or imminent form. Still, LOVER LOVE mourns the past, works in the present, and imagines a future. Cheang has said that she feels both âquite marginalâ and âat the centre of the world.â The installation distils that tension and turns it into momentum: a reason to persist, and to keep imagining what might come next.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9c9bc315-6a60-4453-9531-43df0baf4331",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:211987371450006,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4096x2160/dd7d05dee7/loverlove-4channel-4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c213fa49-d4ec-4032-ac03-d2e6ff7c1838",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LOVER LOVE Tucson Artists & Collaborators:",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Vikó Velázquez Morales, Flor de Nopal",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Forrest, Forrest",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Graham Downing, Forrest's Lover",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Monica Jones, Monica Jones",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Emilia Villegas, MizSkoden",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jade A. Dominguez, Nadir",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Darla Rodriguez, Ash Wednesday",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Azrael Fayme, Azrael",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nimshi Bernice, Nimshi",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Veni, ERA 19",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tania Arballo, ERA 19",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gianna Purcell, Biker",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sam Bloom, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jazzy Benson, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Noah Austin Lopez, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Victoria Fitzgerald, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Shawna Shawnte, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Red Samaniego, ORTX",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jazzy Benson, Producer / Casting Director / Locations",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Katie Burkholder, Producer / Production Manager",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Eryka Dellenbach, Director of Photography",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Clarice Bales, Assistant Camera",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Marizó Siller, Gaffer",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Graham Donohoe, Data Wrangler / Lighting Support / Drone Pilot",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Melrose Mcclain, Sound Recordist / Boom Op",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Reed Chandler, Assistant Director / Script Supervisor / Slate",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Julia Franco, Art Assistant",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-08-23 00:00",name:"Shu Lea Cheang ÷LOVER LOVE",author:"Wei Huang \t",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"bfa3f701-4
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77],_uid:"ea6897c7-587e-45ce-8a6d-3302305270fc",body:[{_uid:"e8f6632c-d428-4a3e-8d86-cf87facf684c",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Louis Pohl Koseda: Complexity as a Way of Making Sense",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Iâm arriving later than planned at a gallery in South East London. As I approach, silhouettes of figures blur against the frosted glass, the words SEAGER announcing the relatively nondescript front of my destination. I make my way in, ducking past groups of smokers stationed right next to the front of the building, only to find Louis in the depths of an animated conversation, leaning in and gesticulating something to a few enraptured conversation partners. I take my opportunity to scout out the space. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Iâve been a fan of Louis Pohl Kosedaâs work for a long time. We first crossed paths during, what is now a fairly hazy memory of, a summer spent digging a hole in the side of a Swiss mountain almost ten years ago. Louis was carrying out a vaudevillian campaign during a collective annual gathering of architecture students called EASA (European Architecture Student Assembly). Whipping up nearly 500 students into a populist frenzy, with the aim of digging one really big hole in the side of the Swiss alps. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Since then, Louisâ work has been profoundly characterised by a search for some kind of objective truth. One that is reflected through his vast and intricate drawings as if looking through a funhouse mirror, the absurdity of the underlying structure that is the subject of his works stretched taut, held up at times with comic relief, but mediated by an equally strong refusal to present it as anything other than a subjective narrative. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In The Palace of Magnolia and the Notification, Louis took on the challenge of addressing how the creep of the digital world in our real world has retroactively changed our perceptions of colour and, by extension, our perception of everyday physical reality. A rather ambitious undertaking to use his art as a mechanism to reflect on the way perceptions around colour have been shaped by the digital form - The premise is complex and densely layered with personal reflections, observations about the human lives at the coal face of global systems. In this collection of works, itâs possible to start to piece together his worldview. But only if you sit and lean into his works; give them the attention that they demand. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The kind of eclecticism that comes with Louisâ work feels a little overpowering at times, but it also resonantes and draws you in, in the same manner as a scrolling square feed of hyperbolic faces and brilliant flashing colours you might quickly glimpse over the shoulder of a stranger on their phone at a bus stop, flashes of worlds blaring out of the tableau and into the street. Itâs a specific curation of ideas, images and references that equal parts fantastical narrative and intimately biographical, barely contained within the physical limits of their medium. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When I first met him, Louisâ art was highly tonally driven. In his Ink drawings, characters were often drawn as if emerging from shadows, negatives that danced into life to the rhythm of an unseen campfire (Ecclesall Road and James Harrington, Roman Road, Again Begin). Louisâ intellectual enquiry seemed driven in parallel with his pen and charcoal explorations, oftentimes one line skimming the surface of the other. His drawings were almost journalistic in nature, capturing moments of connection or mundane simple settings that were immediately around him (Cafe life 3, Magnolia Bath). ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"607fb345-e8c6-4b91-862a-94ca20046ee6",quote:"In this exhibition, Louis took on the challenge of addressing how the creep of the digital world in our real world has retroactively changed our perceptions of colour and, by extension, our perception of everyday physical reality.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"f4598f3f-0dad-414f-b2e6-3bfdc5a3873b",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"More recently, Louis has begun experimenting with paint. Playing with swashes of colour as a textural mass, drawing out writhing shapes on the canvas from the background. Expanding layers through intense flashes of vivid tones and doused in pastel washes. Though experimental, pieces such as Marloweâs Room (2023), a painting recognised by the jury of the 2025 John Moores Painting Prize, break out of lines that contain familiar forms. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Combining the manic detail spilling out of personal, almost autobiographic, paintings like Marloweâs Room and The view of the flat is nice from Peckham Rye (2023), with the contorting meticulous planetary scale charcoal drawings, you arrive at his more recent works, hot day (2026) and Swimming (2026). When seen in retrospect, this creates a feeling of watching a line trend towards an asymptote. Converging towards something on its way to being articulated. Rehearsals for the big performance, perhaps. When viewed in sequence, the paintings layer neatly on top of each other. Earlier forays into colour are presented, in this exhibition, as more still life and at times quite gestural, behaviour (2023) and Rename or cancel (2023). The blending of the personal and the systemic, therefore, carries through into the choices of colours Louis uses; amplifying the intensity of these worlds to dizzying new heights. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"ca42d682-159c-4a18-9386-3893e76f976d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209742812203467,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4894x7014/add0552696/28-cafe-life-3.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a3cff530-edd3-457e-8760-b532dc7a2a01",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209742604483017,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3329x4117/16b44d0278/1-marlowe-s-room-76-bus-2023-paint-and-mixed-media-1mx1m.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f72f7c22-2514-49b8-b662-cf306e7a65e4",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Layers upon layersâ¦",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Louisâ fascination with complexity is evident in his work, Society of the Speculator (2024). An expansive pen and ink drawing taking some of the big names of the speculative economy (J.P. Morgan and Citibank to be precise) to task. The drawing itself pulls into focus at particular moments, as the rest of it fades away into ghostly suggestions of emotion and movement. In the centre of all this, your eyes may rest on a woman rendered in high contrast swinging a Gucci bag over the head of another, falling away into a pale figure just behind her. The image is an Athenian battle, where no one seems to be winning. Skyscrapers emblazoned with prideful logos of high flying global finance drag the observer back into the 21st century. The composition and the details between the carefully curated and rendered characters feels religious, bodies flying through space in an unholy fracas. Vanishing into the horizon, two monuments laden with a multiplicity of meaning held in place with guidelines into the centre of the image, a narrowing Bank of England and a faint No.1 Poultry Street. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" âToday, the issues within the financial system are getting worse. With politicians exploiting the information discrepancy to avoid the root, systemic issues. Spreading misinformation about the nature of economics to capitalize them-selves. The line between lie and reality becomes more blurred. Digital media becomes more centralized. The use of AI and bots creates complex perception ânudgesâ over time as a system of multi-level marketing. As speculative bubbles grow bigger, we also see social bubbles become foam - more isolating and individual. This was supposed to be the future.â Louis Pohl Koseda ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Through its use of plurality of perspective, Kosedaâs work always resists the singular. By combining one, two or even three point horizons, bodies and objects start to float out of place and time. Sometimes neatly, other times less so. When I spoke to Louis about this, at a previous show he curated in the City of London, I found him moving fluidly between referencing works by some of the Old Masters in the same breath as details of brutalist buildings from the 1960s. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e0cd9983-fb99-44b2-a431-bef8cdd92adf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209744121674203,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3834x2352/1f98909f4f/11-society-of-the-speculator_-drawing-speculative-finance-and-new-media-relationships-2024-pen-and-ink-drawing-1-2mx2-4m.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"society of the speculator\", 2024",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"829687d3-3c8f-49d8-bf0b-62d0f7398236",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The direct references to architecture are not only the surface of this influence, having spent three years studying Architecture at the University of Sheffield, it runs pretty deep in Louisâ worldview. His tools and the way he bends them feel informed directly by the drawing conventions that architecture school drills into you. An astute sense of awareness of the observer, and the shape of the observed. How an edge might fall away from you as you take one step to the right. Or another step backwards. Breaking these conventions, in the right moments, creates a layer of confusion in its denial to provide a clear anchor to which the observer of his drawings might hold onto. In some of Kosedaâs pieces, this broken structure is literally left exposed.
77Criss-crossing lines that guide the layers of perspective are left in place, scaffolding as facade perhaps (Society of the Speculator, 2024). ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The density of Louisâ work, expressed sometimes through composition and other times through raw tone, is not stylistic. Rather, itâs a necessity. Ask Louis to explain any of his singular works and you will find lengthy and interconnected theories around social structure, macro-economic policies and references to obscure British television shows from the 1990s. Koseda is driven by lines of social and political inquiry first and foremost. The form is a crystalled set of ideas around how the world is, meditations on how the personal meets with the global in one set of drawings. Propositions on the machinery of the political and economic in another. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Itâs not a surprise, then, that this kind of tangential thinking is one that lends itself to a particular understanding of the world as a moving set of systems. Reading his artwork as grand theories of the systems that shape our society, and our experience of it. The challenge with this approach, however, is the difficulty in parsing these layers of meaning. Where Louisâ resistance to the prosaic creates variegated and intricate landscapes, it also can overwhelm. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The complexity and density of Louisâ art reflects the density and aspirations of its author. His internal thought process is one profoundly led by a deep curiosity. Itâs no wonder drawings are bursting at the seams. Of course, this complexity can be overwhelming, or outright offputting for some. But I suspect that the intensity of the work is the point. Itâs work that demands attention. This necessitates a specific kind of engagement with Kosedaâs drawings - One akin to a form of meditation. Presence that the viewer is encouraged to lean into.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c00ea08f-f1e8-445d-94bc-b2ced760babf",quote:"Most people that visit my shows tend to spend around 45 minutes to an hour in the gallery, which is very high retention for contemporary art works⦠People are relieved that they are seeing slower artworks that they can spend time with.",author:" Louis Pohl Koseda ",component:"quote"},{_uid:"f310cc4b-aa70-4103-881c-9314bf64e655",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209747077118535,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1170x951/682b604032/11-landscape-mode-2022-oil-pastels-on-paper-29-7x42-0.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c6be339c-d675-4fa0-b3aa-895479cb5337",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209747933125203,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2753x3937/c2f7ddb480/8-screenbreak-2020-mixed-media-on-paper-297x420.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"73ad3cd1-043a-4085-a896-10d84769ca02",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209748026272340,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1316x1820/05831588fa/screenshot-2026-08-16-at-18-21-37.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1316x1820"},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7a0c7313-4913-4e0e-91d0-9017f020e0a4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:209748258814550,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2450x1826/c52c436369/screenshot-2026-08-16-at-18-27-38.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c1eb66f1-b9e1-4a63-856b-09b07389eebf",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A sprawling narrative ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Back in the southern edge of Deptford, as the sun began to slip over the horizon, I continued to pace around the crowded room slowly. I recognise some pieces from his previous exhibitions, and scan for any new additions. Quietly considering the link between these pieces, as a set of curated images and reflections. Louisâ work, whether it's laying out a vast tapestry of cityscapes across a canvas or a fantastical spiralling multi-headed hydra fighting a hindu god is inherently relational. It's a set of actors, bodies often flung in space, that are always in motion - acting on or being acted upon by others, but always by a visible force. These forces are often metaphors of systems and s
77ocial structures that are abstracted enough right up to the point they become highly intelligible visual elements. In my many conversations with and about Louisâ work, Iâve come to refer to these drawings as narrative diagrams. An image that is depicting a set of relationships, mediated by an action of some sort, but ultimately depicting a system at work. As such, they serve to, both, elucidate and reify complex links and relations at the heart of each of his works. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As a multi-disciplinary artist, Kosedaâs experimentation is right at the front of his work, often leaping out of the canvas and into three dimensions. His previous exhibition at No. 1 Poultry street was one such example. T-shaped panels stood proudly in the oblique space, mimicking the playful formal elements that made up the iconic building in the heart of the City of London. The panels were arranged as such that they present two-tone contrasts based on the position of the viewer. This three-dimensional experimentation is continued at this SEAGER show, with his use of what he calls Rhizomatic Modules. These small modular elements, CNCd from plywood, rise up from the floor of the gallery. Interlocking at perpendicular angles, they support the weight of a few pieces in the centre of the space and push a few others off the white walls. From certain angles, the lines made by the simple geometric shapes blur into an incredibly dense lattice, complexity that emerges from the iteration of a simple motif. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Itâs hard to not attribute this literal spatial element of Louisâ work, in part, to his background in architecture. To someone who has been through architectural education, this deeply practical approach to construction and modularity feels incredibly familiar. The tessellated forms are made with a particular awareness of how they can be formulated as a self-supporting structure, or a âthree dimensional cellular automatonâ as described by the artist. But the attention here is not on the form itself, but rather the ideas that the Rhizomatic Modular presents - a structure in service of an idea or a concept. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âStarting from a single piece as a seed, as more pieces are joined together a hidden rhythm is revealed. The structure expands in any direction of choice without boundaries, centres/margins or limits, becoming more complex over time. Pieces of pipework, a timber can be threaded through the entire structure, creating a framework for artworks and greater layers of complexity.â Louis Pohl Koseda ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These Rhizomatic Modular elements inform a kind of language that Koseda seems to be building as an ongoing part of his practice. The use of the term Rhizome suggests a particular organic and meandering quality, tendrils rooting around in the soil in search of something, an apt description of Kosedaâs artistic journey in some way. Presented in this exhibition, and taken as a whole, Louisâ work feels like a consistent way of making sense. Whether that is of the world that we are encased in, or in the different chapters of his life as they unfold. By tying together the systemic and the personal, and driven by a deep intellectual curiosity, Koseda presents an idiosyncratic view of contemporary life in an uncanny blend of the surreal and the hyperreal precisely. 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77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" It is, quite possibly, the most interesting and necessary model currently in operation. Before you see a single work, the event has already made a demand. Acclimatise for 48 hours. Start anywhere. There is no opening, no prescribed route, no single centre. The instruction Free appears on the page not as a price point but as a structural condition. Most large-scale art events are organized around arrival: the vernissage, the press preview, the guided tour. This one is organized around the approach. The body must adjust to the altitude before the eye is asked to do anything at all. That sequencing is not incidental. It is the argument. And the argument is regeneration.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Operating under the title \"Signals from Another Star\", this iteration, curated by Vishal K. Dar and Tsering Motup Siddho, dismantles the orthodoxies of the biennial format by situating its practice within the volatile topographical and ancestral contexts of Ladakh. These interventions act as porous membranes between artistic intent, structural design, and the geological real, pushing contemporary discourse out of the 20ieme globalised model and into the LehâKargil corridor, a 230-kilometre route that was, for centuries, a key node of the Silk Road. This geography is not a backdrop; it is the operating system. Trade routes are not destinations; they are systems of relation, and the work here is encountered in motion, between villages, rivers, heritage sites, and open terrain at over 3,000 metres above sea level. That altitude is not picturesque. It is a physical condition that alters perception, slows the breath, and makes the body aware of its own limits before it has time to adopt the critical distance that usually insulates the viewer from the work. Regeneration begins here, in the body, before it reaches the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ad00137b-8114-47b4-97e3-310252372e66",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207188802590637,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5504x8256/879a9ebc3b/sab26_tsepel_suryan-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Stanzin Tsepel, Henasku, sÄ Ladakh Biennale 2026 Photo by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8fc91bbd-093a-4edd-be04-1561311a7fbf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207188800821164,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5504x8256/6dad393cb8/sab26_tsepel_suryan-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"5333x8000"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Stanzin Tsepel, Henasku, sÄ Ladakh Biennale 2026 Photo by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"815958ee-b7e4-4e2d-93f2-099504b36a0a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207595134850792,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8068x5379/9e1b92999d/sa-ladakh-biennale-2026_tundup-dorjey_likir_photo-by-saurabh-suryan-9.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tundup Dorjey, Likir, saÌ Ladakh Biennale 2026, Photo by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c7ae50b-1893-4292-9261-f7735ed3952a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:206583671644174,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/04df51f69b/sab26_urgain_suryan-15.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"8000x5333"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Urgain Zawa, Nurla, sÄ Ladakh Biennale 2026, Photo by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"0504667e-97e0-41b2-89f8-a05f41166750",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207535453708350,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/610f2f9b3a/sa-ladakh-biennale-2026_studio-eidola_lamayuru_photo-by-saurabh-suryan-13.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Studio Eidola, Lamayuru, saÌ Ladakh Biennale 2026, Photo by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"33f6c20a-390f-4ab2-adb0-abd45f86f1e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207534957506603,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5504x8256/42848b637a/sab26_eidola_suryan-7.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"5333x8000"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Studio Eidola, Lamayuru, saÌ Ladakh Biennale 2026, Photo by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"beec85e8-9789-460a-9c11-78b90df82e00",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207534681112609,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5504x8256/ba5e8baf6f/sab26_eidola_suryan-17.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"5333x8000"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Studio Eidola, Lamayuru, saÌ Ladakh Biennale 2026, Photo by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cc35ea43-84d0-422e-bc2c-df2fd6806a09",quote:"This isn't a conventional biennale. It's a pilgrimage across Ladakh. You have to slow down, acclimatise, understand the landscape and let it change the way you see. Every artist, every village, every site, and every encounter along the way becomes part of that journey.",author:"Sagar Singh",component:"quote"},{_uid:"cdecc19a-6687-4a06-8223-da344614dc06",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists are held to the same logic, operating in a space where regeneration is not a theme but a metabolic requirement. It begins as a refusal of the objectâs endurance. Stanzin Tsepelâs sculptural practice, which translates glacial recession into physical ledgers of wood and lime, and Urgain Zawa and Tundup Dorjayâs markalak clay sculptures, cast from indigenous ritual earth, are designed to dissolve. They reject the marketâs demand for permanence, choosing instead to exist, perform their work, and return to the soil without residue. This calculated decay is met by Studio Eidola, who arrive from Zürich to treat industrial residues not as waste, but as carriers of geological and industrial history. In the Indus Valley, their inquiry into what remains after extraction meets a ground that is itself a compressed archive of tectonic movement, positioning the byproduct as the primary site of inquiry.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"afc410cf-4fe0-402c-ac78-2767e187483d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207603579812597,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8192x5464/0b7a3cc885/sa-ladakh-biennale-2026_chemat-dorjey_basgo_photo-by-manan-sheth-4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chemat Dorjey, Basgo, saÌ Ladakh Biennale 2026, by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3dc523b0-d430-48e1-8621-aff1a8d60431",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207601886734546,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5158x7737/79d10e2fba/sa-ladakh-biennale-2026_chemat-dorjey_basgo_photo-by-saurabh-suryan-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chemat Dorjey, Basgo, saÌ Ladakh Biennale 2026, by Saurabh Suryan",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
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77 it is the work. Jitish Kallat occupies this same vertiginous space, refusing to let the cosmological and the immediate cancel each other out, while Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser) project alternate logics across the sites, treating stone, wind, and altitude not as backdrops, but as active variables in a system that exceeds human duration.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This trajectory from soil to signal finds its most precise expression in the raising flags project, a collaboration with museum in progress. Here, the fixity of the object is entirely surrendered to the atmosphere. For Agnieszka Kurant, Peter Kogler, Anna Jermolaewa, and Grazia Toderi, the flag is not a secondary format; it is a radical choice of medium that aligns with the biennaleâs zero-footprint methodology. Jitish Kallatâs Adrift Signs operates in this same airborne register, sending messages into the wind that refuse to claim territory. In this high-altitude corridor, these flags act as nomadic signals, interacting with the sky rather than the ground. Koglerâs networks and Toderiâs celestial mappings are hoisted into the void, becoming metabolic markers that sychronize with the mountainâs own rhythms. The art here does not occupy space; it occupies the frequency.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This institutional and geographic depth is further anchored by Chemat Dorjeyâs Burrowed in Time. By reimagining Chali weaving as an architectural structure at Basgo, Dorjey scales the tactile language of Ladakhi textiles into a spatial dialogue with the ancient citadel. His work exists alongside Amrit Karkiâs Rising from the Soil, Soaring to the Sky, a monumental soil-carpet that tracks the unstable boundary where matter begins to cohere into form before being scattered by the wind. Through a five-year commitment with the Rubin Museum and exchanges with the Fremantle Biennale, represented by Shupiwe Chongweâs ceramic practice, the biennale insists that the ground beneath the maker is the first material, bound by the material imperative of the ground.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1387b3da-13e3-4748-af17-bf4e9d82bcfc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207598543394758,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8192x5464/95c7e7bdda/sa-ladakh-biennale-2026_ayan-biswas_mulbekh_photo-by-manan-sheth-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"sa-ladakh-biennale-2026_ayan-biswas_mulbekh_photo-by-manan-sheth-1.jpg",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75a161be-295c-4abc-aaf1-1cd7b32924ea",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The economic structure is not an afterthought. Local communities are not partners in name; they share crafts, knowledge, and produce, with proceeds returning directly to them. Ayan Biswas, working with the Quiet Art Movement in Kargil, uses alternative printmaking to document the region's medicinal plants, integrating school workshops into the process so that the archival work becomes simultaneously an act of intergenerational transmission. The art is not visiting the community. The community is the condition of the art. The redistribution of cultural and economic energy back into the ground that made the work possible: that, too, is regeneration.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Being local, here, is not a retreat from the universal. It is how the universal gets made. A sculptor working with unfired clay and oral history in the Indus Valley is addressing the same broken relationship between human activity and living systems as any artist working anywhere on the planet. Worth noting, too, is what the biennale does not do: it does not announce itself as a decolonial project, does not frame its craft practices as resistance, does not position La
77dakhi knowledge against a Western norm it needs to overcome. It simply operates from different premises entirely. The criteria by which the international art world usually measures ambition, institutional scale, market visibility, critical legibility within a Euro-American framework, are not the criteria at work here.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The deeper question the biennale raises is one of knowledge itself. How do we imagine a different future for art if we continue to produce it within the very frameworks that determined what counted as art in the first place? The hierarchies of medium, the primacy of the object, the authority of the institution, the geography of the centre: these are not neutral conventions. They are inherited structures, and they shape not only what gets shown but what gets made, what gets funded, what gets thought. A biennale that builds from craft, from oral transmission, from the intelligence embedded in a terrain worked over centuries, is not simply offering an alternative programme. It is operating from a different epistemology entirely. The regenerative act, here, is not just ecological. It is cognitive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The art world has spent decades building a global circuit, fairs, biennials, institutional touring shows, predicated on the friction-less movement of capital and concepts. It has done so, but at a cost that is now visible: a creeping formal and conceptual uniformity, events that increasingly resemble one another regardless of where they are held, a shared grammar of presentation, hospitality, and critical language that travels so efficiently it leaves little room for the genuinely foreign. The circuit is not broken. It has become less critical, less artistically necessary, and less capable of producing the kind of encounter that changes how you think.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The sÄ Ladakh Biennale proposes a different architecture altogether. No centralized venue. No prescribed itinerary. No opening gala. A 48-hour acclimatisation requirement that applies equally to the curator, the collector, and the critic. Slowly, on its terms. This is not nostalgia for a pre-global art world. It is a structural proposition about what contemporary art might recover when it stops optimizing for portability and starts building from place.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What is at stake is not just a question of format. Diversity is the metabolic requirement of any living system, whether biological or cultural. When a single model, regardless of its perceived benevolence, is applied from above across different territories, different histories, different ways of knowing, it does not enrich those contexts; it gradually narrows them. It reduces the range of questions that art is permitted to ask, the range of forms it is permitted to take, the range of communities it is permitted to address. A norm imposed from outside, however prestigious its origin, is always also a contraction. What the sÄ Ladakh Biennale insists on, by rooting itself in the specific conditions of this place and these communities, is that the local does not need to be legitimized by the global. It legitimizes itself. And in doing so, it expands what the rest of the world is able to see.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Anchored, slow, regenerative, economically accountable to the communities it inhabits, this is not a marginal model. It is the one the art models should",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"be moving toward.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"curated by Vishal K Dar, with Tsering Motup Siddho as Associate Curator",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}
77,{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-aace618a-7fff-54b1-f48c-8e833c52955b"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists include Agnieszka Kurant (Poland), Amrit Kakri (Nepal), Anna Jermolaewa (Austria), Arunima Dazess Wangchuk (Leh, Ladakh), Avantika Bawa (USA/India), Ayan Biswas (Likir, Ladakh), Chemat Dorjey (Sakti, Leh, Ladakh), David Soin Tappeser (Germany), Denizay Apusoglu (Switzerland), Grazia Toderi (Italy), Himali Singh Soin (India), Jigmet Angmo (Sakti, Leh, Ladakh), Jitish Kallat (India), Jonas Kissling (Switzerland), Peter Kogler (Austria), Shupiwe Chongwe (Australia), Skarma Sonam Tashi (Sapi, Kargil, Ladakh), Stanzin Samphel (Chemday, Leh, Ladakh), Stanzin Tsepel (Rangdum, Zanskar, Ladakh), Stanzin Wangail (Stok, Leh, Ladakh), Tashi Namgial (Skurbuchan, Leh, Ladakh), Tenzin Olden (Shilling-Skit, Zanskar, Ladakh), Tom Mùller (Switzerland), Tundup Dorjay (Igoo, Leh, Ladakh), Urgain Zawa (Igoo, Leh, Ladakh), and Zahara Batool (Pashkum, Kargil, Ladakh).",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"anchor",attrs:{id:"docs-internal-guid-41f62ab3-7fff-8b86-85a5-dad3cd70ac9e"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"sÄ Ladakh Biennale 2026, LehâKargil corridor, extended until 30th of August",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"75248fcc-33df-4195-8d77-ed69b23f54bf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:207623343834243,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3236x1796/5add2feb99/screenshot-2026-08-10-at-18-21-14.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}],date:"2026-08-08 00:00",name:"sÄ Ladakh Biennale 2026÷Regeneration at Altitude",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"4683eac6-bd23-4f77-984f-093318483471",color:"#90681b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e7a59d28-57d9-4140-b6ee-02cf7540d61d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:206572450528659,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1222x842/67344ad752/screenshot-2026-08-07-at-19-05-14.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1222x842"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Image by Urgyan Skaldan",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"sa-bienniale",full_slug:"directory/reviews/sa-bienniale",sort_by_date:null,position:-1440,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c559bdfd-6690-4cb2-95a7-df229be64909",first_published_at:"2026-08-10T16:20:00.987Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Entre chien et loup",created_at:"2026-07-18T10:29:14.743Z",published_at:"2026-07-18T10:44:12.693Z",updated_at:"2026-07-18T10:44:12.706Z",id:199397190663856,uuid:"94236776-3d92-4e7c-92f1-8da09d4218fa",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"ae653591-2e7e-48b7-8fc3-024753f2a4b3",title:"test",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:199397495286609,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/aace6268f9/3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"test",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"test"}],_uid:"ad745f83-d2dc-43bb-ac3a-ef95a75e36c1",body:[{_uid:"f410be3a-025a-4cf0-afde-8c1213720004",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Entre Chien et Loup\" by Abbas Akhavan at the Canadian Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"As far as I can remember, I have always had a particular fascination with botanical gardens, an interest pre-dating any interest in the contemporary arts field. Having always lived in dense urban environments, the opportunity to enter a public, curated green space in which each species would narrate a story and a world was surprising.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"In Abbas Akhavanâs work for the Canada Pavilion at the
7761st Venice Biennale, I found myself drawn back to this interest in botanical gardens, not only for their aesthetic appeal but also through a political, layered lens. At the same time, the work drew a surprising parallel between the botanical garden and the Biennale format, making their political sides collide.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"The pavilion narration is centred on the giant water lily, a plant species imported from South America to the United Kingdom on the occasion of the Great Exhibition of 1851, when it was named after Queen Victoria and exhibited at the Crystal Palace, and later moved to a dedicated pavilion in Kew Gardens, where itâs currently housed. The plant was transported across the ocean in a Wardian case, a precursor to the contemporary terrarium and a surprising technological advancement for the period. Taking from this history and from the fact that the water lilies pavilion in Kew is currently closed for refurbishment, Akhavan took seeds from the plant, grew them in Paduaâs botanical garden and then transferred them into the Canada Pavilion, converted for the occasion into a contemporary Wardian case, an offshoot of Kew inside a garden dedicated not to plants, but to art practices. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"044ae6cd-f9fb-4d18-80b6-5aae0155e6a2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:199399705808378,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/40ace6992e/1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup, 2026, Canada Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. © Abbas Akhavan. Photo: Francesco Barasciutti",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9bc3dbf6-cd4d-4835-82db-bc6f1d3d99bf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:199399539015103,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x667/df76e94135/2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: Entre chien et loup, 2026, Canada Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. © Abbas Akhavan. Photo: Francesco Barasciutti",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"98035297-ece3-4b44-a32f-a7ca9ff28337",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Akhavan bridges the botanical garden and the Venice Biennale gardens for their shared political undercurrent: in the case of the botanical garden, it is a colonial one founded on plants being imported from colonies through the British Empire system; in the case of the Venice Biennale, instead, it is its inherent political dimension, which we have experienced lately with the cases of the Israeli and the Russian pavilions. Akhavan approaches the political side of gardens through the non-human lens of the giant water lilies and silently embroiders this narration with multiple topics: the colonisation of Canada by the British Empire and the non-human entities as the first to be put in cages as a spectacle for Western audiences.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"The whole project works within a penumbral environment, where what appears and what lies behind the appearance coexist: Canada is only obliquely mentioned through the discourse on British colonialism, and the shady political system of the Venice Biennale is hidden behind a curtain of aesthetics and international cooperation. The title itself ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Entre Chien et Loup ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"brings forward this idea: in the twilight a wolf can be mistaken for a dog and viceversa, just as a botanical garden can a
77ppear as a simple aesthetic exercise while carrying testimony of colonial violence or as the Biennale Gardens can perceived as a display of current aesthetics while they are instead a powerful tool to lure through culture political recognition even for countries who are accused of war crimes.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"},content:[{text:"61st Venice Biennale. Abbas Akhavan represents Canada with his installation \"Entre chien et loup\" â Giardini, May 9 to November 22, 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:"justify"}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-17 00:00",name:"\"Entre Chien et Loup\" ÷Abbas Akhavan ",author:"Iacopo Prinetti",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"878d1c62-f725-4047-a082-518ed7ab4a65",color:"#792a33",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d941a306-1448-4fdb-8339-acc85c4bad17",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:199397495286609,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x800/aace6268f9/3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view, Abbas Akhavan: \"Entre chien et loup\",Canada Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition â La Biennale di Venezia",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"entre-chien-et-loup",full_slug:"directory/reviews/entre-chien-et-loup",sort_by_date:null,position:-1430,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1f6de932-e1ef-423a-af10-5d7594024208",first_published_at:"2026-07-18T10:43:38.479Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Kyiv Biennial",created_at:"2026-07-10T03:06:29.763Z",published_at:"2026-09-09T05:46:04.490Z",updated_at:"2026-09-09T05:46:04.507Z",id:196457225300718,uuid:"0965db5a-4e62-4016-a87c-41e341a23da5",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"cc3663e7-9296-4ec1-bdf0-392337c634af",title:"Kyiv Biennial 2026 Berlin Review: Art Made Inside the Condition",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:196461179174392,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/5ec0542d56/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_lida_abdul_0701_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Kyiv Biennial 2026, A Bird That Cannot Land, KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Hito Steyerl, Mona Hatoum, Dana Kavelina, Lesia Vasylchenko, Samia Halaby, Flaka Haliti, Lida Abdul, Saodat Ismailova, Geta BrÄtescu, Oleksiy Radynski, contemporary art Berlin 2026, nomadic biennial, art and war, post-digital art, poly-crisis art, Ukrainian art, art under conflict",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A review of the Kyiv Biennial's 2026 Berlin edition at KW Institute: art made inside war, mutation, sentiment, and the post-Instagram condition."}],_uid:"ca7b974f-6b62-40d4-953b-db8b3d52c5e0",body:[{_uid:"0726f5d6-cc21-4458-81b5-0cefaa8da516",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"A Bird That Cannot Land\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Kyiv Biennial exists. It simply does not stay in one place. Its current chapter lands at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, a nomadic biennial that has been moving across European cities since the war made Kyiv an impossible host. This Berlin edition operates from a single, exacting premise: that war is not a subject to be represented but a condition that restructures the very act of making: the time available, the materials accessible, the forms that remain possible. And not only war. The full weight of a world coming apart at several seams at once, where the climate, the political order, the social contract, and the body itself are all shifting. This is also the first post-Instagram war: fought with consumer drones, documented on Telegram channels that double as intelligence feeds, its atrocities verified through geotagged stories and TikTok videos posted by soldiers and civilians alike. The image is no longer a record of what happened. It is part of how the war is fought. At KW, the question is not how artists respond to crisis. It is what imagination becomes when the phone in your pocket is simultaneously a camera, a
77weapon, a survival tool, and a propaganda machine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"936c7e7d-20e8-4103-a7b8-18f55c7eb8a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196463456669184,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/2bb49f571d/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0222_hito_steyerl_oleksiy_radynski_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hito Steyerl, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1f9c7913-5bb4-4f7d-87c7-3de5cffe38e1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196463398780415,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/071ce0d650/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_hito_steyerl_philipp_goll_0238_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hito Steyerl.and Philipp Goll, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2e9e4d39-716c-4fc0-996d-7ca3d02cddcf",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hito Steyerl's installation \"Trassniki\" (2026), made in collaboration with Philipp Goll and Oleksiy Radynski, fills a room with metal pipes, sound, and video to map the extractivist logic of Russian imperialism, tracing the pipeline infrastructure that made Nord Stream 2 possible and, by extension, the fossil-fuel opportunism that allowed the war to be funded and deferred for years. Radynski's own video \"Where Russia Ends\" (2024), shown alongside, extends this into the territory of language and naming: where does Russia end, geographically, culturally, historically? The question, posed without irony, turns out to have no clean answer. Together, the two works make the same argument from different angles: the war was built out of pipes and gas and money, and art made inside this reality has to find a way to hold that inside its own structure. The pipes are not a metaphor. They are the actual architecture of the breakdown.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From this material starting point, the exhibition draws a map that no atlas re
77cognizes. It calls the territory \"Middle-East-Europe\": a corridor running from post-Soviet Eastern Europe through Central and Southwest Asia to the Mediterranean, held together not by geography but by shared histories of dispute, coloniality, and recurring conflict. Each new war here reopens the wounds of the one before it. The biennial's wager is that this continuity, this broken continuity, is not a regional particularity. It is the central condition of contemporary life. The artists in this exhibition are, many of them, working from outside the countries that formed them: displaced, relocated, in transit between identities and territories that no longer hold their original shape. Exile here is not a biographical footnote. It is the structural condition from which the work is made. And that condition does not exist in isolation. The war in Ukraine did not arrive alone. It arrived alongside climate breakdown, the fracturing of democratic institutions, the erosion of shared reality, the weaponization of information, and the accelerating damage of digital technology itself: the algorithmic amplification of fear and division, the AI-generated image that makes the evidence of atrocity indistinguishable from its simulation.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e870d406-e3a1-4e4c-b49b-7712f83c0ab9",quote:"I believe contemporary art helps us remain open to others. It invites us to recognise connections across different histories without flattening their differences. In a world increasingly organised through borders, exclusions and militarised identities that capacity to imagine relationships differently may be one of its most valuable contributions.",author:"Sofie Krogh Christensen, Curator (source IG)",component:"quote"},{_uid:"b7bf13de-69c8-4c1d-aeea-8ae06da17bdb",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"e369a2b2-b8f3-43f0-930e-4240da0b8406",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Time Reorganized",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lesia Vasylchenko's monumental video projection \"Night Without Shadows and Light Without Rippling of Waves\" (2025/2026) opens on a sky that looks like a romantic landscape painting, a swollen red sun rising behind dense clouds, and then refuses to let that reading stand. The image is too hot, too pressurized. It reads as nuclear. Beneath it, Vasylchenko weaves footage spanning from 1918 to 2025 into a single, unbroken night. Power cuts, bombardments, crowds in the dark: not a sequence, a coexistence. Time, under the conditions of permanent war, does not move forward. It accumulates laterally, images piling on images, each one undermining the last. The war has not only destroyed cities. It has destroyed the idea that events have a sequence, that causes precede effects, that history moves in a direction. In the adjacent room, Saodat Ismailova draws on Central Asian oral traditions and archival footage to produce a different image of the same rupture: time as a body of water, deep, slow, indifferent to the urgencies of the present. Her \"As We Fade\" (2024/2026) is visually ravishing, its surfaces luminous and dense, and it makes the surrounding urgency feel, by contrast, thin. Together, the two works describe the temporal condition of artists who no longer have access to the framework art history has always assumed: a stable present, a retrievable past, a legible future. The imagination does not expand under this pressure. It mutates. It learns to read the rubble.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"65a1db7a-8cb0-4aa2-9dab-7a3035370808",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196466949099065,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/5e3a26350d/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0470_lesia_vasylchenko_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lesia Vasylchenko, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"0efea75e-d4b1-43b7-9089-b86e1ed04545",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196470682881622,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/56ff621808/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0616_saodat_ismailova_foto_frank_sperling_lq_2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Saodat Ismailova, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"624e8eee-a7d3-4488-ba2d-2f23901a8137",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Feeling in the Dark",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dana Kavelina's stop-motion film \"Grey Earth\" (2026) registers this at the level of feeling. A cow, the casualty of an industrial landscape, and a soldier, the casualty of an industrial war machine, drift together through memory and dream. The logic is not narrative but associative, hallucinatory, close to the way the mind processes disintegration: not as a clear sequence of cause and effect, but as a series of images that refuse to cohere. The sentiment the film produces is not grief, not anger, not even sadness in any conventional sense. It is a disorientation that has calcified into something stable, a permanent low-frequency static that the body has learned to live inside. This is what feeling looks like when breakdown is no longer exceptional. When it is simply the weather.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The same pressure runs through the rest of the show, differently materialized. Mona Hatoum's \"Misbah\" (2006â07) does not need the context to justify it, but the context sharpens it: the Palestinian-British artist's hanging lantern casts intricate shadows across the walls of the KW, shadows that resolve, on closer inspection, into the outlines of a world map drawn from barbed wire. You notice the beauty first. Then you notice what it is made of. The sequence is the work. Lida Abdul's \"In Transit\" (2008), made in Afghanistan, shows workers whitewashing the ruins of Kabul's bombed buildings, painting over the evidence of destruction with a coat of white that is itself a kind of violence. The work is twenty years old. Nothing about it has softened. Its presence here is a reminder that this condition is not new. It is simply, at this moment, impossible to ignore. Gulnur Mukazhanova's \"Material as Memory\" (2026) works in a quieter register: heavy red velvet fabric hanging in a sealed chamber, its weight and texture carrying the physical memory of something that cannot be said. The material holds what the feed cannot process. It does not stand in for anything. It is the thing itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Samia Halaby's kinetic paintings \"Lighthouse\" and \"The RED CANARY and the grey spider\" (both 1993/2025) stop you. The Palestinian-American artist, now in her nineties, has been making computer-generated kinetic paintings since the 1980s, working with the machine as a partner in form long before that became a conversation anyone else was having. Here, the works pulse and shift with a controlled, almost meditative energy. They do not illustrate anything. They move. In a show about the mutation of form under pressure, Halaby's practice is the proof of concept.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1952e590-94de-4eaf-ba3b-eae711252bc7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196981210288908,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/f6b042d418/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0355_dana_kavelina_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Dana Kavelina, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"6e2e887a-967e-4c4a-bf0f-b9d8123da8e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196479671754435,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/81c5f44e94/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0534_gulnur_mukazhanova_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gulnur Mukazhanova, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e631412f-7733-4e2c-9fbf-3f42e4746c6c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196480325308112,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/27ab2e9cc8/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_mona_hatoum_0390_foto_frank_sperling_lq_1_.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mona Hatoum, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e3049377-7b73-4532-acc8-e39c8a14e44f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196480435838673,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/352ae6e7e3/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0632_samia_halaby_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Samia Halaby, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"624c6d4c-e774-47aa-9d6b-44aa7e906149",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Imagination Under Pressure",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Geta BrÄtescu's \"The Traveler\" (1970/2026) is a wooden stool with eyes. It sits in a corner of the KW's ground floor and watches. Made under CeauÈescu's regime, when the Romanian artist was denied access to public exhibition and worked in radical isolation, the piece carries a specific kind of knowledge: that surveillance is internalized before it is imposed, that the artist who cannot show becomes, over time, her own most attentive audience. What connects BrÄtescu's practice to the work of artists living through the war in Ukraine is not suffering as such, but a shared formal consequence of constraint: the retreat into the oblique, the oneiric, the encoded. When direct speech is dangerous or impossible, form becomes the argument. The work does not illustrate constraint. It is its residue.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Flaka Haliti's \"I SHOUT, YOUR ECHO BOUNCE, WHAT AM I?\" (2023) takes this problem into the acoustic. Haliti, whose practice has long interrogated the political conditions of recognition and self-naming, constructs a space in which the act of articulation produces its own undoing: the shout returns as reverberation, the statement as question, the self as echo. What the piece stages is not the failure of language but its constitutive instability under conditions where naming is itself a political act. You leave the room not knowing what you heard. That is not a formal trick. It is a description of the epistemic situation. Nearby, Aykan SafoÄlu's floor puzzle \"1991\" (2026) offers the most unexpected figure in the exhibition: a whale. Specifically, Tichka, a beluga who in 1991 swam freely across the Black Sea as the Soviet Union dissolved, crossing borders that were simultaneously hardening and becoming meaningless. An androgynous figure rides her, indifferent to the cartographic anxieties below. SafoÄlu's humor is precise: the whale does not know about sovereignty, and this ignorance is not naivety but a kind of structural freedom. The body, the work suggests, has always operated according to a different logic than the state. In 1991, and again now, the question of which borders hold and which dissolve is answered differently depending on whether you are a bureaucrat, a soldier, or a beluga.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"550d6f1b-7fd9-4a77-9a08-61cb7c39333e",component:"mobile-newsletter"}
77,{_uid:"a472ace8-0b44-42b8-8c31-33100229890c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196959726236156,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/4dd0ff6868/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0353_aykan_safoglu_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Aykan Safoglu, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6840d01d-c95d-422c-b2c7-d9c9ce875c6b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196959288889850,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x5999/5e7d96a986/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_0371_geta_bratescu_foto_frank_sperling_lq_2.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Geta Bratescu, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7da684f2-077d-46f2-90c6-c70eeb6139d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196959522750971,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x5999/beeb65b84a/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_flaka_haliti_0475_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Flaka Haliti, Kyiv Biennial 2026 picture by Frank Sperling",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9d09b821-fbde-41cc-842c-3f9e74366bb0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"A Bird That Cannot Land \" is not a political exhibition. It is not a didactic one. It does not ask you to take a position or leave with a clearer understanding of the geopolitical situation. The exhibition holds open the question of how pasts and presents speak to each other across geographies that official history has kept separate. The works here carry the weight of lived experience: rupture, displacement, the memory that survives in bodies long after the event that produced it, the traces that persist in the spaces we move through without knowing what they once held. These are not themes. They are the material the exhibition is made of. It is sumptuous: the works here have a formal density, a slowness, a formal commitment to inhabiting the condition, that makes it one of the most sustained shows in Berlin this year. It asks something harder, and more beautiful, and more emotional: to stay with the imagination of artists who are making work from inside the condition. What does form do when the ground is gone? What does sentiment become when the emergency has lasted long enough to become ordinary? The exhibition holds these questions open without resolving them. Four years in, that refusal is not a weakness. It is what the imagination produces when representation itself is under pressure: not a picture of the world, but a form that carries the weight of its transformation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"A Bird That Cannot Land\" runs at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, until 13 September 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Participating artists : Abdullah Miniawy, Adam Hanieh, Alona Karavai, Anna Ehrenstein and Yara Mekawei, Anna Zvyagintseva, Anton Kats and the Grounded Outer Space People, Assaf Gruber, Aykan SafoÄlu, Azar Mahmoudian, Bulgarian Voices Berlin, Dana Kavelina, Eda Aslan, Farahnaz Sharifi, Fehras Publishing Practices, Flaka Haliti, Geta BrÄtescu, Gulnur Mukazhanova, Heinali and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko, Hito Steyerl, Hiwa K, Ihor Tsymbrovsky, Ivan Krastev, Joyce Joumaa, Julia Cimafiejeva, Katarina Gryvul, LABOUR (Farahnaz Hatam & Colin Hacklander), Lesia Vasylchenko, Lida Abdul, Lucia Kagramanyan, Madina Tlostanova, Majd Abdel Hamid, Mona Hatoum, Nazanin Noori, Neda
77Saeedi, Nour Sokhon, Oleksiy Radynski, Philipp Goll, Samia Halaby, Saodat Ismailova, Sattar Stas Shärifullá and Ziliä Qansurá\u2028, Seyyare â Anatolian Womenâs Choir, Stefaniia Bodnia and Jack Dove, Tjan Zaotschnaja, Tolia Astakhishvili, Ulrike Herrmann, Wafaa Saied",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by : Sofie Krogh Christensen",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-11 00:00",name:"Kyiv Biennial ÷\"A Bird That Cannot Land\"",author:"Refresh team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"b896c4ae-5384-46c7-845c-17fc61cd6c33",color:"#feb700",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"7d09107f-029e-48ce-958e-ff7be9ede95e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196461179174392,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4000x2667/5ec0542d56/260609_kw_kyiv_biennial_lida_abdul_0701_foto_frank_sperling_lq.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lida Abdul In Transit, 2008",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"kyiv-biennial",full_slug:"directory/reviews/kyiv-biennial",sort_by_date:null,position:-1420,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"331cde26-9064-4bb4-b084-dba8fb21024d",first_published_at:"2026-07-11T15:10:28.407Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Strings Attached â Puppeteering the Gaze",created_at:"2026-07-09T21:40:40.722Z",published_at:"2026-07-10T08:46:29.672Z",updated_at:"2026-07-10T08:46:29.690Z",id:196377152428075,uuid:"ded321f7-5955-4ddf-bbcb-4ded4d4371a0",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"97ac6274-5a73-4dcf-8968-38ff51359846",title:"seo",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:196377467701796,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/90bba2d3a0/15-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"seo",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"seo"}],_uid:"df26ce9e-4070-4370-86e9-6c63485873b6",body:[{_uid:"1cb9542e-e0e5-45a9-8960-41a56176ea35",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Strings Attached â Puppeteering the Gaze",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\u2028The sculptures, seemingly weightless in their transparent fabric, paper and wire, at first appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with eighteenth-century paintings. As though one ought to approach the figures with caution given their delicate, fragile constitution, we encounter them alternately as shells or as skeletons â ultimately as the scaffolds of those figures Goya presents in two of his tapestry cartoons. Blind Man's Buff (1789) and The Straw Manikin (1791) depict folk games that read like rituals that continue to unfold in an enigmatic atmosphere despite the white walls and harsh lighting of the exhibition space.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnes Scherer presents at the Salzburger Kunstverein (European Union) an installation that might, in its entirety, be described as a walkable painting: an image released from its vertical anchorage as panel painting, one that understands itself as space. Sculpture, as quickly becomes clear both through this connection to painting and through the act of looking itself, is not merely thing but always also image â more precisely: images, an infinite multiplicity of possible perspectives. Traversing the painting-space as one might otherwise only traverse a painting-surface with one's gaze, we approach physically that which lies â or might â behind Alberti's canonical metaphor of the painting as a window. The reference to Goya is the premise of the exhibition and serves as a lens through which the artist, in keeping with her practice, once again draws compelling parallels between historical images as well as an image-turned-reality on one hand, and an ultradynamic present on the other. Beyond this, Scherer does not only furnish the Kunstverein's space as image, but equips the three groups she presents â one of which makes no reference to Goya at all â with an almost incomprehe
77nsible multiplicity of images. What impresses here at first stance of course is the extraordinary effort and obsessive attention to detail, but also the creeping realization that sets in quickly as we move across the crackling paper floor through the installation: that ourselves, amid this impossible multiplicity of images, at some point becomes an image â or must have become already long before entering. The wire sculptures in two of the three exhibited groups of figures are suspended from the ceiling by threads and clothed in intricate motifs, inscriptions and pictograms. As though we viewers were similarly suspended on threads like the installation's own marionettes, we are strangely drawn by the urge to decipher every image, every emblem, every pop-cultural reference. Aren't those the Kardashians â and over there the Olsen twins? The woman on the jet ski, pinned to the forearm of one puppet: does that have something to do with Florentina Holzinger? And what role does the Disney castle play in all of this?\u2028\u2028",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6f281855-d23c-47ac-a9c6-471339c6a985",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382611856009,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/e80ed0e455/1-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f4f5ffb1-207e-4a37-9712-df0f08bbbd42",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382685559436,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3150x4724/367ef8247f/3-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c037d53-5d63-4104-bf4d-502355c71d18",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382685530763,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3151x4724/e676d4cfba/4-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"eba9e665-83c1-44a4-a675-8ad1ee8caa1a",quote:"Agnes Scherer presents an installation that might, in its entirety, be described as a walkable painting",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"64fa4db5-881e-48ff-b4cb-d58b76d63aac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But back to Goya: the reference to La gallina ciega and El pelele â the one a parlour game in which a courtly society blindfolds itself, voluntarily forfeiting orientation and overview, the other a scene in which four women toss a masked male puppet into the air â marks the central role of the marionette theatre that Agnes Scherer conjures: a play of seeing and not-seeing, of control and being controlled. Goya himself must have been aware that in 1789 an order was collapsing in France that had been resting on the same foundations as the one in whose service he painted as court painter. He saw that an aristocracy which had kept its eyes bound for too long was now losing its heads. Social and political regimes are always also regimes of the gaze. What is laid before us in Scherer's installation is precisely this: image-viewing as a relation of power. And like other relations, this one too is susceptible to abuse and hegemonic entanglements. Through the figures of the installation, which meet us as marionettes, Scherer further intensifies Goya's motif through a form that has always de
77signated both entertainment and sacred practice. The marionette is an Other performing in an ambiguous state between being displayed as Other and referring back to the human ontology it is premised on. Unlike the human, it only seemingly possesses its own gaze, its own body, its own intention. However skilled any staging of a puppet theatre may be, once image-mysticism and the admittedly seductive image-agency theory are set aside, the marionette remains an object. Its anthropomorphic status is imagined in the condition of its possible performance. As such, it is always the expression of an unequal power structure and thus always at the mercy of its surroundings and its rulemaker.\u2028",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c96448fc-b5dd-40c1-93c1-8000fe3535e7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382822734479,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/f50d81b2e8/18-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"acf43071-0f1b-43d8-8e8e-8d0c8a18f9ed",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196386518457097,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3149/a9cae749f9/24-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a5519203-88f3-4984-838f-62cab3998e2f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196386967427856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/82b41dbfea/12-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d2358bfc-77e7-4865-b68c-525ff78bb3af",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The images that meet us today are products flooding through gates thrown open by techbros â image machines whose scale one can already sense for example in a reading of Goya's contemporaries Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos and Leandro Fernández de MoratÃn. Jovellanos, the foremost intellectual of the Spanish Enlightenment and a close friend of Goya, harboured little sympathy for those new technologies and visual instruments that made the image mobile, accessible and plebeian: Camera Obscura, Magic Lantern, totilimundi (portable peepshow) â apparatuses that transferred the act of seeing from the controlled space of reason into that of mere amusement. In a popular text which was published in 1790, he argued for their censorship; playwright MoratÃn, part of the same enlightened Madrid circle, shared this position stating their imagery supported disorder, shapeless plot, improbable entanglements and disconnected episodes. Read through a contemporary lens and pushed to its cultural-pessimist extreme, this sounds strikingly familiar. It displays the same concern about fragmentation, formlessness and the triumph of spectacle over substance that is today routinely attributed to TikTok, Instagram and the sheer flood of images on social media. ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9da07b3c-e3cd-47a1-b48a-94e6564ddbc7",quote:" It displays the same concern about fragmentation, formlessness and the triumph of spectacle over substance.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"344ee143-b5db-4ad7-90d9-0d6f90ed4f6e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The political dimension of power inherent in the viewing of images was already visible in the call to censor these early image apparatuses and it is this continuity that Scherer's strategy renders visible: historical images as mirrors in which the present recognises itself. In Three Wicked Games, the exhibition space itself seems like an apparatus â one that renders the panel painting a room to be entered. Not least through the brushstrokes on the paper sheets covering the floor, but also through the countless associations to which we are exposed in the form of a flood of images like snippets, puppet-politics and pop-cultural references. Between looking at and looking through, visitors to the exhibition become part of a marionette condition that we also encounter in everyday life. In the circuit of profit-oriented transactions and sustained visual, economically instrumentalised dependencies that run through life under the conditions of late capitalism, we have long been permeated by its images. Scherer does not merely illustrate the flood of images but enacts it (illustration included) and makes us complicit.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"6fedb1b8-dc87-456d-a4c3-30243c149389",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196381797862006,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3150/4d21ba9b1c/14-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b8030961-5065-49f4-a1df-c8289aeb71e1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382407248515,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3150x4724/07f8c3ad0e/31-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"63fabc7c-b418-4532-89dc-5c98d52fb4d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196382158428802,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3151x4724/88c514a2b7/35-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a4baa803-be10-4ba9-8ca8-ff000bd0c82b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The playful and sharp show, curated by Mirela Baciak within the annual programme under the apt title Captcha Realism, makes clear that a world of apparatuses and technology is ultimately a world of innumerable, ever-present images. These images are expression, marker, symbol, simulation, fake and reminiscence all at once. There are as many of them as there are facets in a kaleidoscope that keeps falling and transforming. Amid countless references like burning moths, protein shakes, tarot cards, miniature schnapps barrels â to name a few â one nearly misses the small subplot at the feet of the Bl
77ind-Man's-Buff figures, which seems to report what lies at the heart of this exhibition: From the mouth of a puppet that unmistakably resembles the artist herself, a paper strip â like that of a fortune cookie, but considerably longer â extends to illustrate her spoken words, while she calls her optician in Vienna (as the phone lying beside her indicates): âCan you modify my glasses so that one person remains indistinct, while the rest of the world stays legible?â. After looking and being looked at during this exhibition to a staggering extent, one expects the optician on the phone to speak immediately, audible for everyone else in the room: âI am sorry, Agnes, but it will be forever easier to leave the world in a blur.â",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnes Scherer, \"Three Wicked Games\" - Curated by Mirela Baciak. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until 12.07.2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-09 00:00",name:"\"Strings Attached\" ÷Puppeteering the Gaze",author:"Niklas Koschel",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"04ab1255-c6f6-4efe-960f-3742a5e0479e",color:"#450706",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"ab05790e-7273-4aa2-9709-fe9286bae038",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:196377467701796,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4724x3151/90bba2d3a0/15-agnes-scherer.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnes Scherer. âThree Wicked Games,â 2026. Commissioned and produced by Salzburger Kunstverein. Curated by Mirela Baciak. Photo: kunst-dokumentation.com",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"strings-attached-puppeteering-the-gaze",full_slug:"directory/reviews/strings-attached-puppeteering-the-gaze",sort_by_date:null,position:-1410,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1bfc57ca-720a-4503-a738-abbb1f963b43",first_published_at:"2026-07-09T22:07:05.176Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"FREE",created_at:"2026-07-06T03:27:27.916Z",published_at:"2026-07-06T10:58:45.956Z",updated_at:"2026-07-06T10:58:45.973Z",id:195046801091568,uuid:"14b46c3f-c90c-407d-bcd2-d4c942a20f62",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"2720eba8-0775-4d87-81ec-4155044507a3",title:"A Masterpiece Over Alcatraz: Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:195047329438133,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x1833/93f699dcdf/db060aad-33df-445a-acd6-71bfaee471e3.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Nancy Baker Cahill, FREE, 4th Wall app, augmented reality art, Alcatraz, abolitionist art, immigrant detention, public art 2026, AR public art, Liberty Bell 2020, In Plain Sight Cassils, carceral justice, solidarity art, participatory art, murmuration, detention centers, abolitionist artist, free augmented reality, San Francisco Bay art, art and abolition,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE transforms Alcatraz into a living flock of solidarity. A landmark of abolitionist AR art, on view July 4âNovember 4, 2026."}],_uid:"2ad474c2-954d-436c-b154-d63f999e7b57",body:[{_uid:"60e09089-45a8-4e9b-8890-b8711de21894",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Launching July 4, 2026, over Alcatraz Island, Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE is a participatory augmented reality work in which messages of solidarity sent to people held in U.S. detention take flight as digital birds, forming a living flock above the most iconic site of American confinement. It is a masterpiece of abolitionist art, and it is free.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the waters of the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Island sits as a monument to isolation, a structure built to sever the individual from the collective and to render confinement absolute. Its history is steeped in exclusion, a physical manifestation of the state's power to disappear lives from public view. Yet, beginning July 4, 2026, Baker Cahill places her work exactly here, in this airspace, above this rock. FREE, an augmented reality installation accessible via her 4th Wall app, transforms the sky above the island into a murmuration of solidarity, a flock of digital birds born from messages sent by participants across the globe to those held in immigration detention across the United States.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work is participatory at its core. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can send a message through the app: a kite, a blessing, a spell, a poem, a personal story. Upon transmission, each message materializes as a paper plane that unfolds into a bird, joining an ever-expanding flock over the island. Where Alcatraz once operated as a mechanism of disappearance, Baker Cahill repurposes it as a nexus of visibility. The project insists on the entanglement of all lives, visualizing a network of c
77are that defies the physical boundaries of incarceration. This is where the work's aesthetic and political registers become inseparable. The murmuration is a masterwork of emotional precision. Thousands of paper planes becoming birds, each one a human voice, moving together above the most famous prison in America: the image hits before the mind catches up with it. There is grief in it, and defiance, and something that can only be called love.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"649d29f4-76d0-411b-81e1-785dffdc801b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:195060332612187,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/f726de1c48/caption-ar.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a9fda106-7af7-46bc-be31-d0f3be951aaa",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FREE opens on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, interrogating the very premise of American liberty with a blunt, necessary question: who is granted freedom, and who is structurally excluded from its promise? Baker Cahill has chosen July 4th before. Six years earlier, on Independence Day 2020, she launched Liberty Bell, a monumental AR drawing presented simultaneously across nine historically charged sites in six American cities, from the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma to the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Commissioned by the Art Production Fund and presented in partnership with institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum and the Association for Public Art, Liberty Bell deployed the cracked bell as a metaphor for the fractured promise of democracy, its layered soundscape moving from a steady toll into an arrhythmic fracture that felt, in that particular summer, less like metaphor than diagnosis. The abolitionist origins of the Liberty Bell's very name, coined by anti-slavery societies in the 1830s, were central to Baker Cahill's framing: freedom, in this lineage, has never been a declaration. It has always been a fight.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That same Independence Day weekend in 2020, artists Cassils and rafa esparza launched In Plain Sight, a coalition of eighty artists that sent skytyping fleets across the United States to spell out messages in water vapor directly over detention facilities, immigration courts, and border sites. Where In Plain Sight turned the open sky into a medium of accusation, writing the names of the detained in clouds above the very sites of their confinement . ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"4th Wall hosted a handful of the messages in AR over those sites after the skywriting had faded away to preserve the messages in perpetuity",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" FREE gathers voices from the ground and sends them upward, transforming the air above a historic site of incarceration into a collective act of care. The two projects form a diptych of resistance â one names the wound, the other floods it with the voices of people who refuse to accept it â and together they demonstrate that the sky is a public space that belongs to no institution.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Baker Cahill's use of augmented reality is crucial to the work's political logic. AR leaves no physical trace, requires no permit, occupies no land. It cannot be seized, demolished, or priced out of a neighborhood. The work exists only through the collective participation of its audience, a living archive of dissent that grows with every message sent, answering the state's logic of confinement with the one thing confinement cannot produce: an open, borderless gathering.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Baker Cahill has been building toward this work for years. Her long engagement with Homeboy Industries, where she led a collaborative art project between 2010 and 2012. FREE links the digital flock to tangible networks of support, directing participants toward organizations working on the front lines.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"It is a work of remarkable formal beauty and fierce moral clarity, a prophetic act that insists, against every apparatus of exclusion, that no one is disposable. In the sky above Alcatraz, Baker Cahill has built a space where the architecture of confinement is overwritten by the architecture of collective care.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"FREE is presented by GRAYAREA and is on view through November 4, 2026, experienced from the San Francisco Bay, though messages can be sent from anywhere in the world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Download the4th wall app ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"here",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/4th-wall/id1325881248",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-04 00:00",name:"A Masterpiece Over Alcatraz÷ Nancy Baker Cahill's FREE",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ea243e2e-6a4c-41a0-af7a-ec5c203d02b8",color:"#000a10",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"6d0f3789-1cd7-4c6f-856f-908100ec004e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:195047329438133,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x1833/93f699dcdf/db060aad-33df-445a-acd6-71bfaee471e3.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"R Production: Nancy Baker Cahill & Shaking Earth Digital",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"free",full_slug:"directory/reviews/free",sort_by_date:null,position:-1400,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"2a45cdcd-9d6d-4792-949f-f5f5996ec3e6",first_published_at:"2026-07-06T03:43:50.511Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"nature-after-nature-old-masters-algocene",created_at:"2026-07-02T18:27:18.563Z",published_at:"2026-07-05T22:20:16.653Z",updated_at:"2026-07-05T22:20:16.669Z",id:193852369182509,uuid:"38b12abb-fa36-4d1b-a173-5b8096b6507d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"73cefff4-af93-4d9d-9368-74fcb4d1c981",title:"Nature After Nature: Old Masters in the Algocene | rectangle",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:193854512434873,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1362x863/e6db30aabb/valla.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"art ecology digital age, Algocene art, post-anthropocentric art, digital nature representation, net art ecology, Alexandra Crouwers, Clement Valla, Jan Robert Leegte, Auriea Harvey, Joan Heemskerk, Lorna Mills, rectangle Brussels, Wouters Gallery, contemporary art Brussels, post-digital art, nature representation, photogrammetry art",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Six artists â Crouwers, Harvey, Heemskerk, Leegte, Mills, Valla â at Wouters Gallery, Brussels: a show about the representation of nature at the moment the digital became part of its fabric."}],_uid:"0be1caee-cc5b-48bf-acd8-69b745574b9a",body:[{_uid:"0dec7271-1c99-4c9a-a3e6-ded882af1dce",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Old Master in the algocene",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rectangle presents \"Old Master\" at Wouters Gallery in Brussels, bringing together six artists â Alexandra Crouwers, Auriea Harvey, Joan Heemskerk, Jan Robert Leegte, Lorna Mills, and Clement Valla â whose practices map the entanglement of ecology and digital infrastructure. Working across photogrammetry, net art, GIF animation, generative software, and 3D scanning, their work converges on a condition rather than a thesis: the digital does represent nature. It has become part of its fabric.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nature is not a backdrop to human civilisation. It is not something external that we act upon from a position of sovereign distance. We are inside it, and what we are unravelling is not nature in the abstract but the precise conditions that sustain us, and countless other forms of life, in their specificity. The ecological crisis is not a crisis of nature. It is a crisis of cohabitation, and it demands a post-anthropoce
77ntric rethinking of what constitutes an entity, what constitutes agency, and what constitutes our habitat.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That rethinking has entered a second phase. The Algocene names the moment at which algorithmic systems superimpose a pervasive digital infrastructure upon the physical transformations already in progress. A new nature has been taking shape, post-natural, hybrid, neither fully organic nor fully synthetic. The digital is not a representation of this emergent nature. It is embedded within it, an invisible yet decisive stratum that conditions every relation between organisms and their environments. The boundaries between human, machine, and the living world have been superseded.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Old Master\", presented by rectangle at Wouters Gallery, is about the representation of nature in the digital era. It is not a digital art exhibition. Digital art asks what the computer can do; art in the digital age asks what the world has become now that the computer is inside it. The distinction is ontological, and \"Old Master\" belongs entirely to the second category: the digital here is not the medium or the subject but the condition, a restructuring of reality so complete that no practice can stand outside it. The canonical old masters painted nature from a position of exteriority: the surveyed estate, the storm endured, the garden subdued. Their images were acts of possession. In the Algocene, that exteriority has been foreclosed. The image is immanent to the system it renders. The scan is embedded in the landscape it reconstructs. The algorithm is a participant in the ecology it models.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7fa2a93a-4cb2-406a-9ea2-79af197031c8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194902301537220,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6960x4632/61726ae31f/_dsc2892.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view Old Master, Rectangle, Brussels 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"95e7395c-6d7e-4551-b9c4-4536c9e0a71e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Alexandra Crouwers's \"Summoning a Forest\" (2026) is a photogrammetric reconstruction of a clear-cut woodland annihilated by Ips typographus, the bark beetle whose proliferation was accelerated by successive droughts and the collapse of frost cycles. Crouwers presents not the resolved model but the process: raw point cloud, untextured mesh, ghostly blue tracking markers registering her own movements through the site. She appears in the reconstruction as a lacuna. The forest has ceased to exist. Its data persists in a condition that is neither archive nor monument, a geometric ghost occupying coordinates that have no season and no entropy. The accompanying audio piece The Compositor / Composing closes the circuit: the beetle's tunnel system, traced to paper and run through image sonification software, produces a sound that was never intended as music and is all the more devastating for it. Ips typographus means compositor, the one who sets type. The insect inscribes; the software deciphers; the forest is transposed into code it never elected. The biological and the computational are not analogous here. They are continuous.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jan Robert Leegte's \"Waves\" (2026) extends that continuity into the digital's own stratigraphic logic. Bleached interface fragments, the residue of web 2.0 platforms, text worn past legibility, are suspended in an oceanic simulation at the precise moment they are being replaced by AI systems that generate content on demand and leave nothing behind that can be located, stored, or cited. The digital is subject to erosion, sedimentation, and irreversible loss of form. The Algocene metabolises its own prior iterations. \"Shadow\" (2025) works through the inverse register: an unattributable square of darkness traverses a wind-tormented Unity landscape with the pace of a geological event, admitting no explanation and permitting no removal. The computational intrusion has been so thoroughly absorbed into the sensory world as to have become indistinguishable from it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"4e3d3126-5233-49c0-a88e-ddf7eb0eb587",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194899532526478,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6015x3539/e53cda5f09/_dsc2922_02.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ALEXANDRA CROUWERS Summoning a Forest process image of photogrammetry scan, 2026 print on dibond 59.5 x 33.3 cm open edition Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"53d4da40-1baa-4c81-9a3f-f8e7276843b8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194899532931983,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7006x4094/ad7c2040e0/_dsc2919.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ALEXANDRA CROUWERS Summoning a Forest process image of photogrammetry scan, 2026 print on dibond 59.5 x 33.3 cm open edition Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0240d6f3-2c05-4996-a696-0b6949901615",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194900607669165,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3024x1590/021476522f/jan-robert-leegte_waves.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"JAN ROBERT LEEGTE Waves 2026 software Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6647d6d6-4362-4cad-afe3-2920cc8904ab",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Clement Valla was a pioneer in understanding that the digitisation of the world is not a neutral act of recording but a system of choices, compressions, and distortions that produce their own version of reality. His earlier work exposed the structural failures of platforms like Google Maps, where the algorithm's attempt to flatten a three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface generates impossible geometries: bridges that fold into rivers, roads that dissolve into sky. The world, when processed, does not simply become data. It becomes a particular kind of data, shaped by the assumptions and limitations of the systems doing the processing. Pointcloud.garden (2020) and Overgrowth (2021) carry that inquiry into ecological territory. Gardens and yards released to rewilding are presented as raw 3D scan data, unprocessed, unresolved, held open at the threshold between image and object. The living world is now subject to the same biases, the same reductive translations, the same productive distortions that Valla identified in the digitisation of geography. The point cloud is not a representation of the garden. It is the garden in another state, shaped by the logic of the scanner as much as by the logic of growth. To relinquish a space to nature is also, now, to relinquish it to data. What appears to be a return is simultaneously a capture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"603fcedc-2f58-4f8a-bd42-c0d8f4f496a7",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"04f2ff6b-de0a-4319-a9c3-21c4626cb16b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194903293010889,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7071x4706/0368a22b11/_dsc2924_01.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CLEMENT VALLA pointcloud.garden 2020 website Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"19f83836-7092-4da9-be7a-a51484983480",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194903386104779,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4447x5853/f150c6fa8a/_dsc2941.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CLEMENT VALLA Overgrowth 2021 Still images, PNG format 1240 x 1754 pixels print on dibond variable dimension Edition of 1000 (each unique) Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"ac5ee988-8c53-4231-a567-60930c46a74d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194903385088970,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4447x5853/d8c5cc2de2/_dsc2939.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CLEMENT VALLA Overgrowth 2021 Still images, PNG format 1240 x 1754 pixels print on dibond variable dimension Edition of 1000 (each unique) Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7505083f-24c8-4018-8a39-edf73a7b1afd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194905117397979,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6995x4656/acf7a1eb3c/_dsc2876.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view Old Master, Rectangle, Brussels 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0dcc4daf-cf4a-4f55-a8ca-c8d599c27482",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194905438761966,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5944x3956/e26214dda6/_dsc2838.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"AURIEA HARVEY ghost.2%_90+%_B9nL 2024 Still images, PNG format 2400 x 1800 pixels Unique Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a7bf8407-c29c-4ec2-a680-2c4c4777702d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194905438778351,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5943x3955/1f1c6fa511/_dsc2837.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"AURIEA HARVEY ghost.2001.11.6.2.29.57 2024 Still images, PNG format 2400 x 1800 pixels Unique Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e43d9e3a-b6df-45f2-9b37-c3840316dee2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194906397275127,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6856x4563/2b4e14e801/_dsc2881_01.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition view Old Master, Rectangle, Brussels 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ca5e88ef-b892-4be0-9d8c-c855792c72e3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194905721455605,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/700x700/f05d08e673/lorna_mills-state-of-grace.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LORNA MILLS State of Grace 2023 Animated Gif 700x700, 70 frames, 10fps Edition of 32 Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6fb0de25-9d1a-4e98-95ea-37645fae6b8c",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"796b2a15-d1fa-488a-bb4f-922fb6280cbb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:194907112256509,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7058x4697/02a8484c8d/_dsc2915_01.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"JOAN HEEMSKERK Auquay 2019 - now website variable dimension Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d6089214-e236-4c6a-8c21-e20e7920a697",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Joan Heemskerk's Auquay (2019âongoing) delineates the world's coastlines exclusively from AIS shipping coordinates. The boundary between land and water is an artefact of signal infrastru
77cture. The coast is where the data is.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Auriea Harvey's Me and My Ghost (2001/2024) is a webcam capture reworked two decades after its making to exploit glitches that had not yet materialised when it was first produced. The digital has its own material temporality, its own modes of ageing and unforeseen mutation, its own capacity to become something other than what it was. Lorna Mills's GIF animations, assembled from the most corrosive strata of the dark net, insist that the internet has an underside as decomposed and as generatively fecund as any ecosystem's anoxic layer. Both works register the digital not as a clean infrastructure but as a living, degrading, self-transforming system, one that has acquired the opacity and the unruliness we once reserved for nature alone.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The title is precise. The old masters were not simply skilled painters. They were the authorised image-makers of a world in which nature was a resource, a spectacle, a possession. Old Master takes that authority and relocates it: to a moment in which the image-maker is inside the system being imaged, in which the forest and its scan, the coast and its signal, the garden and its data are not two things but one thing in two states. The Algocene has its own masters. They are working now.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Old Master â Wouters Gallery / rectangle, Brussels ( European Union) until 25 July 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-07-01 00:00",name:"Nature After Nature÷\"Old Master\"",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f4898c80-fc1b-4a74-9ee9-1e8cdcc167e8",color:"#024220",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"4de3f5b9-5d8f-48d1-b88b-4962958e2546",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:193854512434873,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1362x863/e6db30aabb/valla.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CLEMENT VALLA pointcloud.garden 2020 website Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"nature-after-nature-old-masters-algocene",full_slug:"directory/reviews/nature-after-nature-old-masters-algocene",sort_by_date:null,position:-1390,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"59f1dd5a-eb02-46b6-ba5b-8814c7981931",first_published_at:"2026-07-05T18:07:39.648Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"s3lf.tech â Ãmilie Brout & Maxime Marion",created_at:"2026-06-27T20:00:56.653Z",published_at:"2026-07-09T22:38:28.630Z",updated_at:"2026-07-09T22:38:28.645Z",id:192105908877166,uuid:"1733cdc6-6d02-4ecd-a7a1-ebcb90b95ee6",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"5d438628-0bb1-40bf-bb06-b49c66f5b319",title:"s3lf.tech â Ãmilie Brout & Maxime Marion | Exhibition at 40mcube Rennes",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:192107760476085,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/fd25217c34/broutmarion_s3lftech_stills-6.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"s3lf.tech, Ãmilie Brout, Maxime Marion, 40mcube, Rennes, digital art, contemporary art, VTubing, avatar, digital identity, Grimes, BJD, video installation, exhibition 2026, net art, artificial intelligence, fan fiction, Villa Kujoyama, virtual idol, algorithmic slop, post-internet",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Ãmilie Brout & Maxime Marion examine digital identity and VTubing at 40mcube, Rennes. Free admission through December 19, 2026."}],_uid:"af9977a3-bca3-46a9-a657-3855e94da535",body:[{_uid:"90c066f7-da80-44cd-b4f4-23d76ad18830",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"s3lf.tech\" exhibition by Ãmilie Brout & Maxime Marion",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Brout and Marion build a digital idol, watch her crack under the weight of her own replication, and call it art. They are not wrong.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Grim3s walks into 40mcube (nonprofit art exhibition space) with the confident stride of a pop star and the quiet fragility of a program about to crash. This fictional character, loosely drawn from the world of Grimes, anchors an exhibition that runs as music video, live stream, and post-internet reliquary all at once. Ãmilie Brout and Maxime Marion have built around her a multi-layered apparatus, loaded and legible, in which every object, every screen, every surface upholstered in black fur presses the same question a little harder: at what point does an image stop being a reflection and start being a skin?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The central film, \"s3lf.tech\" (17 minutes, UHD 4K), is the engine of the whole. Grim3s presents her fans with a fictional tool for vocal self-multiplication, a direct extension of elf.tech, the real Grimes software capable of absorbing any voice into her own. The video was actually streamed on YouTube by the artists: chat comments pile up on screen, questions come in, the artist responds. Then a technical glitch exposes the setup. That ending, deliberately flat, is where the project's dark humor lands hardest. Not a bug. A confession. The machine cracks, and in that crack, the whole architecture of belief goes with it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77work inside the algorithmic image with that kind of lucidity, and with something that looks, against all odds, like affection, is to accept going under in order to surface with something the system did not know it contained: a subjectivity that was not there before, an expressivity that belongs to no single author. Grim3s does not illustrate a thesis. She is what happens when that wager pays off.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A second chapter of the same project will open in September at Zoo art centre in Nantes, taking a more contemplative form: a digital sanctuary conceived as a space of memory, connection, and collaboration. Rennes gets the noise. Nantes gets the silence. Both are necessary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"40mcube, Rennes (European Union) â until December 19, 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-27 00:00",name:"She is not real÷Neither are you.",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"7090ea64-2bcd-4a90-99fe-1f6103ffba5f",color:"#251923",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"7beecf34-0344-4efb-9908-0da4a30385d4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:192168539353855,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3936x2624/554e8df2c8/dsc00628-copie.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"s3lf-tech-emilie-brout-maxime-marion",full_slug:"directory/reviews/s3lf-tech-emilie-brout-maxime-marion",sort_by_date:null,position:-1380,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fb87fd46-e3c5-4687-bc89-06cbb8edee9a",first_published_at:"2026-06-28T00:40:04.182Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Walls at the World's End",created_at:"2026-06-25T20:27:25.177Z",published_at:"2026-06-26T08:43:52.863Z",updated_at:"2026-06-26T08:43:52.881Z",id:191404626674832,uuid:"5c1c4455-b66e-4d7f-9fe1-ac77244e011d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"3ada32c9-0582-4b42-b76e-a35468a842f2",title:"Louis Morlæ, Walls at the World's End, Tranen Copenhagen",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:191405477741603,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1800/8a2d97ad63/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_012_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Louis Morlæ, Walls at the World's End, Tranen, Copenhagen, contemporary art, AI art, generative art, robotic sculpture, perpetual evolution, co-evolution, data-driven art, avant-garde, Toke Lykkeberg, illy Present Future Prize, living systems, algorithmic art, post-human, technology and art, nervous system art, ecosystem change,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Louis Morlæ's Walls at the World's End at Tranen, Copenhagen â an AI-driven exhibition where architecture co-evolves with live global data in real time."}],_uid:"044451db-ade2-4d7d-b8f1-d3dcfc050709",body:[{_uid:"62055005-6695-495d-b792-27219d79a0cf",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Walls at the World's End\" by Louis Morlæ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Tranen (Copenhagen) the walls move. Not as metaphor, not as installation effect, but as a consequence of what is happening in the world at the moment you are standing in the room. Louis Morlæ's \"Walls at the World's End \"is built on that condition: an AI system continuously harvesting live data from the internet, translating it into spatial reconfiguration, producing an architecture that co-evolves with global events in real time. The exhibition operates as a nervous system â sensing, processing, responding â and it has no off switch.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8c196e9c-0579-4fb8-8e63-f988d0684c13",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Under Toke Lykkeberg's direction, Tranen has become one of the most genuinely avant-garde exhibition spaces, a place that c
77onsistently programmes artists at the edge of what contemporary practice is thinking and building. Louis Morlæ's \"Walls at the World's End\" arrives as a precise articulation of that ambition: an exhibition less concerned with representing collapse than with constructing the conditions under which collapse becomes a lived, navigable experience.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The centrepiece of the show consists of three robotic walls mounted on wheeled vehicles, each one a scaled replica of Tranen's own architecture. Their movement is not choreographed but generated: an AI system harvests live data from the internet, processing it through poetic concept pairs of Morlæ's devising, among them \"the fence and the horizon\" and \"the furnace and the tide.\" What results is a spatial condition in perpetual evolution, one in which the room continuously reorganises itself around its occupants. Passages form and close. Configurations that existed minutes earlier are already gone. The visitor does not move through a fixed exhibition so much as negotiate an environment that is itself in motion, absorbing and reprocessing the data streams of a world it cannot fully contain.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"49756d12-b14e-415d-ac04-e4fab75d4589",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285559427,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1790/bfee1c09e1/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_011_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"88cc5766-2fae-4f1e-b122-067d366c8635",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409825678490,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1525/c63c6396a7/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_001_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7fd23608-97b4-4d7e-99b7-bea185f48f6d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285559428,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1975x2700/ab07cd629f/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_017_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fd44ca39-cf93-4493-8f3b-02927112fd6e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285338241,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x2700/5e9ae3eb33/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_020_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"016acddc-a097-4ddc-84d5-04f9dd6c6a0a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409825834141,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1865/2691f05003/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_002_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"512110c9-7288-40c3-a1c7-ec66d4e63551",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Crucially, Morlæ has acknowledged that the underlying logic of this system remains opaque to him. This is not a rhetorical concession but a structural fact about a generation of AI systems whose operations exceed the comprehension of their own authors. The artist works with that incomprehe
77nsibility as a material, treating it neither as a failure of understanding nor as a mystical property, but as an accurate index of the conditions under which technological infrastructure now operates. No stable vantage point is available from which to read the work as a totality. That is not a limitation of the exhibition. It is its premise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Suspended above the moving walls is SFB03 (Larsen), 2026, a monumental airbag in silicone-coated nylon with reflective panels and flashing lights, measuring 500 à 500 à 70 cm. The work can be inflated to physically constrain the walls' range of motion, functioning simultaneously as an emergency brake and as a sculptural image of the tech industry's self-regulatory apparatus: large, luminous, and constitutively hollow. The kill switch, Morlæ implies, is always already a performance of control rather than its exercise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0d54d571-6da1-491f-af2e-deff71e0785b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409825727643,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1929x2700/643dc63a2a/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_006_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3717d28b-8f5e-4822-97d8-7a2f5b61fcef",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285686406,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1963x2700/3fa3454931/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_009_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"287dcdbc-b24e-4e22-9413-7289fa62b664",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191406109029449,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/25052dfb55/vid_20260625_120308_419-1.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"764921aa-94e1-4e78-aaa8-a41d4467b844",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Three films complete the exhibition, each produced using the most recent AI video generators available at the time of making. Morlæ describes them as hallucinations, borrowing the term from the vocabulary of large language models, where it names the phenomenon of confident, fluent, and factually unmoored output. One film follows a Peter Thiel-type individualist consumed by a degraded version of his own future visions. A second depicts an eco-collective's rural techno rave interrupted by alien abduction. A third presents a post-human multispecies society rendered from the perspective of ecstatic bees. These are not predictions or critiques in any conventional sense. They are fever-images of possible futures that simultaneously function as a record of what generative tools can and cannot imagine at a specific moment in their development, mapping the ideological limits of the machines as much as the scenarios they produce.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Morlæ trained at Manchester School of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, and completed a Creative Technologies Fellowship at Somerset House Studios and the UAL Creative Computing Institute. He was awarded the illy Present Future Prize at Artissima 2025, with a solo exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin to follow. His practice operates at the intersection of industrial fabrication and speculative narrative, combining sculpture, film, robotics, 3D printing, and engineering with a material obsessiveness that is itself part of the work's argument: the more precisely a system is built, the more completely it exceeds the intentions of its builder.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"d5200bed-d5b0-4de6-81ca-a95cba893e34",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191409285158015,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1800/f86838fed3/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_012_photo-by-david-stjernholm-copy.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"35343190-f02c-4824-9b5c-be3cb47441fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When Art Develops Its Own Nervous System",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is less a meditation on collapse than on ecosystem change: the slow, irreversible reorganisation of the conditions under which art, technology, and human perception operate together. A new class of work has emerged from this shift, one that does not respond to the world but mutates with it, ingesting live data, processing environmental signals, and generating form in real time. The perceptual proposition is genuinely novel: not a representation of change, but a live feed of it, updating at the speed of the world it draws from.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"These works are not the product of a single authorial hand executing a predetermined programme. They emerge from a sustained negotiation between human artistic intelligence and algorithmic logic, a collaboration in which neither party fully controls the outcome. The algorithm brings to the work capacities of a different order: the ability to process data at scale, to operate across temporal registers simultaneously, to produce configurations that no individual imagination could have arrived at alone. What the artist contributes is not instruction but orientation, the establishment of conditions within which emergence becomes possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This redistribution of agency transforms the artist's role.. Morlæ functions here less as author than as architect of a system with its own decision-making capacity, its own relationship to time, its own capacity to surprise. The work is autonomous in a precise sense: it makes choices, develops strategies, and produces outcomes that its creator encounters rather than anticipates. The exhibition does not document that process. It is that process, running continuously, for the duration of the show.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Louis Morlæ. \"Walls at the World's End\". Tranen, Hellerup, Copenhagen ( European Union). Until 16 August 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-25 00:00",name:"\"Walls at the World's End\"÷The Art of Perpetual Evolution",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"8e7790bd-1aea-48d0-ab46-aa06d8106935",color:"#cc5c2d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"3eb482cd-f91a-4249-9958-26c32e5b8c4f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:191407027897437,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2700x1742/ad070e7442/walls-at-the-worlds-end_louis-morlae_tranen_004_photo-by-david-stjernholm.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, courtesy Louis Morlae and Tranen, photo by David Stjernholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"walls-at-the-world-s-end",full_slug:"directory/reviews/walls-at-the-world-s-end",sort_by_date:null,position:-1370,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"90a06e87-5548-403a-a5a5-75e83196f9a1",first_published_at:"2026-06-25T20:38:26.043Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Kyiv, Hall 1",created_at:"2026-06-18T23:29:58.658Z",published_at:"2026-06-18T23:50:05.102Z",updated_at:"2026-06-18T23:50:05.115Z",id:188972231328392,uuid:"4596cf13-7c3e-44bb-8add-b73430482bca",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"1c972113-6314-4fb9-a7df-4c3b9ce6cbb3",title:"nikita kadan",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:188974065430085,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2050x1528/b991aa6db7/screenshot-2026-06-19-at-01-32-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"h",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"k"}
77],_uid:"c3ba73ff-d51d-41a6-aad3-7aa01fa9dcde",body:[{_uid:"5a36eb5a-d2c1-4ff7-acd3-99f87e9dd777",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nikita Kadan sends an ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"air raid siren",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://soundcloud.com/nikkadan/tryvoha-sirens-and-the-mast?si=0272d6d2c1864a3393fbd721db3ca49e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" to Art Basel. It arrives as an opera.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The voice arrives before the work does. Somewhere in Hall 1, before the curtain is visible, before the metal rod at its center comes into view, the sound has already done something to the room. Ukrainian mezzo-soprano Lena Bielkina was not asked to sing. She was asked to become an air raid siren. The distinction matters. Nikita Kadan's Tryvoha (The Sirens and the Mast) (2023), presented by Voloshyn Gallery in the Unlimited sector of Art Basel 2026, curated by Ruba Katrib, is built entirely on that distinction.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The physical components are spare to the point of severity: a circular curtain of translucent white fabric, suspended from above, enclosing a single upright metal rod. The economy of means is not incidental. Kadan has long been interested in the institutional mechanisms through which violence is aestheticized, archived, and ultimately neutralized, and the formal restraint of Tryvoha reads as a refusal of that process. There is nothing here to collect, nothing to document in a way that would reduce the work to an object. The installation exists primarily as duration and acoustic pressure.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The conceptual hinge is linguistic. Tryvoha is Ukrainian for both the air raid alarm and the chronic state of anxiety that the alarm produces and perpetuates. Kadan's decision to have a human voice carry this double meaning, rather than a recorded or synthesized signal, is the work's most precise move. Opera and civil defense share a common origin in the ambition to project sound across large spaces toward large numbers of people. Here, that shared ambition is collapsed into a single act of performance. The mythological Siren, whose song promises death at the moment of its greatest beauty, and the electronic alarm that has structured daily life in Kyiv since February 2022, are not analogized. They are made to occupy the same acoustic body.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LISTEN HERE",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://soundcloud.com/nikkadan/tryvoha-sirens-and-the-mast?si=20751cc0e6d848fa99937cee2ec00307&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3cd9b015-c406-4d1e-8437-864882bf384b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188975380680269,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2030x1528/9b60c92fc7/screenshot-2026-06-19-at-01-32-44.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tryvoha (The Sirens and the Mast), 2024\u2028 Nikita Kadan Metal, fabric, courtesy Voloshyn Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"352e97a3-2ae2-4cb0-ad89-0867847d83a2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"T",type:"text"},{text:"he installation was first realized in 2023 during a residency at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, where it was presented within a church. That context, with its accumulated liturgical and commemorative weight, allowed the work to operate within an established grammar of mourning. Art Basel offers no such grammar. The Unlimited sector is an exhibition platform housed inside a commercial fair, and the tension between those two functions is precisely what Tryvoha exploits. Visitors who have spent the morning navigating price lists and gallery pitches step through the curtain and into a sonic environment that the fair's architecture cannot absorb. They emerge, unharmed, back into the market. The work does not editorialize about this. It simply makes the passage visible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Katrib's curatorial framework for Unlimited this year circled around questions of care, bodily vulnerability, and the ethics of shared space. Kadan's contribution sits within that framework but applies a different kind of pressure. Where other works in the sector address fragility through material tenderness, Tryvoha addresses it through the body's involuntary response to a sound it has been conditioned, across centuries of warfare, to fear. The silences between the waves of sound are not rest. They are the interval in which the next wave is anticipated.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tryvoha does not ask the art market to account for itself. It places the sound of a city under bombardment inside the room where the accounting happens, and waits.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ART BASEL, UNTIL 21/06",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-16 00:00",name:"Kyiv÷Hall 1",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f8720a37-57f6-4b1c-9e0a-791cdfb3adb0",color:"#797979",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"66422d1a-10ea-4459-b49b-229920f13900",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188974065430085,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2050x1528/b991aa6db7/screenshot-2026-06-19-at-01-32-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tryvoha (The Sirens and the Mast), 2024\u2028 Nikita Kadan Metal, fabric",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"kyiv-hall-1",full_slug:"directory/reviews/kyiv-hall-1",sort_by_date:null,position:-1360,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"e1941dd4-5253-41af-bcd0-f54bfb4e45ca",first_published_at:"2026-06-18T23:47:33.930Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Agnieszk Kurant",created_at:"2026-06-18T18:04:52.222Z",published_at:"2026-06-18T19:24:10.919Z",updated_at:"2026-06-18T19:24:10.933Z",id:188892332971849,uuid:"fb3968b2-7f9b-43a6-8a58-3369f30c0be9",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"7b6fea0c-5207-4caa-bfb8-e9854d600bb7",title:"Agnieszka Kurant: The Protocol and the Crystal",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:187861005404334,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1273x960/382e407be3/31029kurant_detail1_ak_alien_internet_2023_detail__1_.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Agnieszka Kurant: The Protocol and the Crystal",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Agnieszka Kurant: The Protocol and the Crystal"}],_uid:"9d174eef-8958-4cd3-a9ac-77073449c971",body:[{_uid:"d4719bb8-fced-4635-bd01-12a6c57a54c0",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnieszka Kurant: The Protocol and the Crystal",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnieszka Kurant's works at Zero 10 share a single structural property: none of them could have taken the form they took without the participation of agents that had no intention of making art. A copper sulphate solution responding to socio-political data. A ferrofluid organism reshaped by the migratory patterns of wild animals. A mineral compressed from sixty pulverized currencies and the aggregated emotional responses of millions of people.. What happens when the author is a system, when the system includes organisms that have no knowledge of the work they are making, and when the work itself continues to change?",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Unthoughtforms (2026) are copper crystals grown through a protocol derived from Gordon Pask's 1950s cybernetics, in which chemical solutions were used as computational systems capable of forms of problem-solving that exceed abstract calculation. The solution is fed with AI-harvested socio-political and economic data converted into electrical and sonic frequencies. The crystals grow in response. What results is not a visualization of data, nor a representation of a computational process, but its physical consequence â the form that emerges when information passes through matter and matter responds. The human sets the protocol. What grows is beyond anyone's control, distributed across the interaction itself, irreversible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"afcbdceb-d5dd-469e-bc43-e15139c8e068",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188908665177320,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1838x1020/28bb3c76f9/screenshot-2026-06-18-at-21-11-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Unthoughtforms, 2026 Copper crystals grown by passing electric currents and sound waves through copper sulphate solution; nickel plated and chrome plated 7 x 9 x 8 1/2 in. (17.8 x 22.9 x 21.6 cm), Courtesy Marian Goddman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a27fdb45-d1e5-4b0f-aa97-b8c24285fcbc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kurant's practice is post-anthropocentric not as a theoretical position but as a method: the human designs the conditions of emergence and steps back from the outcome. In Alien Internet 2 (2023/2026), a cybernetic organism made of ferrofluid â a material whose magnetic particles hold it in multiple states of matter simultaneously â is continuously reshaped by the behavioral data of millions of wild animals: whales, bats, elephants, sponges, ciliates, parasitic fungi, migratory birds. The biosphere is not a backdrop. It is the system's active input. The work enacts a world in which the human and the non-human co-evolve, each continuously altering the conditions under which the other operates. The human is present as the architect of a listening device, but the device listens back.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The tagged animals feeding this system are unknowing participants, their movements harvested by a network they did not choose to join. The biosphere is already a shared computational system. The human is inside it, one species among others, extracting and being extracted from in equal measure. The organism is compelling precisely because it is built on that ambiguity â co-evolution and extractivism are not opposites but the same process seen from different positions within it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9465af1e-a1f5-4ade-8b79-0cf4b99c7ba3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:187861005404334,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1273x960/382e407be3/31029kurant_detail1_ak_alien_internet_2023_detail__1_.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Alien Internet 2, 2023/2026 Ferrofluid, electromagnets, glass, sensors, Arduino, artificial intelligence, custom programming 10 x 13 x 6 in. (25.4 x 33 x 15.2 cm), courtesy Marian Goodman",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d8e71881-96c4-4934-a631-0ff6ef447884",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sentimentite (2022) materializes collective affect as geology. A mineral that should not exist â sixty historical currencies pulverized and compacted, from Rai stones and whale teeth to electronic waste and cigarettes â its final form determined by algorithms analyzing emotional responses to major world events across hundreds of thousands of social media posts. The object is twinned with a digital NFT whose evolving shape tracks the same affective data in real time. Under UV light, luminescent networks surface through the stone, an infrastructure that was always there, invisible until the light changed. Collective emotion has material weight. It sediments. It can be held in the hand. The crowd is the author. The stone is its signature.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Recursivity 3 (2024/2026) closes the loop in a single image. A bronze chameleon in a mirrored terrarium, its skin coated
77in liquid crystals that shift color in response to an AI processing millions of users' speculations about the future. The animal reads the network. The network reads the animal. The mirror folds both into each other. Co-evolution here is not illustrated. It is performed, live, in the booth â every output becoming an input, every form a condition for the next.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"cefd63c0-a0a2-4b6c-8e7f-21da7302cf2d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188910979745132,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/788x956/8ac315b79e/screenshot-2026-06-18-at-21-20-17.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Sentimentite, 2022 Mixture of various pulverized objects compacted into a mineral form, powdered stone, resin, digital NFT, courtesy Marian Goodman",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ed1d231c-2b53-40dc-ad1d-d65fbc2ef392",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188910979724651,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/720x942/4cc447687e/screenshot-2026-06-18-at-21-20-08.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Sentimentite, 2022 Mixture of various pulverized objects compacted into a mineral form, powdered stone, resin, digital NFT, courtesy Marian Goodman",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1766b256-95bf-4e0b-8f05-049599445b54",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kurant is one of the most forward-thinking artists of their generation because their practice starts from a condition that is already true: we live inside a system in permanent co-evolution, entangled with every form of intelligence that shares the planet with us â biological, mineral, computational, collective. The system is never still. A migration reroutes, a crystal grows differently, an affect shifts the shape of a stone. In this system, the human is not the center. It is one node among many, shaped by the same forces it sets in motion, readable by the same networks it reads. Post-anthropocentrism, in Kurant's hands, is not a critique of humanism. It is a more accurate description of what is actually happening. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnieszka Kurant, presented by Marian Goodman Gallery at Art Basel, Zero 10, 18â21 June 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-16 00:00",name:"Agnieszka Kurant÷The Protocol and the Crystal",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"06899c7e-1a38-4549-9033-11656e3039fa",color:"#180302",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e996e732-2873-47ac-8ee0-9235f31b23be",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188907849114810,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1832x1276/bf47911017/screenshot-2026-06-18-at-21-07-43.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"agnieszk-kurant",full_slug:"directory/reviews/agnieszk-kurant",sort_by_date:null,position:-1350,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fe06ae7e-5446-409d-91e5-e4e5cf05d996",first_published_at:"2026-06-18T19:22:09.186Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"john gerrard",created_at:"2026-06-17T20:14:37.331Z",published_at:"2026-06-17T21:30:25.089Z",updated_at:"2026-06-17T21:30:25.103Z",id:188570326382258,uuid:"475ac014-2d4d-489f-9732-e0e137f997ec",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"90edda2a-8b85-4cad-b839-e37ea3826523",title:"The Living System: Smoke, Fire, Vapour â john gerrard",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:188571622467733,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1067/72c5f05c2a/art-basel-john-gerrard_credit-reece-straw-_lr_002-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"john gerrard, Western Flag, Flare Oceania, Standard, Surrender Flag, real-time simulation, post-extractivism, digital art, climate crisis, Art Basel 2026, contemporary art, ecology, self
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It says: this ground belongs to us, this air is ours, this horizon falls within our jurisdiction. john gerrard has spent nine years building flags that say something altogether different that the air is shared, that the horizon belongs to no one and to everyone simultaneously, that the ground itself has a history that precedes and exceeds any claim we place upon it. The three real-time simulations that form his triptych do not illustrate the climate crisis. They operate within its logic, rendering the world as it is, frame by frame, without pause, without archive, without end.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) is a self-generating world. Built from drone surveys and tens of thousands of photographs of the actual site, it runs continuously on a game engine, producing every frame from scratch at approximately fifty frames per second. No two moments are identical. The simulation does not play back a recording it computes its own present, perpetually, locked to the solar calendar of Spindletop, Texas. When the sun sets in Beaumont, it sets in the simulation. When dawn breaks over the Gulf Coast, the virtual sky lightens accordingly, across every day of the year, year after year.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the centre of this evolving landscape stands a flagpole. From seven nozzles, pressurised black smoke billows into a flag shape that never quite stabilises always forming, always dissolving, always beginning again. The site is Spindletop Hill, where in January 1901 a wildcatter named Anthony Lucas drilled into a salt dome and unleashed the petroleum age. For nine days, oil erupted at an estimated 100,000 barrels a day. The town's population multiplied overnight. Over 1,500 oil companies were chartered within the year. The landscape was transformed before anyone had thought to ask what the transformation would cost.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Every frame is generated and immediately replaced by the next. Its only duration is energetic it exists as long as it is powered, and in that condition it mirrors the carbon it depicts: invisible, continuous, cumulative, and permanent. The flag of smoke is not a warning about the future. It is a receipt for what has already been spent.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"23a8b410-2e92-442c-868f-6d2a0eff8ea2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188576445475419,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/ba4d9b0d7f/john-gerrard-western-flag-01-1.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"john gerrard, western flag, courtesy the artist and Felloship",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2c126d00-2ea5-4bb9-9d06-072167db5fdb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Flare (Oceania) extends the self-generative logic of Western Flag into a different geography and a different register of urgency. The simulation is set in the South Pacific Ocean near Tonga. A gas flare burns in the form of a flag above a seascape built from photographs taken by Tongan artist and activist Uili Lousi. Like its predecessor, the work runs continuously, computing its own present in real time, locked to the actual solar calendar of the archipelago. The sun that rises and sets over this burning water is the sun of Tonga, tracked to the minute, shifting across the full arc of the year.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The gas flare is a form that gerrard chose with precision. A flare is energy made visible in its most uncontained state gas that cannot be captured or sold, released into the atmosphere because the infrastru
77cture to contain it was never built. It is the image of extraction at its most candid: a system that produces its own excess and burns it in plain sight. gerrard takes that industrial form and gives it the shape of a flag, a territorial marker, a signal. The simulation evolves continuously the light changes, the ocean surface shifts, the flames respond to the algorithmic wind so that the work is never the same object twice. It is always becoming.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"When Flare was shown in New York in the summer of 2022, the gallery doors were left open. The eighteen-foot LED wall was visible from the pavement. The work extended into the street, available to anyone passing by, running on Tongan time in the middle of Manhattan. That decision to refuse containment was consistent with the work's own logic: a self-generating simulation has no natural boundary, no frame that closes it off from the world it depicts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a6e9d012-af28-4c6f-a3d9-16d036808584",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188579379870366,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x1280/735d4f0ae4/john-gerrard-flare.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"john gerrard, flare, courtesy the artist and Fellowship",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"69ee7866-b4fd-4624-a9c7-d87075dbb195",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Standard is the most formally spare of the three works, and the most demanding in what it asks the viewer to imagine. The simulation depicts a white flag formed entirely from water vapour evaporating above a desert landscape near the Mojave. The flag is colourless, borderless, without insignia. It dissolves as it rises and reforms continuously, driven by the same self-generative engine that powers the two earlier works. The sun moves across the Nevada sky on its actual trajectory, day and night cycling through the full 365-day solar year, the stars appearing at their correct positions when darkness falls.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If Western Flag was the image of extraction at its origin and Flare the image of extraction in its present tense, Standard occupies the territory that comes after: a post-extractivist horizon, still undefined, still forming. The vapour flag does not celebrate the end of the fossil fuel age. It holds open the question of what an economy, a politics, a way of organising collective life might look like once the logic of extraction has been abandoned. That question has no easy answer, and gerrard does not pretend otherwise. The flag dissolves and reforms because the exit from extractivism is not a destination that can be declared and occupied. It is a direction, a sustained turning away, something that has to be chosen again and again until the choosing becomes a different kind of world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The title carries a double weight. A standard is a flag, but it is also a norm, a level of conduct that is expected, agreed upon, enforced. gerrard's renaming of the work from Surrender (Flag) to Standard sharpened this ambiguity deliberately: the work is not only about stopping. It is about what we agree to hold ourselves to once we stop. The flag is colourless because it belongs to no existing nation. It is borderless because the post-extractivist condition, like the extractivist one before it, recognises no borders.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a0c32c5e-0772-4991-a8f1-41b133b2e20a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a broader condition at work in gerrard's practice that the triptych makes unusually legible. Each of the three works is a real-time simulation: not a pre-rendered film, not a loop, not a recording of any kind, but a computation that runs live, generating every frame at the moment it is needed and discarding it immediately after. The image exists only in the instant of its production. This is not a technical distinction but a philosophical one. A real-time simulation has no fixed past and no predetermined future. It has only a present, continuously recalculated, perpetually renewed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That present is not isolated. gerrard's simulations do not exist in separation from the digital layer that now runs beneath the surface of the physical world the continuous data flows, satellite feeds, atmospheric sensors, and computational infrastru
77ctures that monitor, model, and increasingly govern the planet's systems. gerrard's works are in constant co-evolution with that layer. They draw from it solar position data, photographic surveys, real-time atmospheric conditions and they feed back into it, running as live software objects that update with every passing second. The simulations are not representations of a world in motion. They are themselves in motion, perpetually recalculating their own present, co-evolving with the digital infrastructure they inhabit.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This places gerrard's flags in a different category from landscape art, from documentary, from environmental activism. A painting of Spindletop captures a moment. Western Flag captures no moment at all it generates an endless succession of moments, each one unique, each one immediately superseded. The world it depicts is not a world frozen for contemplation. It is a world that keeps moving, as the actual world keeps moving, indifferent to whether we are watching or have looked away. The digital layer does not wait. Neither do the simulations.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"367e0594-8886-4dd6-91d0-a7e36aa6ff62",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188571622467733,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1067/72c5f05c2a/art-basel-john-gerrard_credit-reece-straw-_lr_002-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"john gerrard, triptych (Art Basel-Zero 10), courtesy the artist and Fellowship",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fe06ec14-1806-4625-8c24-df16df7eca14",quote:"This co-evolutionary quality gives the triptych a temporal depth that static images cannot achieve.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"d29dfc59-f455-4562-8043-2eebc92c3ec7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188581418187440,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/0666c39c35/john-gerrard-standard-dawn-01-1.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"john gerrard,standard, courtesy the artist and Fellowship",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6ea50b28-1a0e-4bcd-8d3a-6f7dced67a16",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This co-evolutionary quality gives the triptych a temporal depth that static images cannot achieve. The works age differently from photographs or paintings. They do not yellow or fade. They continue to compute, to update, to produce their own present. And as the planetary conditions they address continue to shift as the oceans continue to warm, as the atmosphere continues to accumulate carbon, as the deserts continue to expand the simulations remain in dialogue with those shifts, not as metaphors but as parallel systems running on the same data, in the same time.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Shown together for the first time at Art Basel in 2026, the three simulations share a single atmosphere across three geographies and nine years. The smoke from Spindletop, the flames over Tonga, the vapour above the Mojave they are the same air, moving through the same planetary system. Each work runs on its own solar clock, self-generating and autonomous, producing and replacing frames continuously whether anyone is watching or not. They are not recordings of a world. They are worlds, running in parallel with the one we inhabit, evolving according to their own internal logic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The flag, across all three works, is a device for making visible what ordinarily escapes the frame. Carbon emissions, offshore extraction, the physics of a heating ocean these are real, continuous, and cumulative, exactly as the simulations are real, continuous, and cumulative. gerrard's triptych does not represent these forces. It enacts them, in the same medium, at the same scale of duration.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The vapour flag dissolves and reforms. The sun tracks its arc. The desert does not wait. gerrard's triptych ends not with a question but with a condition: the simulations will keep running whether the transition happens or not, computing their own present at fifty frames per second, indifferent to the decisions being made or deferred in the world outside the screen. That indifference is the sharpest thing in the work. The planet, like the softw
77are, does not pause for consensus.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ZERO 10 - ART BASEL - Fellowship until 21st June",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-16 00:00",name:"The Living System÷Smoke, Fire, Vapour",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"18fad5de-f52c-4270-b72a-43ba916de9de",color:"#83493a",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"396da761-9568-4b09-8405-61ef23c9dcbf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188571622467733,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1067/72c5f05c2a/art-basel-john-gerrard_credit-reece-straw-_lr_002-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"john gerrard, photo by Reece Straw, courtesy the artist and fellowship",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"john-gerrard",full_slug:"directory/reviews/john-gerrard",sort_by_date:null,position:-1340,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fdea3623-1eed-4d09-a841-5f680805bf28",first_published_at:"2026-06-17T21:07:20.774Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Mariposota",created_at:"2026-06-17T08:56:33.720Z",published_at:"2026-06-17T09:14:15.313Z",updated_at:"2026-06-17T09:14:15.326Z",id:188403686313298,uuid:"feb1d64f-6ed7-40b5-acac-fdd30d85515d",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c5f100df-a3d2-4983-9d36-1cfba7a27162",title:"Mariposota by Timur Si-Qin",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:188402607155811,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3749x2500/d9f235a4c7/0d6a2901.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Art baqel",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Art basel"}],_uid:"cb215e1f-7146-4b73-bf53-d68c3b26fad2",body:[{_uid:"3c140db7-5a70-4d98-b6a0-fbc289a76891",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Timur Si-Qin: \"Mariposita\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Steel holds a Renaco tree: the actual morphology of one specific tree that Timur Si-Qin 3D-scanned during an extended period of solitude in the Ucayali basin of the Peruvian Amazon, reproduced at 1:1 scale through a process that left the tree and its surrounding pond ecosystem entirely undisturbed. That insistence on non-extraction is the work's first act of care, and it sets the epistemological terms for everything that follows.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Care, in Si-Qin's practice, is a discipline of attention before it is anything else. The months spent in the forest before the scan was made were not preparation but practice: a sustained effort to attune perception to the temporal logic of a living system rather than extract from it. To register the particular movement of water across a pond surface, the behaviour of insects in the canopy, the quality of light at a specific hour, requires a quality of presence that has more in common with meditation than with documentation. It is that quality of presence that Mariposita carries within its material form, and that makes the work's scale feel earned rather than monumental.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ef182023-a681-4b80-bb5f-9512f4bd50b4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188405292240095,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1667/1eebc30b2a/0d6a3252.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unl
77imited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1dd3ba3d-d2b9-4c3a-bcfe-6d289909c919",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The stainless steel is cold, industrially precise, unapologetically technological; the moving image breathes and keeps time at the pace of the forest. Si-Qin has consistently maintained that their practice is about nature rather than technology, and Mariposita makes that claim structurally legible: the technology is the available instrument, directed here with a degree of care so total that the living world it mirrors comes through with something approaching fidelity. The distance between the industrial material and the organic subject is not a problem the work solves; it is the site where the question of our relationship to the non-human world becomes impossible to set aside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That question drives New Peace, Si-Qin's ongoing project, which proceeds from the conviction that the ecological crisis is not a deficit of information but a failure of affect. Mariposita does not illustrate this argument; it enacts it. The concept of the pristine that Si-Qin returns to is not a nostalgic category but a perceptual one, naming the experience of an ecosystem so intact and so densely interdependent that it registers, from within the rhythms of contemporary urban life, as almost impossible. The Ucayali exists. The Renaco tree stands in the forest where the scan was taken, untouched. Mariposita asks its audience not to mourn that fact but to hold it as fully real, and to recognise that the capacity to do so is itself something that has to be cultivated, slowly, with the same quality of care that produced the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4e9e5c92-723b-4809-991e-386d52d75780",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402608274024,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x2500/0fc5a28346/0d6a2914.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c9073bb3-53a5-4bec-861f-1395d1a882a7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188404441041944,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1667x2500/03d6093837/0d6a2951.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"45b9f45d-c59c-43d6-96c7-7e519624c760",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402607589990,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x3750/3c5b36f9c2/0d6a3244.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unlimited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"011a39ce-4ded-4af6-aa7d-b98e755399a5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188402608966250,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3750x2500/ebd302f094/0d6a2934.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Caption: Installation view, Timur Si Qin, Mariposita, Art Basel Unl
77imited, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin Credit: Gina Folly",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"332a761b-39fc-4d01-889b-0c441f03634a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Standing inside the installation, the moving image draws the viewer into a recalibration of tempo that is quiet and cumulative. Si-Qin's practice has long treated spirituality as affective technology, a reprogramming of the perceptual reflexes through which we orient ourselves toward the living world. Mariposita is where that proposition becomes fully spatial: a work in which sustained, unhurried attention to what is being seen becomes, without declaration, an act of solidarity with it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The full body of Amazon-rooted work opens at Société in November 2026. 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It is a market convenience that has calcified into ideology, a way of organizing institutional anxiety rather than describing practice. To call something \"digital art\" in 2026 is roughly equivalent to calling a painting \"canvas art\": technically defensible, critically inert, and quietly condescending toward the thing it names. The label has never described what the work does. It has described where institutions feel comfortable placing it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Condition\", the Basel edition of Art Basel's Zero 10 initiative, proceeds from the assumption that this convenience has expired. The exhibition does not argue the point. It simply places works in proximity to each other and lets the proximity do the work, which turns out to be a more effective critical gesture than any amount of wall text could achieve.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The art world's relationship to digital practice has been, for most of its history, structured by condescension. Digital art arrived in institutional spaces as a guest, tolerated, occasionally celebrated, but never quite admitted to the main house. It was associated with geek culture, with the subcultural economies of the early internet, with a certain earnestness that the art world found difficult to metabolize. The NFT boom of 2021 confirmed, for many in the traditional art world, their suspicion that digital practice was fundamentally speculative rather than substantive, a market phenomenon rather than an artistic one.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What that reading missed is that the question of medium was never the relevant question. The relevant question has always been the same: does the work have something to say, and does it have the intelligence to say it? Medium is the vehicle. It is not the destination. The art world understood this when painting was declared dead and continued to produce extraordinary work. It understood it when photography was admitted to the museum. It is still working through what it means when the medium in question is computational, and that process is taking longer than the work itself requires.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"f5b31c84-bc5d-44a3-9374-456c177801fa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:187836195607712,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1530x960/5ced9e2738/1cbe0458_d4ff_4740_8abd_8765bcc9083c.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Leander Herzog Nguyen Wahed 'Infinite Garden', 2025-26. Courtesy of Nguyen Wahed and the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"be0230f0-e756-4f44-ab18-b28e4e82f537",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188585688239341,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1181x886/27c841fbff/asprey-studio-at-art-basel-in-basel-2026-zero-10-booth-z3-presenting-deafbeef-installation-view_-glitchbox.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Asprey Studio at Art Basel in Basel 2026, Zero 10, Booth Z3, presenting DEAFBEEF - Installation view Glitchbox",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ea982b29-2275-418d-a438-ba8d28c7159e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The digital is not a medium. It is not a tool that an artist picks up and puts down. A tool is optional. A context is not. We do not choose to inhabit the digital any more than we choose to inhabit language or gravity. The physical and the digital are no longer parallel layers between which artists choose: they are co-extensive, fused into a single hybrid reality. Every painter has a digital stage in their process. Every sculptor resolves form in software before touching material. Beyond the studio, the entanglement runs deeper still: the spaces we inhabit are saturated with sensors, the images we encounter are algorithmically curated before they reach us. The digital layer has grown into the physical world, through it, indistinguishable from it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This has been true for decades. What has changed is not the condition itself but the art world's willingness to acknowledge it, and that willingness has arrived, as it usually does, slightly behind the moment when it became undeniable.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Condition, curated by the pionnier artist Trevor Plagen, is a reckoning with this delay. The exhibition does not argue that digital art deserves to be taken seriously. It proceeds from the assumption that the question of seriousness was always a displacement, a way of deferring the recognition that the categories through which art is organized are overdue for revision. The works gathered here are not making a case for inclusion. They are present on their own terms, with the self-possession of practices that have long since resolved the question for themselves.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What the exhibition makes visible is the extent to which the art of the digital age has already absorbed and transformed the traditions it is supposedly separate from. The lineage of cybernetics, of algorithmic thinking, of the political economy of images: these are not new concerns. They are the concerns of the twentieth century, pursued with new instruments. The instruments matter. They are not neutral. A work that can only exist in a native digital environment, that cannot be translated into a print or a linear video without losing everything that constitutes it, is making a different kind of claim on the viewer than a work that uses digital tools to arrive at a physical object. Both are works of the digital age. The distinction between them is not a distinction between digital and non-digital; it is a distinction between different relationships to the computational substrate, different ways of inhabiting the condition. This is a distinction worth making. The distinction between digital and analog art is not.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"72650a45-717f-41f3-bd28-9579c506aaee",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188571622467733,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1067/72c5f05c2a/art-basel-john-gerrard_credit-reece-straw-_lr_002-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"John Gerrard, Fellowship ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c8a9944c-0848-446a-9dc7-0d29ffce04d1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Something else is at stake here, something that the exhibition touches without quite naming. We are not moving from one medium to another. We are moving from one epistemic regime to another, from the era of the object and the image to the era of the system and of co-existence. The art of the twentieth century was, at its core, an art of discrete things: paintings, sculptures, photographs, films. Things that could be owned, transported, insured, hung. Things whose meaning was located in their material singularity. Even the most dematerialized practices of the 1960s and 1970s, Conceptual art, Land art, performance, were still organized around the event, the gesture, the document: a thing, or the trace of a thing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What the digital age has introduced, and what the most consequential work being made now is beginning to metabolize, is a fundamentally different model of what art can be. Not an object that exists in time, but a system that exists through time. Not an image that represents the world, but a process that runs alongside it, entangled with it, responsive to it. The work is not about the system. The work is the system, and the viewer is not its audience but one of its variables.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This shift has profound consequences for how we think about authorship, about ownership, about the relationship between the work and the world it inhabits. It also makes the category of \"digital art\" not just inadequate but actively misleading, because the relevant distinction is no longer between digital and analog, but between art that understands itself as a discrete object and art that understands itself as a living system embedded in a larger ecology of relations. Both can be made with a brush. Both can be made with code. The medium is not the point.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0c51f58a-7ddd-447d-87c5-9f9111b423fa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:188418166322467,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/f551452fc2/unnamed.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Office Impart, Courtesy of Art Basel",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a2d8908-a1a4-4012-a2a0-8450596a3a80",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"None of this means that Zero 10 should not exist. It means that it should not exist forever, and that distinction is everything.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zero 10 is one of the most important initiatives the art world has produced in recent years, precisely because it names what the broader culture is only beginning to articulate. We are living through a moment of profound recalibration, and the art world needs spaces that can hold that recalibration explicitly, that can gather works under a curatorial framework rigorous enough to make the argument visible, before the argument becomes so self-evident that the dedicated space is no longer necessary. Zero 10 is that space, and the fact that Art Basel has committed to it with this level of curatorial seriousness is genuinely significant. It signals that the leading institution of the art market has grasped something essential: that the hybrid physical-digital world is not a future condition to be prepared for. It is the present condition, and it has been for a long time.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For Zero 10 to fulfill this role, it has to be curated
77with genuine rigor, which means resisting the twin temptations that have historically undermined institutional engagement with digital practice: the temptation toward spectacle on one side, and the temptation toward subcultural insularity on the other. A dedicated sector that assembles technically impressive but critically thin work, or that speaks exclusively to communities already converted, is not a transitional space. It is a ghetto with better lighting.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This year, in Basel, the balance holds, and it holds convincingly. The Condition does not feel like a demonstration of digital art's potential. It feels like a demonstration of what art looks like when the hybrid condition of contemporary life is taken seriously as a subject, not illustrated, not celebrated, but thought through with the full weight of curatorial intelligence behind it. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The more precise name for what this initiative is doing would be Art in the 21st Century",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At some point, not yet, but not in the distant future, the argument will have been made sufficiently that the dedicated space becomes redundant. The works will move to the main floor, not as digital art, not as a curated exception, but as contemporary art, which is the only category that has ever mattered. Zero 10 will have done its work and can dissolve. Until then, the question is simply whether each edition earns its existence through the quality of its thinking. This one earns it with room to spare.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ZERO 10, ART BASEL, UNTIL 21st of June",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-15 00:00",name:"Art Basel Zero 10÷and the Future of Contemporary Art",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ac799b41-3275-49b7-8ab6-c80796d9f5df",color:"#1f1d24",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d0fbce23-7bf5-414b-a8f3-109a0d101092",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:187861005404334,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1273x960/382e407be3/31029kurant_detail1_ak_alien_internet_2023_detail__1_.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marian Goodman Gallery 'Alien Internet', 2023. Photo by Mathiasâ¯Völzke Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"zero-10-and-the-future-of-contemporary-art",full_slug:"directory/reviews/zero-10-and-the-future-of-contemporary-art",sort_by_date:null,position:-1320,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c50f2af5-88c8-40e6-bacf-5d03ddd26c0a",first_published_at:"2026-06-15T20:49:50.260Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Entanglement: The Rhythm of Being",created_at:"2026-06-03T09:04:52.351Z",published_at:"2026-06-03T19:16:06.661Z",updated_at:"2026-06-03T19:16:06.676Z",id:183451207111276,uuid:"ccb8be0c-fce1-40ec-90c4-07b434b78a41",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c8e1cadd-c316-4170-9f5f-41190b029538",title:"Entanglements The Rhythm of Being TFAM 2026",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:183463616403730,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3010x1552/8bd285677a/sonja-baumel-a-living-artwork-2021-2024-film-and-publication-17-min-6-sec-23x16-cm-31x21-cm-courtesy-of-the-artist.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"kin colonies, colonial glass cases, Okinawan mud, a diffusion model running through an 18th-century machine. Sharleen Yu's Entanglements at TFAM reviewed for Refresh.",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Sharleen Yu's Entanglements at TFAM opens with a work that requires you to get on all fours. A review of the most rigorous exhibition in Taipei this
77summer"}],_uid:"1d3eb85f-133f-4d67-9761-cebd71564508",body:[{_uid:"493d4c6a-c396-4458-9725-0df553efd369",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Entanglements: The Rhythm of Being\" at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (Taiwan)",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition at TFAM opens with a work that requires you to get on all fours. It closes with one that cannot exist without other people in the room. Everything between those two points is an argument about what it costs to perceive what is not you.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Peng Hung-Chihâs\" Face to Face\"' asks one thing: get down. The video screen is set inside the skull of an animal sculpture at dog height, and there is no other way to access it. You crouch, you tilt, you fit your body into the posture of a quadruped, and for a moment the museum floor is very close. The work has been in TFAMâs permanent collection for years. Sharleen Yu ,the curator, opens \"Entanglements: The Rhythm of Being\" exhibition with it because it states, without argument, what the entire exhibition will spend four months demonstrating: that a change in perception is first a change in posture, and that posture is not metaphorical.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b570128c-c684-4d74-9a21-265e4f1d500c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183503761220863,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5184x3456/de7e8a7016/11.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"PENG Hung-Chih, Face to Face, 2001, Video installation (color, sound), fiberglass, LCD monitors, players, speakers, pedestals. Dimensions variable. Collection of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f53d43d2-f852-460b-bc1e-ee00398838fa",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The philosophical architecture of the show rests on two figures whose work converges on the same refusal. Bruno Latour spent decades insisting that the separation of nature and culture was not a discovery but a political operation, one that conveniently placed humans above the systems they were destroying. His âCritical Zoneâ, that thin, inhabited stratum of Earth from canopy to aquifer where air, water, rock, soil, and organisms are in continuous, irreversible co-formation, was his counter-proposal: not nature as backdrop, but a zone of entangled agencies in which the human is one actor among many, and not the most decisive. Karen Barad, working from quantum field theory, arrives at a structurally identical position from the opposite direction. In her account, particles do not pre-exist their relations. They are constituted through what she calls intra-action, the mutual becoming of entities that have no prior, independent existence. Bodies, histories, species: same logic. Yu takes both frameworks to use them as curatorial instruments, selecting works that do not illustrate entanglement but instantiate it.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"499938ae-aa07-4b6a-92dd-03edd28eb244",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183507577112898,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5537x3691/8e94d7075c/04-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"TSAI Pou-Ching, Song of the Russet Sparrow, 2022, Mixed media installation, video, photography, 11 min 42 sec, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"af48b83f-1450-47d3-b397-8bea648e2f3e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183515659050890,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3500x1172/49ebeecc53/02-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LU Ming-Te, Diagram of an Ecosystem, 1991, Object and acrylic on wood board, 182 Ã 546 cm. Collection of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"db6fbbaf-52e9-472b-b17b-f8d7a41c2bb6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183509212629642,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x750/d8befeb5dc/03.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Céline CLANET, Ground Noise - Unhatched arachnid egg, Bois de Vincennes, 2023, Micrograph (SEM), photographs, archival prints. Courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e9a82a5-c477-4429-927e-ff4c63e0d636",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sonja Bäumelâs \"A Living Artwork\" cultivates microbial colonies taken from human skin and presents them as living portraits in the gallery space. They grow on their own schedule, indifferent to opening hours, indifferent to the viewerâs presence or absence. The boundary of the self, which Western philosophy has spent centuries reinforcing, dissolves here not as a provocation but as a simple biological report. Tsai Pou-Chingâs Song of the Russet Sparrow operates at a different temporal register: artificial nests fired from the mud of the Zengwen Reservoir, placed in the landscape, waiting. The Russet Sparrow is critically endangered. The legend the work invokes is ancient. The conservation effort is ongoing. These three timelines do not illustrate each other. They coexist under pressure, and the pressure is the work.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Céline Clanetâs \"Ground Noise\" series produces a perceptual problem that cannot be resolved. Black-and-white film photographs of forest floors are placed alongside scanning electron microscope images of the same terrain at radically different scales. The eye cannot reconcile them. The forest does not become legible at the microscopic level. It becomes alien, specific in ways that exceed any prior claim to having seen it. Lu Ming-Teâs \"Diagram of an Ecosystem\" works through accumulation rather than incompatibility: eggs, shells, skulls, pelts, limbs, the full arc from genesis to remains, arranged without sequence or hierarchy. The distinction between natural object and fabricated sign collapses. This is Latourâs Critical Zone as visual field, a surface in continuous formation where nothing is simply itself.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"29a195a4-c686-460c-92c2-f5b0600ca560",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534028551400,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5184x3456/489a65ef19/06-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"WU Chi-Yu + CHEN Pu, Greenhouse Zero, 2026, Video installation, 15 min, Dimensions variable. 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Courtesy of the artists.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1c47a666-4d69-4078-86da-9804ececb32a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534421161217,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4819x3213/a79867c31f/08.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"NOIZ Architects, Lazy House, 2026, Interactive Installation, 20 x 6.5 m. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ae89028a-be7f-468a-b8d9-ca8198c4f97c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs engagement with technology is its most precise intervention. Wu Chi-Yu and Chen Puâs Greenhouse Zero centres on the Wardian case, the sealed glass container that enabled the colonial transplantation of living ecosystems across 19th-century trade routes, moving Chinese tea to India and ferns and orchids into European drawing rooms. The work holds this object against the architecture of the generative AI database: two enclosure systems, two centuries apart, both selecting which versions of nature are worth preserving, both redistributing life on terms set by whoever controls the container. The parallel is structural, not rhetorical. Simple Noodle Artâs Latent Physionotrace runs a diffusion model through the operational logic of an 18th-century silhouette-tracing device, the physionotrace, which mechanically standardised the human profile for reproduction. The noise and randomness that AI image generation typically presents as evidence of creative autonomy appear here as the continuation of a centuries-long project to fix, classify, and reproduce the face at scale. NOIZ Architectsâ Lazy House, a soft architectural sculpture of cloth and tensioning structure fitted with sensors, deforms in response to the direction of the viewerâs gaze. The space is not passive. It is already watching. Baradâs intra-action made inhabitable.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Yamashiro Chikakoâs \"Mud Man\" is where the exhibition finds its full weight. Three channels, Okinawa and Jeju Island, figures sinking into mud while migratory birds carry what the work calls poetic seeds across time. The histories of these two islands, occupation, massacre, the systematic suppression of local memory, are not narrated. They are present in the duration of the image, in the resistance of the material, in the precise distance between what the murmur on the soundtrack says and what the image is willing to show. Hito Steyerlâs \"Mission Accomplished: Belanciege\" runs at a completely different metabolic rate: a lecture-performance that tracks the mechanism by which a luxury brand absorbs street culture, activist aesthetics, and political posture and returns them as product. The format is fast, almost too fast to follow. That is the argument. The privatisation of collective imagination is not a slow process. It happens in the time it takes to scroll.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"61bb266f-f499-4a47-af54-4405cdbc980f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534628541704,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x563/aa23754f9f/09.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"YAMASHIRO Chikako, Mud Man, 2016, 3 channel video installation, 23 min. Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f3eb5047-aa99-4c9b-be0d-71dfbf09288f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534774756622,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1000x591/54cba9f5e1/10-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Hito STEYERL, Mission Accomplished: Belanciege, 2019, with Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze and MiloÅ¡ TrakiloviÄ, 3 channel HD video (color, sound), environment, 47 min 23 sec. Courtesy of the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c7a994c-f9e1-4c15-975a-94f3bae3ca04",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:183534930425106,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5760x3840/2c80234d02/12.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CHOU Tung-Yen / Very Theatre, Shifting Connections, 2025-2026, Video, VR, 15-20 min, dimension variable. Courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0a683638-b2a2-4593-b268-bfa7aaf7c497",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Chou Tung-yen and Very Theatreâs Shifting Connections closes the show with a condition rather than a statement. The XR work cannot be completed alone. Virtual lines form between participants, tracing a shape that has no existence prior to the gathering of bodies in the room. This is Baradâs intra-action at its most literal: not individuals who interact, but a relation that constitutes the individuals it connects.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yu does not position coexistence as a value to be adopted. She frames it as a condition already in operation, one that precedes any decision to acknowledge it. The rhythm in the title is not a musical metaphor. It is the pulse of things already entangled: the microbiome that has always been part of you, the sparrow waiting for a nest it may never find, the algorithm that has already decided what nature looks like, the mud that holds what the century tried to bury. The exhibition does not ask you to care about these things. It asks you to notice that you are already inside them.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Entanglements: The Rhythm of Being\", Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (Taiwan), Until September 20, 2026. Curator: Sharleen Yu.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-06-03 00:00",name:"Entanglement÷The Rhythm of Being",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f39c0523-82d1-49c1-93a0-9e0912
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77circulating hoaxes as fact, were not provocations in the usual sense. They were experiments in the mechanics of belief: how authority attaches to images, how institutions ratify fictions, how the desire to belong to something real renders audiences complicit in their own deception. What they were mapping then has since become the architecture of the entire information environment. Curator Nadim Samman, whose trajectory runs from the Antarctic Biennale to the inaugural role of Curator for the Digital Sphere at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, brings the same long engagement with how digital systems reshape physical and social territories. This is not an exhibition assembled around a timely subject. It is one that has been thinking about it for a long time.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"44db7d82-ffa6-4c98-a649-11ca279466c8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178508731419343,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/6ffc1fff42/480.mov",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"exhibition trailer",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"924c8e44-6df2-4f27-9186-712ed9a4734b",quote:"\"We optimised for engagement and got radicalisation. We optimised for c
77onnection and got loneliness. We are very good at optimising.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"5b6283f0-9b2b-4212-9043-a199efbd3131",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Palazzo Franchetti: when the data center meets the Renaissance",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Palazzo Franchetti, the 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal becomes the first argument. The Mattes overlay its historic rooms with raised flooring, cable trays, and prefabricated components drawn from the vocabulary of data centers and cryptocurrency mining infrastructure, not as metaphor but as architectural fact. The palazzo does not recede. It becomes a palimpsest in which Renaissance grandeur and server-farm logic occupy the same plane, each making the other more legible. The hybrid condition of contemporary life is built here, walked through, physically inhabited, and the decision to work at this scale, in these rooms, with these materials, is what separates the exhibition from the many that address the same territory in two dimensions on a white wall.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cursed Cat (in the Dataset): the meme as object",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Cursed Cat\" (in the Dataset) (2025) introduces a stuffed, earless black cat, a physical incarnation of the internet meme, posed beneath a robotic arm-mounted camera that also frames visitors in the background, folding them into the same image-making logic as the object they are looking at. A Large Language Model trained exclusively on images of this single figure generates a continuous stream of new iterations, released onto the internet to be absorbed into future training datasets, corrupting the imagination of AI systems from within. The same figure reappears in wood carved from the Dolomites, glass forged in Murano, plastic food replica from Japan: craft traditions of singular, place-specific making pressed into the service of a meme whose whole logic is frictionless reproduction. These are beautiful objects, strange in the way that things are strange when two incompatible systems of value have been forced to share the same surface, and that strangeness carries more weight than any caption could.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1706b430-1631-4f2c-bfac-86c0bc005af5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178542598813839,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1244x414/08cfd9c85e/screenshot-2026-05-20-at-13-49-25.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IMAGE GENERATIVE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fc6f77a2-4df3-4eec-839e-c0ae147a7e92",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178503800731684,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/e1daf5b345/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2611-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dfb207cb-9d39-4214-82fa-51fd531a4d9c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178514243251571,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6336x9504/b62ba93ed2/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2635-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of RAGE BAIT by Eva & Franco Mattes presented by Autotelic Foundation. Photo by Melania Dalle Grave for DSL Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
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Curated by Nadim Samman and Luisa Haustein.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-20 00:00",name:"The Feed as Reality ÷Eva & Franco Mattes at the Venice Biennale",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"dbeacc4c-d1af-4cd9-bdee-5049c369c12f",color:"#f5e529",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"91682d35-80c7-4c66-8a63-a98260f667f4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:178507084380788,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/9504x6336/c6151a93e7/melania-dalle-grave-dsl-studio_mdg2430-modifica.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-feed-as-reality-eva-franco-mattes-at-the-venice-biennale",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-feed-as-reality-eva-franco-mattes-at-the-venice-biennale",sort_by_date:null,position:-1300,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"5d9060ac-dd59-422b-be1c-5c1667c53413",first_published_at:"2026-05-20T12:15:21.739Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"TAIWAN ",created_at:"2026-05-18T07:03:18.371Z",published_at:"2026-05-18T19:26:33.359Z",updated_at:"2026-05-18T19:26:33.376Z",id:177759020564637,uuid:"7e542c8e-06a9-4527-95f4-b016dd905546",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"13dadcb7-2b02-4862-9e35-8f2a12895e99",title:"Being There Is the Point: Li Yi Fan's Screen Melancholy at the Venice Biennale 2026",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:177792982876160,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/ab1cb969f3/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Li Yi Fan, Screen Melancholy, Venice Biennale 2026, Taiwan Venice Biennale, TFAM collateral event, Palazzo delle Prigioni",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Li Yi Fan's Screen Melancholy at the Palazzo delle Prigioni is the most politically charged work at Venice 2026. 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Yet, away from the boing noise of the main venues, a masterclass in quiet, stubborn defiance unfolds inside this former Venetian jail.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The official roster of participating countries entirely omits Taiwan. Instead, a placard outside the venue credits the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, effectively relegating an entire nation's cultural presentation to the secondary status of a collateral event. Inside this contested space, Taiwanese artist Li Yi Fan presents Screen Melancholy. The physical environment is disrupted by massive sculptures resembling fragmented body parts, generated from three dimensional scans and carved open to expose crimson muscle tissue. On the surrounding screens, a digital human filmmaker directs a cast of virtual actors. Li constructs these chaotic digital environments using Unreal Engine, mapping his own facial movements onto cheap avatars purchased from online marketplaces. The protagonist is a pale, hairless figure marked by visible surgical sutures, delivering frantic monologues about artificial intelligence, the automation of labor, and our increasingly digitized existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"50781d09-fc5a-45a3-85a1-9fc7803b3b4e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177776787657953,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4658x2622/b0ed8ca843/06_-li-yi-fan-screen-melancholy-installation-mockup-image-for-reference-only-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-20.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi Fan ,courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan Pavilion",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e88bf138-9e84-4e96-88a4-615aaf3383df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177792982384639,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/5d62c8c956/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1054ba54-f761-4eaa-a108-7fa7a2d982a2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To be present without a formal name is only a defeat if one believes a name is absolutely required to exist. The Palazzo delle Prigioni proves otherwise. What cannot be stated in the official program is loudly articulated through the artwork and the sheer physical reality of the exhibition. The Taiwanese organizers do not need to shout or cause a scene. Thirty years of uninterrupted attendance is the ultimate political gesture. They occupy space. They create art. They invite the world to look.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And the world should pay closer attention to what Taiwan consistently brings to Venice. Year after year, the island produces some of the most intelligent, nuanced, and genuinely adventurous exhibitions in the entire Asia-Pacific region. This is not accidental. It is the direct product of a cultural ecosystem that prizes plurality over spectacle, critical thinking over scale, and artistic risk over institutional prestige. Taiwan does not need to fill a vast pavilion with monumental screens or drape its presentation in the language of decolonization while quietly advancing its own geopolitical interests elsewhere. It does not need the grandiloquence that increasingly defines its neighbor's cultural output, an output that grows louder and larger in inverse proportion to the freedoms available to the artists producing it. The Chinese pavilion this year offers a useful point of comparison. It is a sanitized, technically accomplished, and profoundly tedious affair: a celebration of artificial intelligence in a frictionless society, all gleaming surfaces and optimistic data flows, the kind of presentation that mistakes scale for ambition and polish for thought. The irony is almost too large to process. This is a country that has built one of the most extensive surveillance infrastructures in human history, a state apparatus of cameras, facial recognition systems, and social credit scores that monitors, grades, and disciplines its citizens at every turn. And yet here, in Venice, it arrives with a pavilion that presents AI as a benevolent force, a tool of harmony and progress, a gift to humanity. At this level of ideological packaging, the word propaganda feels almost too generous. It is a trade fair. It is a tech showroom dressed in the vocabulary of contemporary art, and it fools no one who has spent more than ten minutes looking at the real thing. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Taiwanese pavilion, by contrast, is intelligent precisely because it refuses that comfort. It knows what surveillance feels like from the inside.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"dd3f6077-969a-4967-9565-16e3516f2799",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177781756376730,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/874x558/2fa668ea19/image004.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b82cd17f-8a52-435a-9432-894e3884cebd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177825141271770,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1537/a750307749/07_screen-melancholy-li-yi-fan-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-2026.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"878a55f2-b554-4f02-b082-7995ddfe8fac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177825141714139,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2840x1794/a7bac86a2b/03_li-yi-fan-screen-melancholy-screenshot-2026-60min-video-installation-li-yi-fan-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-tfam-of-taiwan-collateral-event-2026.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b5088fa3-4a79-4022-bc01-0fc435568fae",quote:"Taiwan is not simply a participant at the Venice Biennale. It is one of the most important outposts of contemporary art thinking in the world today,",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"a7cc4736-bc04-40ce-ad3f-790d428cd9e7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"China's art machine is formidable in its ambition and its reach. But ambition and reach are not the same as depth. The most sophisticated collectors, curators, and critics working today know the difference between genuine cultural production and artfully packaged soft power. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Taiwan, precisely because it operates under constraint, precisely because it cannot rely on state spectacle, has developed something far better: a culture of genuine intellectual resistance. Its exhibitions tend to be smaller, stranger, and considerably more honest. They engage with technology, identity, and geopolitical anxiety without resolving those tensions into comfortable narratives.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In that sense, Taiwan is not simply a participant at the Venice Biennale. It is one of the most important outposts of contemporary art thinking in the world today, a place where the pressures of the twenty-first century are processed with clarity, wit, and a refusal to be absorbed. And Li Yi Fan's \"Screen Melancholy\" is, ultimately, a work that speaks directly to Beijing and to the entire world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Not through protest, not through provocation, but through the sheer sophistication of its form. A digital body trapped in an infrastructure it did not build, asserting its presence through intelligence rather than volume, navigating its constraints with humor and precision: the metaphor does not require explanation. Taiwan is speaking. It is doing so with remarkable elegance. And that, in the end, is the most defiant gesture of all. The exhibition is somptuous, clever and curated by a new genration curator.. It is a masterpiece of the 21st century and the must see exhibition in Venice.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Li Yi-Fan , \" \"Screen Melancholy\"\" Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), organizer of the Taiwanâs representative pavilion",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"curated by Raphael Fonseca",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-18 00:00",name:"Taiwan ÷Being There Is the Point",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"05fc5f80-fd6a-4327-bd55-5db35339ca43",color:"#6a669e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"46578b84-498e-43c3-b565-6b5fde4b4992",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177792982876160,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4800x3200/ab1cb969f3/taiwan-collateral-event-at-venice-biennale-2026_installation-views-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Li Yi-Fan, \"Screen Melancholy\" © Li Yi-Fan. Courtesy of the artist and TFAM, Taiwan",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"taiwan",full_slug:"directory/reviews/taiwan",sort_by_date:null,position:-1290,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"9789dbde-9363-4d29-876f-a8537e1c8bc1",first_published_at:"2026-05-18T09:27:22.329Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Still Joy : The World Rebuilt Through Love",created_at:"2026-05-17T03:04:42.493Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T12:20:37.699Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T12:20:37.719Z",id:177346488335324,uuid:"c94421c4-0926-4fa9-be06-45d8ae718714",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"cf709099-4206-4a31-b68b-ac553386b6bb",title:"Still Joy: Ukraine Rebuilds the World Through Love",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:177377219727812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2398x1326/03c445b3ea/17-roman-khimei-yarema-malashchuk-dedicated-to-the-youth-of-the-world-ii-2019.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Still Joy, Ukraine, Venice Biennale 2026, Ukrainian contemporary art, PinchukArtCentre, art and war, joy as resistance, love as resistance, Philippe Riss-Schmidt, Björn Geldhof, Oleksandra Pogrebnyak, independent art magazine , in-depht art criticism",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt reviews Still Joy at the Venice Biennale 2026, where Ukrainian and international artists turn love and joy into resistance."}],_uid:"f61e6649-dac4-43d6-a131-36a274ce74d1",body:[{_uid:"3dcefa24-ef5b-481d-b0fb-ef89958aab41",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" : The World Rebuilt Through Love",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In Venice (European Union), in May 2026, a Ukrainian marine who survived captivity walked into a palazzo on the Grand Canal and spoke about a strawberry chocolate bar. What followed was one of the most important exhibitions of the year.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"War doesn't leave much time for beautiful words. But there is still something it has not managed to destroy. It is the bond between people. And when we speak of joy, it may seem inappropriate in the context of war. But joy is the proof that we are still alive and that we are fighting.\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" Yuliia \"Phobia\", Senior Sergeant, Ukrainian Armed Forces and combat medic, Venice, 7 May 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"993b2654-7122-431a-996f-58a7e0438187",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177378139025861,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1992x1316/adff6df23e/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-06-37.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"JuliaâFobiaâ.StillJoyâFrom Ukraine Into The World /BiennaleArte2026. PinchukArtCentre.Photo:ValentynaRostovikova/PRYZMphotography",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"69faf6db-9a81-4f31-89fa-31bcfd6aa818",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy â From Ukraine into the World\" is an exhibition built on a question that refuses to be deferred: how can anyone still speak of joy when their country is being destroyed by war? The PinchukArt Centre (Kiyv, Ukraine) offers no ready-made answer. It offers a visceral experience, an unsparing testimony to the human capacity to remain alive to beauty in the midst of annihilation. Its power is inseparable from its restraint. \"Still Joy\" is subtle and fine-grained, operating through nuance rather than declaration, and it is in that very restraint that its underlying force becomes irresistible. Joy and love are not its themes. They are its supreme intelligence: the deepest, most demanding form of understanding available to a civilization under pressure.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this exhibition refuses, above all, is the consolation of heroism. The Ukrainian and international artists gathered here do not aestheticize suffering, nor do they flee it. They inhabit it. The video by Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, superimposing images of Kyiv raves before and during the war, makes this inhabitation visible with disarming clarity: the faces are the same, the music pulses with the same intensity, the bodies move with the same abandon. Joy here is not a departure from reality. It is its most precise reading. A ferocious refusal to let war become the only frequency on which a life can be lived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" does not ask for sympathy. It asks for something harder: the willingness, intellectual, emotional and moral, to hold joy and devastation as a single, indivisible condition of being alive. The dominant cultural grammar around war tends toward two poles: mourning or resistance, as though grief and defiance were the only legitimate responses to destruction. \"Still Joy\" proposes a third term: love. Not unconditional love, not love as surrender to feeling, but the kind of love that keeps its eyes open, that refuses both sentimentality and despair, that demands of itself the full weight of what it means to remain attached to the world while the world is being taken apart. To love a person, a plant, a piece of music, the warmth of chocolate melting against your skin, in the middle of annihilation, is not naivety. It is the most serious, the most demanding, the most uncompromising thing a human being can do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"fc7ce668-d2ba-439e-9c14-d477b50b6ca0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177377219727812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2398x1326/03c445b3ea/17-roman-khimei-yarema-malashchuk-dedicated-to-the-youth-of-the-world-ii-2019.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Dedicated to the Youth of the World II, 2019",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"87930ae8-fe21-4c93-867a-4b0ca01649bb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Architecture of Testimony",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This proposition is grounded not in theory but in lived testimony, and that choice is the exhibition's most fundamental declaration: a manifesto written not in words but in the irreducible weight of what people have actually lived. Hlib Stryzhko, a marine, veteran and former prisoner of war, spent years after his captivity interviewing fellow survivors, not about death, but about the moments of joy that kept them alive. His stories are presented in a visual language of deliberate lightness, creating the exhibition's first and most decisive tension: the surface is a fairy tale; the content is not. Lost limbs. The smell of marshland on survivors. Grief without a name. And within all of it, the extraordinary persistence of small pleasures: a strawberry chocolate bar softened under the thighs of a prisoner whose teeth had been broken, offered by a guard in a moment of inexplicable humanity.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That detail is not anecdotal. It is philosophical. It tells us that joy does not require permission from circumstances. It erupts anyway, through the body, through the senses, through the bond between two human beings in a situation designed to destroy all bonds. Conflict journalist and co-founder of The Reckoning Project Nataliya Gumenyuk contributed her own gathered testimonies alongside Stryzhko: voices from the field, from the rubble, from the impossible ordinary of wartime survival. Together, they establish the exhibition's ethical foundation: \"Still Joy\" is not an artwork about Ukraine. It is an artwork made from Ukraine, from inside the experience, from the irreducible fact of people who are still here and still feeling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens with this foundation and immediately expands it. Kateryna Aliinyk's landscape paintings, in which small animal life vibrates under a soft moonlit glow, propose a world that continues to breathe at the margins of catastrophe. Piotr Armianovski's video essay blends the reality of war with the dreams of Mariupol, a city that no longer exists as it was and yet persists in the imagination of those who loved it. Simone Post's immersive installation reimagines the palazzo's interior through a structure made of candy, an architecture of childlike joy that is also, in this context, an act of radical insistence on the right to pleasure. These three works together establish the exhibition's first argument: that the world does not stop being beautiful because it is being destroyed. It becomes more so.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4c6d1c66-23a2-4539-afcc-4cbd6aaed526",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177387446878694,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2002x1320/3ce2f09ff5/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-51-01.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"PiotrArmianovski,cMeandMariupol, 2017, \"StillJoycFromcUkraine IntoTheWorld\" /BiennaleArte2026.PinchukArtCentre.©PhotoOKNOStudio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"7a2ef441-e428-49d2-a7e0-1377bca4d439",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177414497444483,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2143x3000/b8e9596a6f/6-simone-post-she-knew-she_it_they-would-melt-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Simone Post, She Knew She/It/They Would Melt, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cdbabf14-6af6-4a5e-9ff9-ca511cb550ce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177387049447902,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2006x1328/6424334c55/arte-2026-pinchukartcent-okno-studio.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kateryna Aliinyk, Night in Heaven, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"022429ff-2014-48a1-867b-a3009e368594",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Love as the Only Adequate Response",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial decision to bring international artists into dialogue with Ukrainian voices is not a gesture of solidarity. It is an argument. Loss and love are not Ukrainian conditions. They are human ones. And the works that carry the most weight here are those that understand love not as warmth but as precision: the exact, specific, irreplaceable attachment to a particular person, a particular gesture, a particular world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tacita Dean's 39-minute 16mm film \"If I Were in the Adlon\" (2025) makes this argument with surgical precision. Filmed over a single afternoon with Ukrainian artist Boris Mikhailov and his wife and lifelong collaborator Vita Mikhailov, the film does not document a relationship. It inhabits one. Joy here is not an emotion. It is the accumulated weight of decades of chosen proximity, what love becomes when it survives long enough to be taken for granted, and then, under the pressure of history, is no longer taken for granted at all. Cardiff and Miller's \"Conversations with My Mother\" (2023) presses this further: a row of telephones, each carrying the voice of someone gone. Love does not end when the person ends. It continues, unresolved, looking for a receiver. These two works together make the exhibition's most precise philosophical claim: that love is not a feeling but a form of sustained attention, one that outlasts the body, outlasts the war, outlasts the silence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Gabrielle Goliath's video works bring another register entirely into the room, and in doing so, make the exhibition's argument about love more precise and more demanding. The intimate testimonies of Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ soldiers and civilians speaking of joy are not a statement about identity politics. They are a statement about the nature of love itself: that it persists in conditions designed to deny it, that it constitutes a form of knowledge precisely because it is contested, that the people who have been most systematically told their love does not count are often those who understand most clearly what love costs and what it is worth. In a war that has made every form of human attachment a target, these testimonies hold survival and beauty as inseparable, not as a consoling idea, but as the most rigorous position available. That insistence is the exhibition's moral spine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ãlvaro Urbano's painted-metal \"Kalyna\" â a viburnum branch, the emblematic Ukrainian plant, rendered in a material that cannot be smelled or plu
77cked â holds this tension in a single object. The joy of recognition is immediate; the impossibility of possession is equally so. Julian Charrière and Ryan Gander each trace, in their distinct registers, how human presence leaves marks in the world: the geological, the atmospheric, the intimate. Daniel Turner's work operates in the register of material endurance, what survives when everything else has been consumed. Lesia Vasylchenko, Katya Lesiv, and Kateryna Lysovenko each bring the body and its memory into the room, through drawing, through gesture, through the insistence that a person's inner life is not erased by the circumstances imposed upon it. Pavlo Kovach and Oleksiy Sai & Yury Gruzinov extend this into the territory of collective memory, of communities that hold their shape even when the ground beneath them has been taken away.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4ca99ed1-4057-4b76-9440-16a23cd03572",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177382048522694,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2010x1336/9676c410a4/biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tacita Dean, If I Were at the Adlon, 2025. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"35dd8d6e-4ce0-4c2a-a666-16bbd75a36ae",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177382843597256,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2024x1338/8df91cf060/screenshot-2026-05-17-at-07-31-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gabrielle Goliath, Personal Accounts (a quiet rush), 2025. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3e970863-4257-4672-82fa-a97857b39f30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177415650001546,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x3000/e19a18081d/36-alvaro-urbano-disobedience-after-hilma-af-klint-kalyna-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãlvaro Urbano, Disobedience After Hilma af Klint (Kalyna), 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f89ccefc-da20-4574-9d80-f7fecb263f6e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177415747838603,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x3000/29ea315581/34-alvaro-urbano-disobedience-after-hilma-af-klint-kalyna-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ãlvaro Urbano, Disobedience After Hilma af Klint (Kalyna), 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cb0390af-9be7-46a5-a7aa-a041e6a10c18",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177418129027732,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/2a9d1d02f1/41-julian-charriere-where-waters-meet-2019-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julian Charrière, Where Waters Meet, 2019. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World_Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c4082653-b86f-42b4-ade7-f5e19012a0ff",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424737489608,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/9cfbe00661/27-lesia-vasylchenko-1534-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lesia Vasylchenko, 1534, 2026. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ce785913-5501-4e12-8c84-4437832fbc74",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Body as the Last Territory",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"War makes the body its primary site of violence. \"Still Joy\" makes it the primary site of resistance. Alevtina Kakhidze's tattoo salon inside the exhibition is philosophically precise about this: to be tattooed by the exhibition is to refuse the separation between aesthetic experience and lived life, to insist that what happens here is permanent, an act of sovereignty over the only territory that cannot be bombed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zhanna Kadyrova's light-box photographs of bombed interiors each contain a single surviving houseplant amid the rubble, plants she rescued and carried to Venice. The image resists symbolism. It is simply factual: something lived, something continued, something carried across the wreckage. And Ashfika Rahman's monumental sculpture of tiny bells, each bearing the fingerprint of a displaced woman, does not mourn. It rings. The work's argument is the same as Kadyrova's, stated in a different register: love is the refusal to let a person be reduced to their absence. Every fingerprint is a person who was somewhere, who touched something, who insisted on leaving a mark.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fb514128-cfdf-443e-823d-bbfe634e3c79",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424676770503,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/7d974bb0ab/1-ashfika-rahman-than-para-no-land-without-us-2025-ongoing-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ashfika Rahman, Than Para â No Land Without Us, 2025âongoing. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a4050c3e-440b-4abe-897f-171f5023b60d",quote:"\"Still Joy\" is beautiful. It is moving. It carries an intelligent and universal message with the full weight of what has been lived. What if the world rebuilt itself through love? ",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"e4dbf803-fa3b-4aeb-8920-ce5996b34392",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177424676516550,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/fa88b85984/14-zhanna-kadyrova-refugees-2023-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zhanna Kadyrova, Refugees, 2023. Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a3f19fee-32a3-4fdd-b93b-3b5c8cd8875e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nikita Kadan: Where It Ends",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition closes with Nikita Kadan's monumental drawing of a silent rave: bodies pressed together in the dark, moving without sound, finding in collective movement what language cannot hold. In Kadan's drawing, bodies become a landscape. Emergence and loss are indistinguishable. The rave is a funeral. The funeral is a rave. Joy and grief share the same breath, the same gesture, the same room.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the image \"Still Joy\" leaves you with: not resolution, not consolation, but the full weight of human beings insisting on being alive together, in the dark, without words, without explanation, insisting that this insistence is enough.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What this exhibition ultimately proposes is that love is a practice. A discipline. An ecology. It extends beyond the human, leaving its marks in rock, in ice, in the slow chemistry of the earth, in the subversive kinship between the organic and the synthetic; The boundaries between species, between bodies, between the living and the lost, are not walls but membranes, permeable, trembling, alive. 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77,content:[{text:"To love is to engage in a profound act of world-making, one that refuses the hierarchy that places destruction above survival, despair above attachment, absence above the insistence on contact.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, joy is not a passive state. It is an act against systemic collapse. The boundaries between the personal and the political, between the intimate and the historical, blur and dissolve. What remains is the raw, unmediated fact of people who are still here, still feeling, still reaching toward one another, across every distance that has been imposed upon them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy\" is beautiful. It is moving. It carries an intelligent and universal message with the full weight of what has been lived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What if the world rebuilt itself through love? ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Not unconditional love, not love as surrender,but the kind of love that keeps its eyes open, that holds the full weight of what has been lost and chooses, with full knowledge of that weight, to remain attached.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists gathered in this exhibition understand that to love is to engage in a profound act of world-making. They expose the friction between the organic and the synthetic, mapping an ecology where desire extends far beyond the human. We navigate through the intimate architecture of queer ecologies, where the toxicity of our environments forces new, subversive kinships. We confront the posthuman body, where vulnerability is stripped of its romantic veneer to reveal a raw, unmediated entanglement with the other, whether that other is flesh, flora, or the slow chemistry of the earth.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Here, joy is an act of resistance against systemic collapse. Submission to grief is repurposed as a political tool to dismantle established hierarchies. The boundaries between species blur in works that function as contemporary cathedrals for bodies that have been marginalized, displaced, bombed, and yet remain. That insistence belongs to no flag, no front line, no particular season of catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Still Joy â From Ukraine into the World\", Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice. until 1 August 2026. A Collateral Event of the \"Biennale di Venezia\". Presented by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the PinchukArtCentre. Curated by Björn Geldhof and Oleksandra Pogrebnyak ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"de9d09a6-966c-426f-b3f6-5838ee15dcf2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EDITORIAL NOTE :",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Refresh Magazine is an independent publication committed to freedom of speech and avant-garde thought. We have proudly published this article despite certain pressures, and we will continue to build a proper art journalism that holds its ground. We will re-publish this essay in a different format in our upcoming Print issue, distributed worldwilde.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-17 00:00",name:"\"Still Joy\"÷The World Rebuilt Through Love",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e023d6b7-620e-44a5-bf0a-39988326b51d",color:"#727272",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a82f7b07-6ba5-45c7-bc08-4ef1ddcf6620",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:177389904421370,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3000x2000/e67f09556d/7-nikita-kadan-after-all-2026-still-joy-from-ukraine-into-the-world_biennale-arte-2026-pinchukartcentre-photo-okno-studio.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nikita Kadan, \"After All,\" 2026. \"Still Joy â From Ukraine Into The World\" / Biennale Arte 2026. PinchukArtCentre. © Photo OKNO Studio",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"still-joy-the-world-rebuilt-through-love",full_slug:"directory/reviews/still-joy-the-world-rebuilt-through-love",sort_by_date:null,position:-1280,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"808b7491-369a-4d3c-a8d4-2acc7b2d53d9",first_published_at:"2026-05-17T08:00:46.641Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Proximity Music: The Ongoing Hum,",created_at:"2026-05-11T22:37:26.656Z",published_at:"2026-05-19T14:17:36.782Z",updated_at:"2026-05-19T14:17:36.803Z",id:175511333532391,uuid:"92d7a95f-bc35-4f0d-9726-0aed4992b730",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f367755a-2daf-477d-b881-9350802c1280",title:"Everything Is Already Vibrating",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:175511779843053,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/1b66d024a0/w845_3313449-koenraad-de-groot-the-colour-of-chameleons.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Everything Is Already Vibrating",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Everything Is Already Vibrating"}],_uid:"9647e5b4-b825-4ddf-a163-c41560929779",body:[{_uid:"1094d3a0-b51b-4109-84f9-cb44d5676e86",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything Is Already Vibrating: How Rewire's Proximity Festival Opens Portals into the Multi-Layers of the World",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The raison d'être of Proximity Music is a recalibration of the senses in the face of a culture that has narrowed perception to the visual and the immediate. The festival insists on slowness, on physicality, on a form of listening that requires the whole body. It insists that the world is vibratory, that everything is interconnected at frequencies we rarely pause to register, and that art IS capable of making those connections felt rather than described. The hum was always there. Proximity Music simply refuses to let it go unheard.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a frequency running through everything. Through stone, through glass, through the walls of a church, through the body of a stranger standing next to you. Proximity Music: \"The Ongoing Hum\", the sixth edition of the joint exhibition programme by Rewire and iii '(instrument inventors initiative)', takes this as its founding conviction: that the world we inhabit is layered with rhythms, vibrations, and radiations we have trained ourselves not to notice, and that art can break that habit.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rewire is not a festival that positions music as a spectacle to be consumed from a seat. Its Proximity Music strand proposes something structurally different: that sound is a property of matter itself, that vibration is the connective tissue of a multidimensional world, and that the artist's task is to open portals into the dimensions of that world which ordinarily escape perception. This conviction is embedded in the physical logic of every work, every venue, every instruction given to the listeners.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Ongoing Hum\", spread across six venues in The Hague's city centre, gathers seven artists whose practices converge on this premise from radically different angles. The thread between them is a shared refusal to treat matter as passive. Ceramic vessels are not objects but perspectives; bacteria are not organisms but composers; a piano is not an instrument but a receiver for a parallel dimension. Each work is a portal, and each portal opens onto a layer of reality that coexists with our own, running through it at every frequency",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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genre of AI-critical art that arrives pre-loaded with its conclusions: technology bad, humans lost, screens everywhere, game over. \"The World Is Sleepwalking\", curated by Daniela Cotimbo at the Filodrammatica Gallery in Rijeka, is not that exhibition. The four artists gathered here are not technophobes issuing warnings from the analogue high ground. They are inside the machine, working with its materials, and their discomfort with what they find there is all the more credible for it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At some point in the last few years, the volume of synthetic content online crossed a threshold that is difficult to name but easy to feel. The scroll no longer delivers the world with distortions; it delivers distortion as a world in its own right. Memes, deepfakes, AI-generated text, resurrected voices, virtual faces: the feed
77is a continuous hallucination that has stopped pretending to be otherwise. Nobody adapted. We just stopped noticing. It is precisely these conditions that form the basis of \"The World Is Sleepwalking\", a program organized by Drugo More (The Other Sea) in collaboration with the curatorial platform Re:humanism, led by curator Daniela Cotimbo. The artists brought together here do not observe these shifts from a safe distance. They work speculatively and critically inside them, probing the ideological architecture of AI and its growing power to reshape what we perceive, what we believe, and what we can collectively imagine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c5b4e6aa-94b3-43bb-9470-464dbead0972",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175291973571558,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7636x5163/8d609b0dd5/the-future-is-weird-af-installation-view-re_humanism-pastificiocerere.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Silvia Dal Dosso ,\"The Future Is Now Finally Weird AF\" courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6ee3db92-3e8f-499d-b9e5-e522a8f00052",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175096472761565,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2300x1526/29fe500606/screenshot-2026-05-10-at-19-52-42.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Silvia Dal Dosso ,\"The Future Is Now Finally Weird AF\" courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ec16177c-b6ec-4526-82c6-2d32922ecbae",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The premise is cynical to its core. We have entered what the exhibition calls a regime of mass confusion, a condition in which the AI industry, while promising growth, has flooded public life with fabricated content to the point where our sense of what is true has quietly shifted toward whatever story feels most reassuring. The artists do not dispute this. They build inside it, which is either the most honest position available or a sign that there is no outside left. Taken together, the works interweave image, sound, and synthetic voice into something that functions less as a group of individual pieces than as a single, enveloping environment: a digital ecosystem in miniature, cacophonous and relentless, replicating the very bombardment it sets out to examine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Silvia Dal Dosso's The Future Is Weird AF opens with a synthetic version of Adam Curtis's voice narrating a landscape of resurrected celebrities, virtual influencers, and human-bot relationships. The choice of Curtis is deliberate and pointed: his voice has become so synonymous with the documentary of collapse that cloning it is itself a form of collapse. Dal Dosso delivers a critique of synthetic media through the very mechanisms of synthetic media. It does not resolve the contradiction. It is not supposed to.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fec48abd-0da9-4eed-961f-459b3ed7f3b1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175090435486340,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x1500/efd1520cf1/the-world-is-sleepwalking_installation-view-10-jpg-12-jpg-silvia-dal-dosso-the-future-is-weird-af-2023-2025-installation-view-background-the-bastard-fields-by-most-dismal-swamp-the-world-is-sleepwalking-filodrammatica-gallery-rijeka-2026-photo-borut-brozovic.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking\"i, nstallation view, Silvia Dal Dosso, \"The Future Is Weird AF\" installation view (background: The Bastard Fields by Most Dismal Swamp), Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, 2026. Photo: Borut BrozoviÄ.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"98831da6-7508-4b89-9b99-58adcb84fde4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175292691407882,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x1500/0032ff9544/the-world-is-sleepwalking_installation-view-18.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Most Dismal Swamp, The Bastard Fields, 2025, installation view, The World is Sleepwalking, Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, 2026. Photo: Borut BrozoviÄ.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"272be7b3-41e5-44de-b008-c85bda85ee8c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175094499693595,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2702x1514/40661d6a4f/screenshot-2026-05-10-at-19-52-31.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Bastard Fields (still) by Most Dismal Swamp, 2025, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"81c4a323-ae23-4406-965a-e851428ab632",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Most Dismal Swamp's The Bastard Fields is where the exhibition hits hardest. The collective builds a hallucinatory environment around the concept of model collapse, that process by which AI systems, fed on their own output, degrade into homogenous, toxic noise. The artists call this \"midification,\" and the term deserves wider circulation. The argument running beneath the sludge is ecological as much as technological: it is diversity that generates culture, and it is uniformity that kills it. When algorithmic systems mine the same archives, amplify the same patterns, and reward the same formats, they do not produce culture; they produce its slow erasure. The Bastard Fields makes this visceral rather than theoretical, populating its landscape with content-hustlers and platform producers who have extracted every last drop of meaning from the cultural corpus and left behind a sticky, incoherent residue. It is a world that looks busy and feels dead.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5f3decc1-8953-459e-a48d-1e43a5e5429e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175293316412442,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x1500/b9461fcb37/the-world-is-sleepwalking_installation-view-5.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zach Blas, IUDICIUM, 2022, installation view, The World is Sleepwalking, Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, 2026. Photo: Borut BrozoviÄ.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fb12f9fe-fd53-4a30-87dc-c327454e7465",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Zach Blas's IUDICIUM frames AI through eschatological imagery, connecting the tech industry's messianic self-image to the quasi-religious ideologies that have always underwritten systems of judgment and control. The installation imagines AI as a god of judgment, borrowing the aesthetic of the sublime that the industry deploys to make its predictive systems feel inevitable. The parallel between ancient ritual and contemporary surveillance is not subtle, but the point Blas is making is not a subtle one: the impulse to reduce human life to a score, a rank, a prediction, is as old as power itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The collective Malpractice rounds out the show with AI Fatigue Rehab Agent, a conversational bot designed as a therapeutic interface for AI burnout. We are exhausted by AI, so here is an AI to process our exhaustion. The irony is structural, not decorative, and it points directly at the industry's reflexive claim that more technology is always the answer to the problems technology creates.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"5e475f6f-7401-4fa9-83ec-61a7a93baf29",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175293729965100,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1920/bf5d6b610a/malpractice-_-ai-fatigue-rehab-agent-2026.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Malpractice, Chiara Kristler & Marcin Ratajczyk, AI Fatigue Rehab (detail), 2026, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2423ecf2-2bb8-44c8-8cbc-763544598369",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175294319449165,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x1500/3ff2950970/the-world-is-sleepwalking_installation-view-14.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Malpractice, Chiara Kristler & Marcin Ratajczyk, AI Fatigue Rehab Agent, 2026, installation view, The World is Sleepwalking, Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, 2026. Photo: Borut BrozoviÄ.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5817c902-391a-4b71-908b-cb2eb3cca595",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What the exhibition understands, and what so much AI-critical work misses, is that the sleepwalk is not a failure of awareness. We know, more or less, what is happening. We scroll anyway. The systems we inhabit were not designed for us. They were designed to identify us, profile us, and extract value from us, in the service of commerce, attention markets, and forms of control that rarely announce themselves as such. The trance is not a side effect. It is the product.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And yet the exhibition does not end in resignation. The very act of making these works, of turning the machine's own materials against its logic, of insisting on diversity, on the hallucinatory, on the irreducibly strange, is itself a form of reappropriation. The show does not moralize about this. It simply points, quietly but firmly, toward something that the algorithm cannot process: the human capacity to look at the conditions of one's own capture and refuse to find them acceptable. Images no longer document; they prescribe. The shift is not technical but political: what we are shown determines what we consider possible, and the systems deciding what we are shown were not built with our freedom in mind. Against this, the exhibition proposes something unfashionably simple: that imagination, the capacity to picture what does not yet exist, remains a form of power that extraction has not yet managed to fully monetise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking\" is part of the 21st \"Mine, Yours, Ours\" festival, produced by Drugo More and curated by Daniela Cotimbo in collaboration with Re:humanism. Filodrammatica Gallery, Rijeka, until 14 May 2026. With Zach Blas, Silvia Dal Dosso, Malpractice, and Most Dismal Swamp.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-12 00:00",name:"\"The World Is Sleepwalking\"÷Scroll, Repeat, Collapse",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"e8cf7944-b109-45a8-976b-e47f6c68887d",color:"#3d6487",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"31eab8ef-739e-47aa-9ca3-b2d4173cb063",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:175087641612849,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2288x1502/1caee874e3/screenshot-2026-05-10-at-19-52-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Silvia Dal Dosso, \"The Future Is Now Finally Weird\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-world-is-sleepwalking",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-world-is-sleepwalking",sort_by_date:null,position:-1260,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"bbd7beea-db6a-48c3-8c75-664902f30c16",first_published_at:"2026-05-12T01:01:47.478Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"IMMERSIVE-FESTIVALDECANNES",created_at:"2026-05-09T21:11:05.592Z",published_at:"2026-05-23T10:32:15.170Z",updated_at:"2026-05-23T10:32:15.188Z",id:174782323162174,uuid:"b302a1e5-a36b-4114-99b8-0ebe08c732bd",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f3d7ebcf-5bc6-441f-b8ef-bf0123565d24",title:"Immersive, Festival de Cannes",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:174782790295879,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3222x1766/84d43a2e58/the-black-mirror-experience-hero-image-competition-immersive-jpeg.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"festival de cannes",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"festival de cannes"}],_uid:"4e3ec28c-5a58-43c8-8ab5-3193ab8658df",body:[{_uid:"039ec848-48c4-4104-b7b0-e85dad056035",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Immersive Competition at the 79th Festival de Cannes: Nine Works to See",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From May 12 to 22, the Carlton Hotel in Cannes becomes the arena for the third edition of the Festival's Immersive Competition. Nine works from eight countries are in the running for the Best Immersive Work award, spanning virtual reality, mixed reality, and large scale video projection. This year's edition introduces a new technical setup capable of hosting up to 200 participants at once, reinfor
77cing the competition's ambition to make immersive art a genuinely collective experience rather than a solitary one.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Below is a detailed look at each of the nine works in competition.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6f04869f-8e74-403a-b781-0607b7e81b3e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174788082897279,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/c91b5a1c6e/gawd-v-the-people-official-trailer-competition-immersive.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"GAWD v The People - Official Trailer - CompeÌtition Immersive",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ac313c45-d6f9-46d5-b059-391276d7ca02",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"GAWD v. The People",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"United Kingdom | World Premiere",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Directors: Yamil Rodriguez, Ivan Alejandro Diaz Cardenas, Stephen Henderson",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This project places the public inside a speculative legal setting where the fate of the human race hangs in the balance. Within an artificial intelligence governed judicial proceeding, volunteers from the crowd take the stand. They must argue for our species' continued survival while facing testimonies from nonhuman entities regarding environmental destruction. The physical environment adapts dynamically, with visual projections altering the room as the case progresses. A cynical deity figure oversees the proceedings, and every iteration of the thirty minute event finishes with a unique, unscripted ruling on the future of mankind.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0d730514-2cd9-4671-9a70-e35d30994d1c",poster:{id:174789855244689,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5000x2812/df9ef32da1/katabasis-project-photos-violet-3-competition-immersive-2026-png.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:174789361086864,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/f9f210dfce/kata-teasercannes-3.mov",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"KATABASIS, video extract,CompeÌtition Immersive 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d02e155b-0e18-47a7-897f-8e6f99704e22",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Katábasis",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"France | World Premiere",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Director: Ugo Arsac",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Taking inspiration from ancient tales of venturing into the realm of the dead, this thirty minute piece functions as a participatory documentary investigating the subterranean networks of New York. Utilizing both virtual reality and large scale projection, it highlights the voices of outcasts who find shelter or employment in the city's deepest infrastru
77cture. By weaving these hidden narratives together, the creators paint an intricate picture of urban life that exists out of sight, challenging the viewer to confront the stark social divides of modern America from an entirely new vantage point",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7b64a498-1a0c-4638-9137-41e1613e30b1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174790691205524,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/dd084a644b/lucido-official-trailer-competition-immersive-2026.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LuÌcido, Official Trailer, CompeÌtition Immersive 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fa7101e9-045e-49ad-a502-a47084948f19",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lúcido",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Portugal | World Premiere",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Director: Vier",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This twenty minute virtual reality project utilizes the phenomenon of conscious dreaming to examine themes of loss, autonomy, and the families we choose. The story centers on Gil, a man who wakes from a terrifying vision and subsequently trains himself to direct his subconscious mind alongside his partner. As the couple navigates bizarre and fluid nocturnal environments, they must grapple with a difficult truth. They find that the most challenging visions to leave behind are often the ones providing the deepest comfort.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4a9dfb01-1017-4e24-8879-30d702f5d1f5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:179579714113731,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/203b48996b/pwf_251209_4knew.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lucide, v ideo extract, CompeÌtition Immersive 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b8c59295-9f26-4b13-a719-3a5c3c4ac452",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Playing With Fire",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"United Kingdom, France, Taiwan | ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"World Premiere",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Director: Pierre-Alain Giraud",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This forty minute mixed reality installation completely reimagines the traditional piano concert format. Attendees find themselves positioned intimately close to a physical Steinway instrument while experiencing a digital performance by the acclaimed musician Yuja Wang. The repertoire features compositions by classical masters, and each piece functions as a distinct segment in a broad narrative exploring human existence, warfare, and regeneration. Developed alongside the visual artist GabrÃela Friðriksdóttir, the project incorporates advanced spatial sound design and specific scents crafted by Francis Kurkdjian to deepen the sensory immersion.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3aae459c-ffe5-48c0-8b01-d217d78df03c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174794157412843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3246x1792/40c327877e/screenshot-2026-05-09-at-23-59-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Playing with Fire, still, CompeÌtition Immersive 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3401692f-e1b6-4ffc-b0fd-4fdc0dcc0295",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Red Planet 3009",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Italy | ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"World Premiere",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Directors: Mariano Leotta, Francesco Fiore",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Taking place in a distant era, this thirty minute video presentation investigates the Martian landscape via the sensory inputs and internal diaries of a robotic explorer named Serendipity. While traversing the dusty terrain, the machine encounters bizarre visual anomalies that hint at the remnants of an unsuccessful human settlement. Following a system reset triggered by a severe weather event, the robot discovers it has been functioning for hun
77dreds of years. Embracing its ultimate destiny, the machine transmits a comprehensive genetic database of mankind into the void of space before shutting down permanently.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c8ca26dc-b3e5-4690-ba65-f2ad13cfc8b7",poster:{id:174782790295879,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3222x1766/84d43a2e58/the-black-mirror-experience-hero-image-competition-immersive-jpeg.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:174794627973620,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/a7dc6cb669/the-black-mirror-experience-official-trailer-competition-immersive-2026.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Black Mirror Experience,-official trailer, competition immersive 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ad1fd778-2bc1-4adc-88bc-97ee2304cc8f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Black Mirror Experience",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"France, Spain | World Premiere",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Directors: David Bardos, Damià Ferrà ndiz",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Translating the pervasive unease of the famous television anthology into a tangible format, this hour long free roaming virtual reality event requires no prior familiarity with the source material. 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The presentation is structured as an aquatic recollection, guiding the public through atmospheric settings defined by turbulent weather and stark contrasts of illumination. 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77,{_uid:"8756a7e7-fdfd-403c-be1f-76ad97a5bcf9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174797763121681,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/72761f0688/yellowfin-trailer-1.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yellowfin, video extract",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4b0042b6-0d76-4f96-a672-ffafe2ddccd8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yellowfin",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Philippines | World Premiere",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Director: E del Mundo",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This fifteen minute immersive video and specialized audio project tracks the journey of Popi, a young man returning to his maritime home after enduring a lengthy incarceration in Indonesia. Upon discovering his spouse has built a new life without him, he seeks isolation on the open ocean. His quiet expedition rapidly devolves into the bizarre when he saves a marooned maritime officer, unearths a secret cache of wealth, and crosses paths with an injured mythical aquatic creature",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"9dc54ead-ef06-4b47-bc07-de3304788142",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Refresh will be on the ground at Cannes this May. With nine works this strong in competition, the question of who takes the Best Immersive Work award is genuinely open. We will be there to find out, and will publish a full portrait of the winner in a devoted review. 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77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A magnificent exhibition where LoVid transforms digital language into matter. Textiles, video and installation collide between memory and dissolution. \"Hotter than the Sun\" captures the sheer absurdity of our hybrid world, where relentless accumulation is the only remaining logic, and extractivism its inevitable shadow, a civilisation mining itself into collapse. They stitch together algorithmic debris into dense, vibrating fabrics, endlessly piling up pixels and acrylic until human experience and machine categorisation become completely indistinguishable. LoVid orchestrates this digital compost with brutal precision, building an interconnected ecosystem entirely out of our information overload.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a35aa91a-cf8f-48c7-9596-acf409f0328e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174705156213162,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1098x1470/15e88e5624/screenshot-2026-05-09-at-17-49-23.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LoVid, \"Magnetic Moment\", 2026 courtesy the artist and Picture Theory",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6136177e-31f2-48b6-af9a-c80f4366f335",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174705156016553,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1064x1478/dd731a55d7/screenshot-2026-05-09-at-17-49-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LoVid, \"Tape Loops\", 2025, courtesy the artist and Picture Theory",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"48329123-087d-4837-b95c-e5e99c9e0392",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Picture Theory is saturated. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LoVid has filled every corner of the space with material that accumulates, layers, and refuses to resolve. The gallery operates under pressure, and the pressure is structural, not theatrical.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Their textile works are the core of this logic. Digital fragments are stretched into ornamental fields, printed onto polyester, then buried under dense embroidery and acrylic in varying viscosities. The result is fabric that looks like it is processing itself, consuming its own surface. The image underneath has been overwritten so many times it functions only as sediment. Accumulation as method, data hoarding rendered tactile.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From accumulation, the logic tips into extractivism. Every surface in this exhibition is a record of extraction: minerals pulled from the earth to build the chips that generate the images that feed the fabrics. The cycle is total and terminal. The video piece \"Spark Frame\" makes this tangible. Edited at a frantic pace, it pulls from Google Photos archives using search terms like landscape or mood. The machine surfaces images that have nothing to do with lived experience, flattening memory into a category. LoVid frames this stream with signal based abstractions, and what sits behind every image is a pulse of electricity drawn from a grid that nobody is auditing. We outsource memory to servers that consume more energy than entire nations.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"498daa46-1bb4-4bb4-bb8f-f52ccc3eaaa0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174706202860001,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1786/b442b3e6d5/0_video.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LoVid, \"Emails from the Paleolithic\", 2026, courtesy the artist and Picture Theory",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"13f5bd19-f535-45a9-836c-7d36e26cc335",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This extractivist logic finds its most unsparing form in the sculptural installation \"Emails from the Paleolithic\". Using motors, rocks, and sound composed by Dan Friel, the work stages the collision between geological time and technological acceleration. The rocks are literal. They sit there as evidence that the infrastru
77cture of the digital world is built on the same planet it is consuming. The installation does not editorialize. It simply runs, loudly, and the gap between the Paleolithic and the server farm turns out to be thinner than expected.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LoVid \"Links\", the media reference library included in the exhibition, assembles books, zines, VHS tapes, vinyl records, and catalogs from artist run spaces into a counter archive. It operates against the logic of the algorithm, holding the position that cultural transmission has a body and a history. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Hotter than the Sun\" maps the extractivist engine at the heart of our digital civilization with the cold clarity of a system that has already calculated the outcome.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"LoVid, \"Hotter Than The Sun\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Picture Theory, New York (USA), Until 30th May",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-09 00:00",name:"\"Hotter Than The Sun\"÷Mine, Stack, Collapse",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"87e41247-c3d7-4a03-b557-81934d5b8c3d",color:"#70585b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"f956bf96-bdf2-4d06-8cfa-3df58156eb0d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174704005888419,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1868x1372/ffdcd33654/screenshot-2026-05-09-at-17-49-43.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"LoVid,\"Marbles\", 2023, courtesy the artist and Picture Theory",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"hotter-than-the-sun",full_slug:"directory/reviews/hotter-than-the-sun",sort_by_date:null,position:-1240,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"e8fb2b25-3c3e-4c75-aee0-3d4f1e03cfc9",first_published_at:"2026-05-09T16:11:23.871Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"lamerde",created_at:"2026-05-08T19:26:20.116Z",published_at:"2026-05-11T10:51:11.363Z",updated_at:"2026-05-11T10:51:11.378Z",id:174402683394486,uuid:"ce7c0d15-b045-4a33-ad9b-4b816982fa5e",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"7d7dc07f-7324-491b-825d-f35717143536",title:"La Merde: Shame, Precisely",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:174402995265946,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3508x2339/9061123533/03-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"La Merde, exhibition, review, Aline Bouvy, Venice Biennale 2026, Luxembourg Pavilion, Arsenale Venice, contemporary art Venice, shame social construction, feminist art 2026, art exhibition Venice, Casino Luxembourg, Biennale Arte 2026, body and shame art, political art Venice, must-see Venice Biennale, excrement art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:" Aline Bouvy's La Merde exhibition at Venice Biennale 2026 is a masterpiece on shame, the body, and social control. The unmissable show at the Luxembourg Pavilion."}],_uid:"297668de-fb68-4f3c-a7a5-00f71d19ccf5",body:[{_uid:"fd675ad3-94be-49ce-ae3e-77919c81f4b2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"La Merde\": Shame, Precisely",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"With La Merde, Aline Bouvy delivers an intense, fully committed body of work that takes shame apart as a social construction. She maps the exact thresholds at which a body, a word, or an existence gets classified, tolerated, repressed, or simply erased. The result is a masterpiece in the truest sense: a work that holds its conceptual weight, its political charge, its dry humour, and its gut-punch emotional force all at once, without any of them cancelling the others out. The Luxembourg Pavilion at the Arsenale has never smelled this good.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Let us be honest. Nobody expected Luxembourg to be the one. And yet here we are, standing in front of a giant anthropomorphic turd on a cinema-grade LED screen, and it is the most coherent, funniest, and most politically loaded thing in the Arsenale. Aline Bouvy has spent years making work that causes friction just by existing. With La Merde, she has found her perfect subject.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The film follows an excrement figure through the full social obstacle course of being alive. It gets used as a prop in a classroom hygiene lesson, which is the kind of thing that happens when your body is considered a cautionary tale rather than a body. It gets shoved around on a tram. It tries to have a drink and negotiate desire in a bar, which, depending on your own experience of bars, may or may not feel familiar. In a bedroom, alone, the film sits with the slow, grinding cost of self-restraint, the daily performance of being acceptable. The protagonist holds it together for as long as any reasonable entity could. Then it does not. The resulting discharge is not a metaphor. Or rather, it is entirely a metaphor, and also completely literal, and Bouvy knows exactly what she is doing with that.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4f5bf96e-90fb-4525-9162-8cce49e81778",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174428039388198,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3508x2339/27f6827af7/03-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Installation view of \"La Merde\" by Aline Bouvy, Luxembourg Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2b0ff89d-5acd-4221-b9c4-20fc75cd45da",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174428042869808,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3508x2339/f199ed1d35/08-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Installation view of \"La Merde\" by Aline Bouvy, Luxembourg Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5284f223-efbc-478c-b28e-a997f30e0e26",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174428043783218,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3508x2338/0aab8f35d4/01-installation-view-of-la-merde-by-aline-bouvy-luxembourg-pavilion-biennale-arte-2026-graysc.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Installation view of \"La Merde\" by Aline Bouvy, Luxembourg Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"453dfed6-b539-41b3-be00-791d3b1b1eb7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Between scenes, archival images flood in: centuries of bodies losing control, expelling, transgressing. The accumulation is not shocking. It is recognizable. Society has always produced this material and always worked furiously to pretend it has not. Bouvy assembles the evidence into a collective memory of suppression, a history of the things we decided were too much to look at.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The installation itself is built to make you feel the contradiction in your body. A massive, pristine LED screen, the kind usually reserved for blockbusters and product launches, broadcasts bodily waste with full cinematic seriousness. Pierre Dozin's spatial soundscape wraps around you in real time, a living, shifting environment that blurs the line between the film and the room you are standing in. A mirrored, semi-circular structure designed by Antoine Rocca catches your reflection from every angle. You came to look at the work. The work is also looking at you, and the mirrors make sure you cannot pretend otherwise.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77,{_uid:"bfd8136f-2ec5-417e-841a-e7ac3da83bb2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174432641465638,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1548x1158/772ab3d7aa/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-23-44.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ba6ddb9b-8850-4e23-97df-518c355e27a7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174432641137956,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/822x1134/cff9b34a16/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-24-01.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e9b7964-88de-4cdf-952d-a32619471697",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bouvy has built a pavilion out of everything we are told to bury, and she has done it with the formal rigour and dark wit of someone who finds the whole situation genuinely funny and genuinely outrageous at the same time. La Merde is a Rabelaisian farce, a feminist manifesto, and an immaculate piece of contemporary art. Go see it. You will not regret it, even if you feel slightly implicated on the way out.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"La Merde\", Aline Bouvy. Curated by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Stilbé Schroeder - Organizer Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Luxembourg Pavilion, Arsenale, Venice. Until 22 November 2026.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-09 00:00",name:"\"La Merde\"÷Shame, Precisely",author:"Refresh Team (Venice)",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"990a254e-e133-4828-a5b5-530f40b0a232",color:"#935100",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"9282c18d-04ce-4754-a0a6-0e193d9f257c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174430002670775,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2876x1480/0f41d2d058/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-23-17-12.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Aline Bouvy, La Merde (still), 2026. Courtesy The Artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"lamerde",full_slug:"directory/reviews/lamerde",sort_by_date:null,position:-1230,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"fc5b9742-5484-4748-b905-c2905fc1b105",first_published_at:"2026-05-08T21:34:52.958Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:".art award",created_at:"2026-05-08T11:07:38.562Z",published_at:"2026-05-11T16:57:57.096Z",updated_at:"2026-05-11T16:57:57.116Z",id:174280124702701,uuid:"3b33d93d-0258-498a-a021-b94614bb48a3",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"b7393532-d6fc-4fad-81d0-b5f2e9b804ff",title:".ART Turns Ten with a Prize That Changes the Terms",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:174285235758904,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6040x4027/22009b149e/stiles_are-you-ready-for-the-future__cibernetica-e-fantasmi-2023_courtesy-sineglossa.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:".ART Turns Ten with a Prize That Changes the Terms",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:".ART Turns Ten with a Prize That Changes the Terms"}],_uid:"cc04933b-bd91-4c37-8364-8a3baa24e622",body:[{_uid:"e4895d63-b813-474b-b5f5-0316eac3e667",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:".ART Launches a New Global Award Emphasing the Story Behind An Artwork",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:". An Award That Changes the Terms.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Own your context. In May 2026, the .ART domain registry marks its tenth anniversary with the launch of the .ART Award, a global prize open to artists of every geography, background and medium, with more than $50,000 in total prizes. It turns the creative process itself into the submission.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Every artwork has a story. Share yours. That is the baseline of the .ART Award, and it is also its entire argument. At a moment when the digital layer is inseparable from artistic practice, the prize positions the artist's online identity as an extension of the artwork itself, structured and personally authored. The baseline is not a marketing line. It is a statement of intent: the story of how a work came into existence carries as much meaning as the work itself, and it deserves to be told, preserved, and evaluated on its own terms. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To apply, artists present their practice through a .ART domain: a digital space that can take the form of a website, a portfolio, or a social media profile, anchored to the artist's own address. That domain becomes a living record of how an artwork takes shape, from the first research impulse through to material resolution. The submission carries the full weight of the practice",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What is being evaluated here is the methodology: the decisions, the evolution of an idea across time, the artist's own account of how their thinking moves. A domain built with rigour and intention holds this chronology intact. It is where context lives, where the artist's voice reaches the viewer unfiltered, where the arc of creation is readable in its entirety. Treated with this seriousness, the digital archive becomes the most complete expression of a practice.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"11cafed9-bc86-49f5-960d-dab615bfc7df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174285234689847,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2196x1464/311be4aed8/img_6707_baselsocialclub2023_courtesyplayrecordmint.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sasha Stiles, Basel Social Club, 2026, Courtesy Play Record Mint",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0864e0d4-898e-4618-9ba9-fbaa8e085a71",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ulvi Kasimov, who built the registry from a single domain extension into a network of over 700,000 registered addresses across 170 countries, has consistently argued that the value of an artwork lives in the surrounding information: the context, the chronology, the artist's own account of their decisions. The .ART Award gives that conviction institutional weight and financial consequence. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A $15,000 grand prize, residencies at Château du Fresne in France and Anfitrion in Marbella, and a premium .ART domain are among the prizes on offer. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The jury for this inaugural edition brings together Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic at New York Magazine and 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner; Regina Harsanyi, Media Arts Curator at the Museum of the Moving Image; Sasha Stiles, poet and co-founder of theVERSEverse; Irina Tarsis, founder of the Center for Art Law; Dean Phelus, Associate Vice President of Learning and Editor in Chief of Museum magazine at the American Alliance of Museums; Akanksha Ballaney, Senior Director of Business Development at Artsy and Artnet; Gijs Stork, curator and co-founder of Château du Fresne; Shlomi Rabi, Executive Director of the Per Artes Foundation; and Leo Crane, co-founder of AIFA Ventures.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This also raises the question of authorship over context. For decades, the context of an artwork has been produced by others: the curator, the critic, the auction house, the institution. The .ART Award places this authorship back
77with the artist. The architecture of the domain, the hierarchy of information it presents, the sequence in which the work reveals itself â these are creative decisions that belong entirely to the person who built it. What is being judged is the artist's capacity to construct the conditions under which their work is understood, and that capacity is itself a form of intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8e09bcb0-519f-4fa3-9d03-8eda6b33e2b0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174297111677319,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6771x4514/c74763847f/stiles_a-blank-garden_nft-paris-2025_courtesy-the-artist_img_0491.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sasha Stiles, \"A Blank Garden\",nft Paris, 2025, Courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4328cc56-ba90-4f9f-84b9-edf56beac7fd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The initiative opens with a gesture that reinforces its own logic. On May 13, the registry is hosting a free live webinar on YouTube, anchored by a live performance from Sasha Stiles. A Kalmyk-American poet and language artist whose practice traces a throughline from ancient orality to generative machine intelligence, Stiles has been co-evolving with her AI alter ego, Technelegy, since 2018. Her work has been exhibited from MoMA to Art Basel and honoured with the Prix Ars Electronica and the Lumen Prize. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Opening the prize with a live reading places the act of making, the voice in real time is at the centre of the event. The session runs at 11:00 AM EDT and includes a conversation with the .ART team, a walkthrough of the philosophy and submission criteria, and an open Q&A. It is the first in a series of webinars running through the application period, each designed to unpack a different layer of artistic storytelling. Registration is free at ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"campaigns.art.art/webinar",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://campaigns.art.art/webinar",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_blank",linktype:"url"}},{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:".",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is also a structural concern that the prize addresses directly. The digital layer is built on fragile foundations: platforms fold, file formats become unreadable, and the archival memory of contemporary digital work accumulates gaps that institutions will struggle to close. A self-owned domain is durable infrastructure. The artist controls its architecture, its content, and its continuity. By making this the primary submission, the .ART Award creates an incentive for artists to build their digital layer with the permanence and intentionality the work deserves. The inclusion of Irina Tarsis on the panel signals that questions of longevity, attribution, and legal legibility are taken as seriously here as the aesthetic and conceptual dimensions of the submission.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The registry's broader infrastructure gives the project coherence. Its ID.art platform uses a patented Digital Twin process to credential and archive art objects. Its acquisition of HUG in 2024 established it as an active online gallery. These initiatives, taken together, describe an organisation building the conditions for a genuinely artist-controlled digital art world, one in which the archive, the credential, the gallery presence, and the critical recognition form a single, coherent structure. The .ART Award is the cultural dimension of that structure.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"81110ed8-8e9e-40f4-9ce3-948c7387aaa9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174297109494150,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2085x1390/c5fb09eba7/sasha-stiles_cursive-binary_fragments_outernet-london_2024_photo-by-marcus-peel_02-jpg.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sasha Stiles, Cursive Binary Fragments Outernet London, 2024, photo by Marcuc Peel",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2ef3e33c-cf3f-4ebb-aba2-ec10d9371ddd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The prize structure itself compounds its own logic. The $15,000 (",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"â¬13000) ",type:"text"},{text:"grand prize is substantial. The residencies at Château du Fresne and Anfitrion offer time and concentrated attention. The premium .ART domain, valued at $10,000 (",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"â¬8500)",type:"text"},{text:", extends the artist's digital infrastructure and amplifies the reach of the very archive that earned the recognition. Each prize reinforces the conditions that make the next one more productive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The digital layer is no longer separate from the physical world; it is entangled with it. Smart cities where traffic flows are managed by algorithms responding to real-time data. Financial markets where algorithmic trading reacts to news sentiment analysis in microseconds. Social networks that shape human behaviour, which generates new data, which reshapes the algorithms. The digital layer has become part of the world's operational reality, not a representation of it. This entanglement creates a hybrid world where the distinction between digital and physical loses its meaning. We live in a hybrid reality where the two are inextricably interwoven, where the digital layer generates its own evolutionary pressures, its own emergent properties, its own capacity for autonomous development. This is the constant at the foundation of the .ART Award. An artist's practice does not exist in spite of this entanglement; it exists within it, shaped by it, and the domain that archives that practice is as much a part of the work as the object it documents.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The .ART Award arrives at a precise moment in the evolution of this hybrid reality. The tools for self-documentation have never been more accessible. The stakes of permanence have never been higher. The prize brings these two realities together and asks artists to meet them with the full force of their practice. That is a serious invitation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Applications",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"open May 11 and close November 1, 2026, with winners announced on December 3 during Art Basel Miami. you can apply ",type:"text"},{text:"on ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"www.award.art",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://www.award.art",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-11 00:00",name:".ART New Award÷ For The Poetics Of Process",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"32921ad8-42db-4251-b279-a5c6c5a66e4a",color:"#670356",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"5b726c91-135b-4bfb-ba39-b8e51028d7b3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:174300888099405,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2466x1368/402138321d/screenshot-2026-05-08-at-14-31-51.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false}
77,caption:"Sasha Stiles, \"Are you ready for the future\",2023, courtesy Sineglossa",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"art-award",full_slug:"directory/reviews/art-award",sort_by_date:null,position:-1220,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"262977f6-ec16-4ca0-bb40-68f7a163ff7b",first_published_at:"2026-05-11T11:01:38.979Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Remote viewing",created_at:"2026-05-04T20:58:43.928Z",published_at:"2026-05-11T11:46:23.687Z",updated_at:"2026-05-11T11:46:23.704Z",id:173009813243104,uuid:"c38db558-cb09-4e16-bb9f-8aa910e5b414",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"df614c34-5e67-4960-8346-d0e1f44aa236",title:"Remote Viewing Exhibition",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:173009413972843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2262x1442/c2969a393c/ho-tzu-nyen-hotel-aporia-2019-single-channel-video-projection-color-and-multi-channel-sound-84-min-courtesy-of-the-artist-jpg.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Remote Viewing, MoNTUE, Taipei contemporary art, Alice Nien-Pu Ko, Tony Oursler, Trevor Paglen, Sandra Mujinga, Ho Tzu Nyen, Jenna Sutela, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, surveillance art, perception politics, contemporary art exhibition 2026, psychic research art, Stargate CIA art, biometric surveillance art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A critical review of Remote Viewing at MoNTUE Taipei: how perception became a political weapon, from Cold War espionage to algorithmic surveillance."}],_uid:"69986f62-c741-4dae-b9ea-fa9bf518f283",body:[{_uid:"7022ed61-9987-4a07-a20c-074db1b53dc7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Remote Viewing\": Perception as Contested Ground",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The ambition to govern what others see and how they believe it is not a modern invention, however much the tech industry would like the credit. \"Remote Viewing\" exhibition at MoNTUE Taipei (Taiwan) traces its persistence across a century of practice, from early 20th-century psychic research through Cold War military intelligence to today's algorithmic surveillance, treating it not as a series of aberrations but as a structural condition of power. That this argument holds, across thirty-seven artists and three floors, is a measure of how precisely curator Alice Nien-Pu Ko has built it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens on an archive that should not exist. In 1931, Japanese psychologist Tomokichi Fukurai claimed to have produced a photograph of the moon's far side through the concentrated mental projection of a clairvoyant, decades before any actual lunar observation technology. He lost his academic post over it. Ko's decision to open here is one of the show's most intelligent moves: she is not interested in rehabilitating Fukurai, but in what his expulsion reveals. The boundary between legitimate and illegitimate knowledge about perception has always been policed, and that policing has always served someone. The archive is not a curiosity. It is the thesis, and it arrives before a single contemporary artwork is in sight.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0a1d61f0-9610-493b-a4a4-849508117c96",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047244842509,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2314x1554/fe566fae0d/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-27-28.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tony Oursler,\"Third Eye\", 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"1b4bd75b-fb0b-4ef5-9bd9-e7eda9abe11c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047244981774,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2330x1528/9c34071f88/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-27-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tony Oursler,\"Third Eye\", 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a184f963-372d-4a35-b35f-94c55e068ed6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047245235727,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2324x1546/604b6c8988/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-27-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tony Oursler,\"Third Eye\", 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"38611ba3-10a1-4a42-b2c7-ac6cdb0b0400",quote:"I don't believe there's a difference between rational and irrational. I try not to get into these dualisms",author:"Susan Hiller",component:"quote"},{_uid:"519fda55-6489-445c-85f1-01674499a126",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047176726023,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2302x1522/351df25229/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-29-54.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Susan Hiller, \"Resounding (Infrared)\", 2013,©Sunsan Hiller",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d751f95f-7b54-4d19-93d9-16ebc646ed1b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From there, Ko constructs a genealogy with real structural nerve. The institutional fantasy that perception can be trained, directed and deployed runs unbroken from Fukurai's photographic plates to the CIA's classified Stargate program to the biometric databases of the present, and the show makes this continuity impossible to dismiss. Tony Oursler's new commission Third Eye (2026) places Ingo Swann, the artist recruited as the CIA's most valued remote viewer, in direct dialogue with Fukurai's materials, and the proximity is exact: the paranoid underbelly of American counterculture and the operational logic of Cold War military intelligence share an obsession with the weaponizable mind. It turns out the government was very interested in the counterculture. It just wanted to run it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"What distinguishes Ko's approach from a straightforward history of surveillance art is her insistence that the question is epistemological before it is political. The show keeps returning not to whether extra-sensory perception is real, but to who has historically been authorised to define the limits of the visible, and what happens to those who exceed them. Jeremy Shaw's Quantification (2017), shot in the degraded grain of 1970s cinéma vérité, catches the exact point where devotional practice and biometric procedure become formally indistinguishable. Che-Yu Hsu and Wan-Yin Chen's Catastrophism (2025) scales the same question outward to ecological and geopolitical crisis, examining how rationality is constructed and mobilised precisely when the stakes are highest. In both cases the argument is the same: the definition of legitimate perception is never neutral, and it is never stable. It is, however, always very well funded.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5746fdfa-f781-449d-ba49-e3116b2ce4c4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173054967776856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2688x1774/7814c0ab0b/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-02-01-20.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Jeremy Shaw, \"Liminals\", (2017), courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c3b24279-d5a3-4047-a029-032f3444efbe",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173015246562347,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2332x1524/7eaf073239/screenshot-2026-05-04-at-23-20-28.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Che-Yu Hsu à Wan-Yin Chen, \"Catastrophism\", 2025â2026, courtesy of the artists",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"95732c7c-49eb-4cc7-a799-c0c3bb61bae6",quote:"The definition of legitimate perception is never neutral, and it is never stable. It is, however, always very well funded",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"b8b40719-877d-43e7-a926-d3768637ee6d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The third floor is where the exhibition earns its more difficult registers, and where Ko's curatorial intelligence is most visible. She could have built a show that stayed within the comfortable territory of media critique and surveillance studies. Instead, the third floor insists on what perception costs at the level of the body, the language, the dead. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Mouth to Mouth (1975) stages the violence that language both enacts and conceals, speech so fractured by colonial suppression and diasporic rupture that it materialises as haunting rather than communication. Yutaka Matsuzawa's My Own Death (1970) folds the visitor's consciousness into an imagined death, then into their own, threading individual experience into the vast, anonymous accumulation of deaths that constitute historical time. These works do not illustrate the exhibition's argument. They extend it into territory the argument alone cannot reach, into grief, into the body, into what Lieko Shiga calls the psychic terrain that a disaster leaves behind long after the event itself has been archived and named.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The most speculative works in the show raise a question the exhibition approaches but never quite names, which may be Ko's most astute decision. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Solarium (2023) sends a double projection adrift through a glass structure, images moving through the space less like objects than like presences that have lost their body. Jenna Sutela's nimiia cétiï generates a language from artificial intelligence and the movement patterns of microorganisms, a communication system that belongs to no existing category. Both works are asking what happens to the politics of perception when the perceiving subject is no longer assumed to be human. It is the show's most open edge, and the one that feels most urgent, not least because no one in power appears to have noticed the question yet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"57767854-b917-459c-80ea-ca2b1ec2d944",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173056580810363,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2038x1152/222ba13403/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-02-08-29.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yutaka Matsuzawa My Own Death, 1970 ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75dd39ad-ea56-4ca5-bba3-9133eb6a15fb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173056068814439,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1960x1458/ab7d19b440/electronic-arts-intermix.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, \"Mouth to Mouth\", courtesy Theresa Hak Kyung Cha/Electronic Arts Intermix",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"cad52fb2-ddbe-45cb-85bc-65b2232c7866",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047489816081,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1534/52e271f06d/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-26-23.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Apichatpong Weerasethakul, \"Solarium\", 2023, courtesy of the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"da03882b-1ed3-4601-8177-234d213e1db3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047489635856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2320x1544/6721dfca69/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-26-34.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Apichatpong Weerasethakul, \"Solarium\", 2023, courtesy of the artist and SCAI THE BATHHOUSE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c62ad8ea-1a02-43d6-86b4-7edb8c71f574",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173047243937289,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2308x1538/686892ec7d/screenshot-2026-05-05-at-01-29-42.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandra Mujinga, \"Pervasive Light\", 2021,Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ac9c29b8-0c7c-4f16-af0c-3bdd77d4a0ec",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The basement closes the argument with the least ambiguity, and the most satisfaction. Here the machinery of manufactured reality is laid bare: how false narratives are circulated until they become, through repetition and institutional authority, indistinguishable from fact (Paglen's Doty, 2023); how a body whose visibility has become a condition of its control retains or loses the capacity to act (Mujinga's Diffuse Light, 2021); how ideology embeds itself in the material logic of everyday space, in corridors, in room arrangements, in the architecture of hospitality, and continues to organise the present long after its historical moment has nominally passed (Ho Tzu Nyen's Hotel Aporia, 2019). By this point Ko has earned her conclusion: the distance between Fukurai's psychic photographs and today's surveillance platforms is not a distance at all. It is the same project, updated, and considerably better financed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"After closing time, Oursler's Third Eye continues on the glass facade of the building, projected into the street until 22:30. The image exceeds the institution's walls. For a show about who controls the act of seeing, it could not end at the door.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Remote Viewing\" at MoNTUE, Taipei (Taiwan). Until June 28, 2026. Curated by Alice Nien-Pu Ko.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-05-04 00:00",name:"\"Remote Viewing\"÷Perception as Contested Ground",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"1e170bd5-18ce-492a-b215-2d279bab5ab9",color:"#797979",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"fcb32eb7-6a69-4467-b1f5-15809ac0d92f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:173009413972843,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2262x1442/c2969a393c/ho-tzu-nyen-hotel-aporia-2019-single-channel-video-projection-color-and-multi-channel-sound-84-min-courtesy-of-the-artist-jpg.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ho Tzu Nyen, \"Hotel Aporia\", 2019, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"remote-viewing",full_slug:"directory/reviews/remote-viewing",sort_by_date:null,position:-1210,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"6f3a8811-311d-471b-9e46-8b6e074b0e21",first_published_at:"2026-05-04T23:49:15.649Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null}
77,{name:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth Digs Into the Matter",created_at:"2026-05-01T17:15:25.618Z",published_at:"2026-05-03T20:15:31.285Z",updated_at:"2026-05-03T20:15:31.301Z",id:171893250565439,uuid:"c57a12a5-130f-417e-888c-baf99824f26a",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c0f72b89-43c5-4f9d-9d6d-9829cfff13cc",title:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:171892174810416,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3333x2500/25af220fa4/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-162.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth Digs Into the Matter",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth Digs Into the Matter"}],_uid:"97939f52-ab53-49d8-b2d3-3d2f70f919c3",body:[{_uid:"acb17fe2-f32b-4ac7-a4af-c3159410e0fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Ressources Sensibles\": (re)connecting.earth ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"Biennial ",type:"text"},{text:"Digs Into the Matter",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art is an instrument of perception, not of persuasion. It can work without grand spectacle or pompous statements. That distinction matters more than it sounds. (re)connecting.earth Biennial has been building on it since 2021.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The route starts in Geneva (Switzerland) and ends in France. Between the two, it crosses a construction scar, passes through two train stations, runs along a cycling path that was itself dug up and rebuilt a decade ago. That is not incidental. The third edition of (re)connecting.earth, titled \"Ressources Sensibles\" has chosen its territory carefully: a cross-border corridor shaped by the CEVA rail construction, a massive displacement of earth and materials that makes the ground beneath your feet a document of the very processes the biennial is examining.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Organized by art-werk, the biennial is built on a micro-to-macro logic: start with the soil, follow the chain of transformation, arrive at the global systems that govern our relationship to matter. The edition pairs each work with scientific interlocutors. The conversation does not stay decorative. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"The curatorial logic here is forensic.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"93ab9ad4-ddfe-4b14-a146-df653640f599",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:171908179603275,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/aa48efc62d/ana-alenso-the-mine-gives-the-mine-takes-2020.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ana Alenso, \"The mine gives, the mine takes\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"93157aef-6a35-4ff5-9259-4fa8f7cfcf60",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:170470022309314,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1103/b90ac3b90f/yuri-ancarani-il-capo-2010-screenshot.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Yuri Ancarani, Il Capo, video stll, © Yuri Ancarani",auto
77play:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"89b7b72b-1db2-4ba5-b4e9-5fe2536656e5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Each artist is following a trail of extraction, transformation and disappearance, and each arrives at it from a different direction. Ana Alenso has spent years embedded in mining complexes across South America, West Africa and Central Europe; her assemblages of post-industrial debris do not illustrate extraction so much as enact its logic, turning the residue of resource economies into objects that are simultaneously beautiful and damning. Monira Al Qadiri's sculptures and videos draw on the visual culture of the Gulf to examine how oil dependency has shaped not just economies but aesthetics, desire and collective identity. Yuri Ancarani, whose documentary practice has taken him from deep-sea mining operations to marble quarries, brings a cinematic precision to industrial landscapes that makes the familiar utterly strange.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"91a8e5f4-af96-42a2-a057-928aa9254000",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172540857747098,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1875x2500/0570527930/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-177-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Seba Calfuqueo, \"Alga parda\" © Julien Gremaud",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2b616b54-aeec-4a42-9b7e-34e87f5468c9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172540857374361,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1875x2500/2abf33f31c/reconnectingearth-2026-280426-juliengremaud-137.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Seba Calfuqueo, \"Alga parda\" © Julien Gremaud",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"09c895d4-165d-419d-9e7d-dbe3dc4ba380",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is also attentive to what disappears before it can be extracted: the knowledge, the territory, the memory. Khalil Berro, working between Zurich and the remote Bedretto valley, is interested in what threatened landscapes carry within them, the geological and cultural strata that development erases without record. Mabe Bethônico traces through archives and institutional memory how knowledge about natural resources circulates, is suppressed or simply lost. Juan Blanco operates at the edge of sound and matter, making audible the frequencies that move through soil, stone and water, what the ground says when you listen closely. Seba Calfuqueo, from Chile, installs two photographic series along the Voie Verte, her practice grounded in Mapuche cosmology and the ongoing dispossession of indigenous land; her work is a reminder that \"resource\" is never a neutral term. Tanja Engelberts traces the colonial architectures embedded in the global trade of raw materials, her research-based practice moving between historical document and sculptural form, making visible the power structures that have always governed who extracts and who bears the cost.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ba119b90-fbe4-4ff9-a012-03391db378f7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172586382932030,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1266x1750/03ce22f46b/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-18-15-32.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tanja Engelberts, \"a well, instruction\"© Tanja Engelberts",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"3ecafc32-6c95-4195-99f0-dc5bcb5489f6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172542039115422,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x2715/7740e48b73/juan-blanco-poster_re-low-width-1920-format-webp.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Juan Blanco, \"Maillage des paysages\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b679c215-d9a9-4df5-ae2d-f73f76d43388",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172603077482719,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2678x1726/eda88b08d6/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-19-22-35.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Soya the Cow & Uhura Bqueer,Â©ï¸ Tarcisio Gabriel ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1285b91c-e480-47f9-ace3-726ac48ba36c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:172645101972185,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2630x1668/e82e96147f/screenshot-2026-05-03-at-19-24-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Etter/Spozio, \"CHART\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6a12046c-e3dd-43b9-8789-47edcd61d8c1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the Comédie de Genève, the exhibition takes on a more performative and sensory dimension. Etter/Spozio works with the material transformations of the immediate region, while Séverin Guelpa, whose practice moves between urban infrastructure, desert landscapes and alpine geology, presents Energy as a Vehicle, a sonic installation that renders the city's subterranean pulse audible, setting the hidden networks of pipes and circulating fluids in dialogue with a choir and a solo voice. Soya the Cow & Uhura Bqueer stage Dé-domestication, a live performance that works the fault line between the human body and the animal, pressing on the question of what domestication has cost both sides. Olaf Holzapfel draws on non-Western craft traditions to question the hierarchies that separate \"art\" from material knowledge, and by extension the hierarchies that separate one kind of knowing from another. 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Tidal Memories, by Jeewi Lee and Phillip C. Reiner, begins with grains of sand collected from three coastlines and magnifies each one to a scale at which its geological individuality becomes a portrait: a work about the invisibility of the materials that sustain global industry, and about what it means to look at something properly. Gabriela Löffel works with soil as a political and agricultural subject, examining the knowledge systems that govern land use and the bodies that depend on it. Gabriel Massan's digital practice imagines futures shaped by communities whose resources have long been taken, a speculative and post-colonial lens trained on the same extraction the other works document. The OMIJA Collective from Busan, five artists working under the shared name Mija, opens the work to forms of engagement that go beyond looking. 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This collective and itinerant project addresses ecological crises like rising sea levels and biodiversity loss. It produces monumental tapestries that capture the topography of specific regions using local natural materials. Functioning as an ecological testimony, the work is deeply participatory and engages local communities. Residents are invited to learn plant dyeing and tufting techniques during a three month residency. Intergenerational teams collaborate weekly to create these pieces, fostering strong social bonds. This shared creation process helps citizens forge a renewed connection to their living environment. The project plans to recreate each tapestry thirty years later to document environmental changes. Currently, the works are accompanied by scientifically backed thirty year projections of the sites. Ultimately, the growing PaysâÃges collection supports local organizations in protecting the environment.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"36195aff-64a0-4e03-bf72-06ead4f15387",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168080371901306,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1136/e12fc6e48f/gme-18863-000_9-2023.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Valentine Huyghues-Despointes , THE WRECK DESK",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5ae687f8-08b3-45df-a003-34153cd2cbfc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artwork \"Wreck Desk\" dramatically transforms a mundane twentieth-century Empire-style flat desk (ex GME 15705/1). Originally measuring 0.75 x 0.75 x 0.35 meters, this piece was once a standard, second-rate administrative furnishing. The artist subverts its original bureaucratic function by inviting viewers into a marvelous underwater journey. Through this intervention, the desk resembles a sunken shipwreck re
77claimed by the vibrant, multicolored life of warm seas. This virtuoso transformation serves as a conceptual mirror, reflecting the marginalized status of the Mobilier National's discarded items. These inanimate objects, forgotten by the institutional system, are given a new, poetic existence as an \"alienated\" wreck. To achieve this striking effect, the artist meticulously reconstructed the underwater volumes using salvaged materials. Recycled wood and plastic bottles form the structural base of this vibrant marine ecosystem. These foundational materials are then intricately covered in a rich, diverse array of leather scraps. The artist utilized an extensive palette of available leathers, including calf, steer, and goat. More exotic textures like crocodile, alligator, monitor lizard, and fish leathers add striking detail to the piece. The creation of this complex leather universe was a highly collaborative effort. Twenty-three volunteers assisted the artist, particularly in executing the intricate, repeating patterns. Before this artistic intervention, the desk featured four bronze-shoed sheath legs and five drawers. Now, it stands as a powerful statement on memory, institutional neglect, and ecological reclamation.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"851b866b-e220-4981-b1dc-bfd55ed41652",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168080853087100,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1340x891/7c45acb8f5/seas_1340_c.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lara TABET, Eleven Fragmented Seas ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7b9cd861-3f1f-400d-875b-a2a93dab9ccf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168080853087099,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/992x779/5225ccfcdf/14-_992.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lara TABET, Eleven Fragmented Seas ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"accfa56e-a937-43ae-85f3-ffa3caf74971",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bordered by the Mediterranean sea and home to numerous rivers and groundwaters, Lebanon is considered a water-rich country in an overall arid region. This heritage has always been at the heart of strategical geopolitical struggles as well as corrupt local politics.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Immediately after the civil war, the coastline became the site of real estate speculations as illegal constructions started popping up. From an ecological standpoint, the water is heavily polluted from chemical spills, untreated sewages and the garbage that overï¬ows from neighboring leaking landï¬lls. The seashore is a tool of power and the government lets it deteriorate to justify its future privatization.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Through the study of seawater, Tabet comments on the neoliberalist politics that transformed the Lebanese waterscape by mapping its microbiological content.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Tabet travels the Lebanese from South to North, withdrawing a water sample every twenty km and inoculating it onto large format color ï¬lm.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"A photographer and medical biologist, Lara Tabet crosses forensics bacteriology with landscape photography.",type:"text"},{type:"hard_break"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b92e28bd-b26d-4796-a053-2288b4e6db4c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168081925501823,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1540/7bdff3fa0e/img_6619.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Benjamin Marquette â Change Paris NOW",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"84cb1f5e-014a-4bba-8ec3-20e9be031735",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168081925620609,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1540/4f8f7f3f29/img_6621.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Benjamin Marquette â Change Paris NOW",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5448cfd1-b49f-420a-ac3b-eda3da81a5f4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168082744132491,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/e56e4257b4/a7r00032.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Benjamin Marquette â Change Paris NOW ( intsall shot)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"662b60b7-ce69-429d-81e5-75dd40cb6a30",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Duo: Rob Hopkins and Benji from The After Project. Together, they collaborated to envision the future they aspired to create. Rob Hopkins shared his extensive knowledge and experience in imagining the transition, while Benji brought this vision to life through live illustrations, transforming ideas into art in real time. This interactive moment actively engaged the audience, making their voices an integral part of this creative and forward-looking experience. Their suggestions for imagining a Paris in transition were captured live by Benji through his art, supported and enriched by Rob Hopkins.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"19c63209-4fc1-42a1-a039-13fe6cde4f68",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168085787923371,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/ac0de4e8df/a7r08986.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Elsa Mroziewicz & Cécile Palusinski, LA FORÃT UNIVERSELLE",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"34d3ccd6-ab26-42c4-bd26-4e318e6367c1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168088987022328,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/d2031c3504/a7r00113.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"install shot, ChangeNOW 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c0b9de3-1695-4f70-b6fc-02b8c30ca9cb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168088986932215,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/2c8688486e/a7r09811.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"install shot, ChangeNOW 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5d0c9347-7d8a-4f1a-857e-f84d532de530",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"where exactly do you stand on a planet already in motion?",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"All these artists, through installations, textiles, and paintings, did far more than illustrate ecological shift , they rendered it physical, audible, and tactile. Far removed from the conventions of the white-walled gallery and the codes of standard contemporary art exhibitions, and set within the framework of a large-scale participatory event, these works became vital and genuinely accessible. Together, they constructed a spatial arena that compelled participants to locate their own coordinates within a vastly expanded planetary scale, and to reckon, at last, with what that position demands of them.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a327b7fd-0ff6-427e-9d99-161d41d7c15d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curator : Ronan de la Croix",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"2026 participating artists : Pinaffo & Pluvinage, Jurena Muñoz Lagunas, Júlia Mota Albuquerque & Andrea Davalos, Dorian Ãtienne, Fondation Carmignac ,Valentine Huyghues-Despointes ,Elsa Mroziewicz & Cécile Palusinski ,Meg O'Hara, Environmental Photography Award, IAMPIà (Emma Piau) ,Lorenzo Naccarato , Janina Rossiter ,Macabéo, Benjamin Marquette ,Maxime Mergalet , Institut des Futurs Souhaitables ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ChangeNOW - April2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The next iteration will take place in April 2027",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-22 00:00",name:"Change NOW ÷Landscape is a choice",author:"Refresh Team and Ronan de la Croix",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ccd510f2-0bf4-42bd-9f27-5429169856f1",color:"#4ba498",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2736b829-f190-4bb9-8ed8-1e7bd8bf0bf5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168078087390050,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2400x1600/8cbe49ae39/dsc08332.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ChangeNow, Paris(European Union) - April 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"change-now",full_slug:"directory/reviews/change-now",sort_by_date:null,position:-1180,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"c852a750-d76a-49f6-bceb-bde7c846de5f",first_published_at:"2026-04-20T23:06:08.873Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"An Ecology of Beasts",created_at:"2026-04-20T12:03:51.010Z",published_at:"2026-04-20T13:49:31.305Z",updated_at:"2026-04-20T13:49:31.334Z",id:167923839062842,uuid:"97bc363d-d35f-402e-aa64-ca6b61ac0e4c",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"a0922926-3cd4-4bb3-8f5d-1826ef6312b6",title:"An Ecology of Beasts",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:167923479091564,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2279x1282/8f87965eed/anecologyofbeasts_commonindex_atbase_169_03.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"An Ecology of Beasts",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"An Ecology of Beasts"}],_uid:"601937ad-b271-4eb7-be51-869fbba04052",body:[{_uid:"b6ff9d29-1dcb-4d28-a12d-6530e204cfad",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Common Index\" is a device for design inquiry, collective making, and digital experimentation. Not for impact but fot care",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Common Index\" bypasses traditional art gatekeepers to forge ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"An Ecology of Beasts",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:", a collective experiment where 33 creators mutate medieval bestiaries into a digital, horizontal ecosystem. By rejecting top-down hierarchies, the fixed frameworks, this project transforms design into a shared, living cartography of interconnectedness.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Each artists involved here brought their own tools, methods, and degree of technical complexity to the process, yet none of these individual specificities dissolved into the collective. On the contrary, the project demonstrated that a shared framework need not flatten its contributors: it can hold them, distinct and intact, within a system that gains its coherence precisely from their differences. Openness here is not a curatorial gesture but a structural condition, one that turns divergence into the very engine of collective meaning.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"7a24e108-4946-466f-90dd-ab47ecb3036e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167923479091564,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2279x1282/8f87965eed/anecologyofbeasts_commonindex_atbase_169_03.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" courtesy Common index ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e825c6bc-e060-4f2f-a07e-ecd009bb0d8e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167930898623631,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/83ec7d67d6/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_6-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"dfa9f321-32ba-4e0e-9fe7-53e7393ac827",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167930898607246,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/163758ad67/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_5-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"26ba0a34-3231-4585-af37-7b4ca9e41543",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A Cartography of Interdependence",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An Ecology of Beasts",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:", staged by the Common Index platform during the 2026 Milano Design Week operates as a necessary rupture within a discipline frequently constrained by top-down directives and the myth of the solitary genius. It fundamentally interrogates the mechanics of production, situating itself at the active crossroads of technological application, design thinking, and communal action. By intentionally bypassing the conventional gatekeepers of the cultural sphere, the organizers have engineered an environment where multiplicity and shared presence are structural necessities rather than curatorial themes.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The intellectual foundation of this endeavor finds its strength in the historical concept of the bestiary. During the Middle Ages, these volumes functioned as intricate epistemological tools rather than simple zoological inventories. They provided a framework where observation, mythology, and belief converged to articulate complex relationships and environmental behaviors. Significance was not isolated in a single creature but generated through the entire ecosystem. Common Index successfully ports this medieval logic into our current digital paradigm. They establish an open protocol for shared experimentation, demonstrating that contemporary relevance requires deep entanglement over individual isolation.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This conceptual stance materialized through two distinct yet symbiotic phases.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Initially, an open call generated a \"Collective Bestiary.\" A diverse group of thirty-three individuals, spanning filmmakers, researchers, and artists, were tasked with reinterpreting a randomly assigned creature from a custom digital deck into a vertical video format. The intelligence of this phase lies in its absolute refusal of hierarchical curation. The resulting outputs are not coerced into a linear storyline or artificially categorized. Instead, they populate a bespoke viewing infrastructure spanning eleven screens that constantly reconfigure the visual relationships between the pieces. This mechanism supports divergence through a foundational architecture that amplifies every participant equally, making the ecological concept tangible. It proves that radical openness cultivates substantial dialogue, not just chaotic noise.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"89edf644-ca15-47cf-985e-e1448d775ca2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167931321134239,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/986x1098/ebf7a25a12/screenshot-2026-04-20-at-14-24-54.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"PARTICIPANTS TO THE OPEN CALL Andrea Borsato Andrea Simeone Annalisa Coco Torres Davide Marcianesi deiv Donato Renzulli fede mandelli Federico Bisio Flavia Doda GADSC gi.ro Giacomo Baccega Guillermo Cárdenas Lars Leonardo Puca Luca Venturoli Maff martiiiesposito Martina Borgese Martina Menegon Mattia Tafel metrocubo Nelson Gutjahr Paola Sau Patrick Chiang Penombra Pietro Maria Vincenti Trabace and Francesca Rumori Pietro Vaglieri Riodeviz rrandagio s-ol Sabrina Caretta Simona Coltello Simone Di Mauro Simone Inverardi Siri Sølyst Farup sogliasogliasoglia Stefania Varodi Stella Facconi Tommaso Boccaletti and Filippo Mirandola Valentina Trevisanello Virginia Taramasco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"85c66682-32a1-4fe7-ae11-752dc863b69e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The second component expands this communal logic into a generative, interactive space titled \"Cartography of Entangled States.\" Drawing inspiration from historical ",type:"text"},{text:"mappae mundi",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:", this installation visualizes the specific environments these digital creatures occupy. It translates archaic geographical concepts, zones of darkness or accumulation, into an active digital terrain. Crucially, visitors are not permitted to remain passive spectators. Their physical presence, ambient noise, and movement act as direct ecological inputs, actively altering the digital environment and spawning transient states. The installation operates as a responsive habitat and an active memory bank. Every physical action contributes directly to the continuous mutation of the shared space.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It became evident that ",type:"text"},{text:"An Ecology of Beasts",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" operates far beyond the parameters of a standard exhibition. It functions as a crucial site for convergence. The organizers never intended to deliver a static, finalized object. They cultivated a situation that allows diverse practices and imaginaries to coexist and converse over time. It is an active index, a framework continuously molded by physical presence and the ongoing negotiation of space. This initiative makes a compelling case that true advancement in the creative fields relies entirely on collective, entangled action and co-evolution",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"a61b5a56-d657-4f0a-8db2-fa3d6e1d7a24",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167934351351241,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/fcea3dc31d/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"505d0011-191c-4c05-aeae-20373882bc7d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167934351302086,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/a2ee339c02/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_7.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1957bd8f-ad9c-46e7-9824-49ea9c9c5278",quote:"Openness here is not a curatorial gesture but a structural condition, one that turns divergence into the very engine of collective meaning.",author:"",component:"quote"}
77,{_uid:"f53eb026-2524-43a5-bdcf-5ca60720b6b8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167934351199685,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/3c91c4f431/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_8.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"96a584d7-f2b1-4adc-95e6-826860b78714",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167934351318471,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1333x2000/4f05316ed0/common-index_an-ecology-of-beasts_mdw-2026_2-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Common Index, \"An Ecology of Beast\" (detail), courtesy Common index",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c954890-ceb5-4478-a850-fe735101d780",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"BASE, Milan (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A shared practice by Carlotta Bacchini, Dorsa Rafiee, Pietro Forino, and Simone Restifo Pilato",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until 26th april 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-20 00:00",name:"An Ecology of Beasts÷ Not For Impact But For Care",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"2919ac93-5fea-49a2-be0c-74014285dcfe",color:"#e9a7c6",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d07f559a-0ecc-4cb7-808e-ef12e6593c35",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:167923575789971,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2279x1282/8d690864cb/anecologyofbeasts_commonindex_atbase_169_02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"an-ecology-of-beasts",full_slug:"directory/reviews/an-ecology-of-beasts",sort_by_date:null,position:-1170,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"058a3a4e-8040-460c-b5c5-c329e1af32b0",first_published_at:"2026-04-20T12:50:14.117Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Connie Bakshi BETWEEN THESE BLACK WATERS",created_at:"2026-04-20T10:19:24.821Z",published_at:"2026-05-23T10:29:17.946Z",updated_at:"2026-05-23T10:29:17.961Z",id:167898172749312,uuid:"ed8aa96f-4499-4cdf-976e-d0e9473c9c6f",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"6aad1339-10cd-41be-a080-a175fc0105ab",title:"Bakshi Solo At EPOCH BETWEEN THESE BLACK WATERS",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:167899063136649,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1152/c70bb00f19/btbw_still_03-2048x1152.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Connie Bakshi, EPOCH Gallery, Between These Black Waters, interactive film, procedural generation, digital art exhibition, post-Cartesianism, post-fixed frame, protopian systems, permanent evolution, diasporic memory, Taiwan Strait, Black Water Ditch, semiconductor history, AI and colonialism, machine intelligence art, web-based art, blockchain art edition, Ethereum art edition, contemporary digital art, interactive narrative art, Los Angeles digital art, new media art 2026, AI art exhibition, postcolonial digital art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Connie Bakshi's Between These Black Waters at EPOCH Gallery: a procedurally generated interactive film where choice is consequence and history haunts the machine."}],_uid:"ede095a9-efb7-4b66-ad82-316f04fd52f3",body:[{_uid:"163b6d1f-c0a1-4651-9cad-8c0ae2b90217",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Between These Black Waters: Connie Bakshi at EPOCH Gallery",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A sumptuous, terribly timely piece. Connie Bakshi puts choice back where it belongs: as consequence. Poetic, sharp, and quietly forward. A next step.One of the most urgent works of digital art you will encounter this year.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Some works stop you. Not because they are loud, not because they perform their own importance, but because something in them is genuinely at stake. \"Between These Black Waters\" is one of those works. Connie Bakshi's first solo exhibition at EPOCH Gallery carries the specific gravity of a piece that could only have been at this moment, from this particular intersection of histories. Its beauty is inseparable from what it knows. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{text:"Then you understand you are not looking at craft. You are looking at truth. That is the difference between a good work and a masterpiece.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is beauty as truth. Connie Baksi work is a 21st century masterpiece.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"35e65c4b-2f36-4940-887f-598f080b962d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:179578465456146,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/089e190d6f/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_video_01_3840x2160_30fps.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7744800c-b9a1-4db4-a37d-883b0e9aca8d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EPOCH opens the solo show with a work that does not announce itself. \"Between These Black Waters\" loads quietly, and then it starts asking. You are an entity with no memory, no origin, no name. The world around you assembles in real time, shaped by what you do. This is post Cartesianism made tactile: no fixed frame, no stable ground, no view from outside. You are inside the system and the system is watching back.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bakshi has built a space where choice carries actual weight. The world has its own conclusions and it reaches them regardless of your intentions. Each decision is not a branching path toward resolution but a permanent shift in what the space can still become. Choice is stripped of its liberal promise and returned to its original condition: something that costs, something that forecloses. The absence of a fixed frame is not a formal experiment. It is the only honest condition for a work about what it means to move through a world that was built without you in it, one that keeps assembling itself around your presence without ever stabilizing into a view you can step outside of.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The phrase \"black water\" was whispered into AI throughout the making of the piece. Not as a query. As a summons. The Black Water Ditch in the Taiwan Strait was, for centuries, the most feared crossing in the diasporic imagination of Taiwanese and Fujianese communities: a corridor of drownings, disappearances, and forced departures, the passage through which colonial histories layered themselves one over another. It is also, today, one of the most geopolitically charged bodies of water on the planet, a flashpoint between two superpowers whose rivalry is partly fought over the island that sits at its edge. Bakshi does not separate these two timelines. Diasporic memory and current geopolitical tension run through the same water, and the work holds both without resolving the distance between them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The machine processes this without knowing it processes it. The semiconductors that power the AI systems Bakshi employs are manufactured in Taiwan, on the same island those waters surround. This is the specific structure of AI and colonialism that the work makes visible: not as argument or illustration, but as condition. The postcolonial is not a historical category here. It is the operating environment. The machine is built from the labor and geopolitical precarity of a territory that has spent centuries navigating between empires, and it runs without any re
77cord of that debt in its outputs. Bakshi does not explain this to the viewer. She builds it into the structure of the work and lets it move through the outputs like a current that has no name in the system's vocabulary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is a protopian system in the most rigorous sense: not optimistic, not catastrophist, but permanently evolving, absorbing its own contradictions, generating form from what it cannot account for. The work does not resolve. It continues.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"And it continues against a backdrop that makes its stakes impossible to ignore. Bakshi is half Taiwanese, and that biographical fact is not incidental to the work. It is the nerve through which everything runs.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The entity at the center of the piece, the one the viewer inhabits, wakes without memory and without classification. This is not an abstract philosophical conceit. It is the precise condition of a diasporic body that exists between two national imaginaries, claimed by neither in full, legible to both only partially. Growing up between cultures means learning early that identity is not a fixed coordinate but a negotiation, conducted differently depending on which side of the water you are standing on. Bakshi has built that negotiation into the architecture of the work itself. The procedurally generated world does not pre-exist the viewer's arrival. It assembles in response to presence, the way a diasporic self assembles in response to context, never quite the same twice, never quite stable.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"83d381ef-102a-49cb-8f34-0ca4616a3452",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:179578578993184,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/3dbd31e335/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_video_02_3840x2160_30fps.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"86e67300-739a-4d4a-9876-be122084835a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:179579024253026,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/3885877f44/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_video_04_3840x2160_30fps.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"263ff145-ac12-40a8-8a3d-9f0120e7ac5c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168321729154984,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/cc1386153e/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_still_05_3840x2160_300dpi.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5a102da3-07cb-400c-bfc9-21c941432a97",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168321728462757,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/282512b307/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_still_06_3840x2160_300dpi.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Courtesy of the Artist and EPOCH, Los Angeles From Between These Black Waters (2026), Interactive Film",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"eeef4390-f5a7-4d24-a5a8-828d6b8abda9",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The choice of the Taiwan Strait as the work's central geography is equally specific. For Bakshi, the Black Water Ditch is not a historical reference retrieved from research. It is a family passage, the water that ancestors crossed or did not cross, the threshold that separates those who arrived from those who were lost in transit. That weight is carried in the phrase itself, whispered into the AI as a summons rather than a query, as if the machine might hold what the archive cannot. It does not. But the attempt to make it hold is where the work lives.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Taiwan today is one of the most geopolitically pressurized territories on the planet, caught between the competing claims of two superpowers while simultaneously producing the chips that make both of their digital economies run. This is not a new condition. The island has spent centuries navigating between empires, absorbing colonial regimes that each left the
77ir own sediment in the culture, the language, the body. For Bakshi, this is not geopolitics observed from a distance. It is inherited. The Black Water Ditch was the passage through which that history moved, and drowned, and kept moving. Bakshi does not use Taiwan as backdrop or symbol. She uses it as substrate: the material the machine is made of, the ground the system stands on without knowing it stands on anything at all.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The entire film will be released as an Ethereum edition in May 2026, consistent with the logic of the piece itself: a work about the ownership of unclassifiable history, offered as a new kind of object, in a space that has not finished defining itself yet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EPOCH GALLERY (Online)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Until July 21, 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-21 00:00",name:"Bakshi Solo At EPOCH÷Between These Black Waters",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ef7ca4a6-e2b6-41e6-ae5d-61323317e7f1",color:"#676767",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"e288ddc4-0bf7-4f0c-b420-84e109544cd9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:168321728090019,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/a150b6d528/conniebakshi_x_epoch_btbw_still_04_3840x2160_300dpi.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"connie-bakshi-between-these-black-waters",full_slug:"directory/reviews/connie-bakshi-between-these-black-waters",sort_by_date:null,position:-1160,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"bdbe3d71-498d-45b1-bf8b-7b551ba767ce",first_published_at:"2026-04-21T07:37:02.006Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Spectrosynthesis Seoul: What the Framework Should Contain",created_at:"2026-04-17T16:31:41.604Z",published_at:"2026-04-17T20:56:54.439Z",updated_at:"2026-04-17T20:56:54.458Z",id:166927981006777,uuid:"41ed324a-c8d3-49a1-bee8-2fd0c776b197",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"5d336284-3df9-49f7-8000-847b39964c19",title:"Spectrosynthesis Seoul: What the Framework Should Contain",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:166929216107529,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1398x927/e76f6a8889/unnamed.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"queer art exhibition Seoul 2026, queer art Korea, LGBTQ art exhibition Asia, Spectrosynthesis Seoul, Art Sonje Center exhibition 2026, queer contemporary art Asia, LGBTQ+ art museum Korea, queer art biennial Asia 2026, Korean queer artists exhibition, Sunpride Foundation exhibition, queer art history Korea, siren eun young jung, Mark Bradford Seoul, Danh Vo exhibition 2026, Kang Seung Lee artist, queer art review 2026, best art exhibitions Seoul 2026, contemporary art Korea LGBTQ, queer exhibition review Asia",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Spectrosynthesis Seoul Review | Queer Art Exhibition Korea 2026 | Art Sonje Center"}],_uid:"fe42e26c-18c2-467e-ad33-668edcc4b44d",body:[{_uid:"615fad86-cd63-4923-bdb9-06b58ebaa84b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Seventy-four artists, four floors, Spectrosynthesis\" Seoul is the most ambitious and sumptous queer art exhibition ever staged in Korea, and its real argument is not about visibility. It is about dismantling the framework that made visibility necessary in the first place.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Spectrosynthesis\" Seoul is an exhibition designed to spotlight the work of LGBTQ+ artists and artists exploring queerness in their work, figures who have led the way in avant-garde artistic practice across boundaries of time, space, and institutions. In particular, it seeks to use the spatial setting of Seoul as a focal point in examining contemporary currents in queer art. The Spectrosynthesis exhibitions have been spearheaded by Sunpride Foundation, which was founded by Patrick Sun in 2014. Since 2017, these exhibitions have been co-organized with various art institutions in Asia. The prefix âspectro-â in âspectrosynthesisâ expresses the idea of light or a spectrum. It is used to refer to the practice of breaking complex light or sound signals down into wavelengths and frequencies to analyze their components or when separating light to display its wavelengths side by side. The word âspectrumâ refers to a phenomenon in which light breaks into a rainbow as it passes through a prism, while the word âsynthesisâ refers to the process of various thoughts, ideas, or objects being assembled in one place. Combining these two terms, the exhibition title expresses the aim of sharing artists and artworks that are as diverse as the color spectrum.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"35cd4f8c-3b5b-45d0-b54a-a7779f92df51",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166936204932236,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1740x1159/1f07250751/inhwan-oh-where-he-meets-in-seoul-detail-2020-powdered-incense-14-3-1-2-x-20-3-3-8-from-spectrosynthesis-seoul.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Inhwan Oh, \"Where He Meets in Seou\"l (detail), 2020, courtesy the artist and courtesy of art Sonje Center",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c5d53a0-eee9-4d17-b3dc-2b0b28549fda",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166983718510069,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5202x3468/0819d2f0f3/installation-view-of-spectrosynthesis-seoul-photo-by-seowon-nam-courtesy-of-art-sonje-center28.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of \"Spectrosynthesis\", Seoul, photo by Seowon Nam, courtesy of art Sonje Center, Seoul (Korea)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"13ce10d6-a1df-401d-8035-831b48f8c99b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a work on the second floor of Art Sonje Center that will not survive the exhibition. Inhwan Oh has written the names of Seoul's gay bars and clubs in powdered incense directly on the gallery floor. The incense was lit on March 20, the day the show opened, and it will continue to burn until June 28, the day it closes. By then, the names will be ash. It is a story about a community language made visible at the exact moment it is consumed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is Spectrosynthesis Seoul, the fourth edition of a series that has moved methodically across Asia since 2017, from Taipei to Bangkok to Hong Kong and now here, to a city that contains, within a few square kilometers, both one of the most vibrant queer nightlife cultures in the region and a military code that still criminalizes homosexuality. That tension is not the backdrop to this exhibition. It is its subject matter.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Seventy-four artists and collectives fill the entire Art Sonje Center building, including spaces that have never functioned as galleries: the lobby, the corridors, a basement machinery room, a dressing room behind the theater stage, the outdoor hanok garden. The curatorial decision to occupy these transitional zones is not a spatial gimmick. Queer life in Seoul has always operated in the margins, in the gaps between official designations, and the exhibition physically enacts that condition floor by floor.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The show is structured in two parts. \"The Two-Sided Seashell\" runs from the basement through the second floor and takes its title from a science-fiction story by Choyeop Kim about two personalities sharing a single body, each falling in love with the same person. The story's central tension, between conflict and symbiosis, between the self that society recognizes and the one it does not, runs through everything in this section. Tender: Invisibly Visible, Unlocatably Everywhere, on the third floor, was conceived by curator Yongwoo Lee around the specific geography of Seoul queer culture: the Jongno neighborhoods of Ikseon and Nakwon, Itae
77won, the Seoul Queer Film Festival that Art Sonje Center itself hosted in 1998. These are not abstract themes. They are addresses.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e006e3bb-32c4-46f9-8743-003d4fb024dd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166938876986599,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1012x1550/7ea7b48703/screenshot-2026-04-17-at-19-15-38.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sin Wai Kin's ESSENCE (2024), courtesy the artist and Art Sonje Center, Seoul",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1de93f48-8f4d-4ea5-95fa-fb3b405aa9e1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166937799664833,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/618x876/0b733aaf6f/swk_essence_6sheet_screen-rgb-web-618x876px.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sin Wai Kin's ESSENCE (2024), courtesy the artist and Art Sonje Center, Seoul",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4e86cac3-2b61-4a4f-a35d-7637467d1b3b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition begins before you enter. Sin Wai Kin's ESSENCE (2024) runs on an LED screen installed in place of the museum's main entrance, formatted as a luxury fragrance advertisement. A brand ambassador named Wai King rides a horse through a pastoral landscape and speaks about discovering true masculinity. The work is precise and cold: it takes the grammar of desire as it is packaged and sold and turns it inside out without raising its voice. On the rear exterior wall of the building, facing Gyeongbokgung Palace, a banner carries the slogan \"Your true self awaits.\" The palace receives millions of visitors a year. The banner is impossible to miss. Sin Wai Kin is working at the scale of the city.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Inside, the basement Art Hall is where the exhibition finds its most concentrated register. Young-jun Tak's \"Their Fear in Our Opening\" (2026) hangs at the entrance: two wooden sculptures showing the faces of two men carved onto the bodies of pollock, a fish traditionally believed to ward off evil. One face is Tak's own; the other is that of General Im Gyeong-eop, an ancestor from the artist's maternal line. The work folds shamanist belief, genealogy, and queer identity into a single object without resolving any of them into the others.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1a86cf22-523c-45b5-a7b9-f1ac3284ef24",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166939523499250,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/846x1110/291e7318bb/screenshot-2026-04-17-at-19-17-57.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Young-jun Tak,\"âTheir Fear in Our Opening\" (2026), courtesy of the artist and art Sonje Center, Seoul (Korea)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d5f5e27b-1a51-40db-9ad2-5086dadb650b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166939523486961,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/852x1094/b8c18c042d/screenshot-2026-04-17-at-19-17-50.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Young-jun Tak,\"âTheir Fear in Our Opening\" (2026), courtesy of the artist and art Sonje Center, Seoul (Korea)",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"5c605872-2dc0-4e8d-bce2-6ec309c68904",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166978674977860,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6308x4205/7095b920b8/installation-view-of-spectrosynthesis-seoul-photo-by-seowon-nam-courtesy-of-art-sonje-center4-1.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation View of \"Spectrosynthesis\", Seoul, photo by Seowon Nam, courtesy of art Sonje Center, Seoul (Korea)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7b96b6ca-8a3b-470f-966a-49233c6676ce",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In the same space, Derek Jarman's \"Landscape\" (1991) is shown alongside\" A Story of Shadow Gardener\" (2026) by Jaehun. After his HIV diagnosis, Jarman cultivated a garden in the barren soil near a nuclear power station in Dungeness. Jaehun, working in response to that legacy, has built a virtual garden from photographs, a book, and music. The garden in both cases is not a retreat. It is a form of insistence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The theater is used in full. Behind the seats, Cha YeonsÃ¥'s painting The little one, All (å
¨) (2025) shows a small pine tree that grew to block the entrance of her late father's house, deemed inauspicious by feng shui. The tree grew anyway. On either side of the stage, Leesop Cho's sculptures \"The Vows of Grey\" (2025-2026) and The Language of the Heart's Edge (2025) address the body and the institution of marriage with the same formal seriousness: glistening organs, grey fabric, the legal and the biological pressed against each other. Jo Hyunjin's Dream Sunbathing (2026) faces them: a sculpture built on the logic of a human barricade, bodies linked to resist pressure, visualizing those who are absent from official records by making their structure present.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Above the stage, three video works play simultaneously. Au Sow Yee's \"Shattered Night March of the Shimmering Raven\" (2025/2026) is built from childhood memories of a father's playlist and the sound of ravens, a species introduced to Malaysia during British colonial occupation. The birds are neither native nor foreign, neither settled nor passing through. Au Sow Yee does not explain this. The sound does the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"7c8ae7fa-2342-46a7-9832-a8fc01603b5a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On the second floor, the exhibition opens with siren eun young jung's Sick Seoul (2026), a four-channel video that follows queer citizens who participated in the street protests after the martial law declaration of December 2024. Jung has spent years researching yeoseong gukgeuk, traditional all-women Korean opera, and the political intelligence of that earlier work carries into this one: how a body in a crowd learns to move, how collective action is choreographed, how people who are institutionally invisible become, for a moment, impossible to ignore.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Facing jung's video at the second-floor entrance is Ayoung Kim's wallpaper Evening Peak Time Is Back (2022), which reimagines Seoul's urban landscape from a future vantage point. The two works together hold the city in two timeframes at once: the present of the protests and the future that those protests are trying to make possible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kang Seung Lee's Untitled (Harvey) (2025, ongoing) grows in a window: a cactus cultivated in reference to Harvey Milk, assassinated in 1978. Lee has been developing this project since 2023. It is quiet and it accumulates. Nearby, Danh Võ's new work Born out of a uterus I had nothing to do with (2026) places a fifteenth-century oil painting of the Madonna and Child inside a Rimowa suitcase, alongside a thirteen-star American flag from the Revolutionary War. The text on the suitcase is the title. Võ is very good at making objects carry more weight than they should be able to hold, and this work does not break under it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mark Bradford's Nadir (2026) was made on site at Art Sonje Center. Bradford builds his paintings in dense, abraded layers, and this one references both the peri
77od of Jim Crow laws after the American Civil War and the AIDS crisis of the late twentieth century. The title is exact: nadir means the lowest point. Bradford does not illustrate these histories. He buries them in the surface and makes you work to find them.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Grim Park's new series Amido (2026) uses collective images of LGBTQ+ people living in Seoul, including the artist, rendered in the visual vocabulary of traditional Buddhist painting. Each figure is distinct. They stand side by side. The work borrows the formal authority of a devotional tradition and redirects it entirely.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"80830e4f-3a8c-4c7e-a82d-5707dca2ef1f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166934640120941,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5918x3945/b280772b13/installation-view-of-spectrosynthesis-seoul-photo-by-seowon-nam-courtesy-of-art-sonje-center30.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation view of \"Spectrosynthesis\", Seoul, photo by Seowon Nam, courtesy of art Sonje Center, Seoul (Korea)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"38ab6600-9032-4a02-938c-4382a53711e5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166983011327428,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6063x3418/f6eb3c5326/installation-view-of-spectrosynthesis-seoul-photo-by-seowon-nam-courtesy-of-art-sonje-center27.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Installation View of \"Spectrosynthesis\", Seoul, photo by Seowon Nam, courtesy of art Sonje Center, Seoul (Korea)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"faadd723-a30b-4005-94c1-65dcc0b028bd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The third floor, Tender: Invisibly Visible, Unlocatably Everywhere, maps queer Seoul through memory and place. Ho Hur's I just can't say goodnight (2014-2026) series captures the fleeting intimacy of bodies meeting in cruising spots, painted with the attention usually reserved for more sanctioned forms of encounter. Lee Jungsik's \"The Book 2013-2017\" (2017) shows a figure tearing apart a paper body, rendering it unreadable, while the voice that narrated it continues. The book is destroyed. The life is not.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sejin Song's \"Passing Present and Preserving Past\" (2024) documents locations associated with the Sewol ferry disaster and the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush from a minority perspective. Both events are part of the same city, the same decade, the same accumulation of loss that this floor is trying to hold.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The density of the exhibition is real. Seventy-four artists across four floors demands time and sustained attention. Some works receive less space than they deserve. But the scale is also the argument. Patrick Sun began building the Sunpride Foundation collection in 1988, at a moment when institutional support for queer art in Asia was close to nonexistent. The collection now holds around 400 works by over 200 artists. Spectrosynthesis Seoul is not a survey. It is a reckoning with what that collecting has made possible, and with what Korean artists have been building, largely without institutional support, for decades.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Art Sonje Center has hosted the Seoul Queer Film Festival since 1998. It has shown LGBTQ+ artists in solo and group exhibitions for years. This exhibition is not a departure from that history. It is its fullest expression to date.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77indifference in the precise sense: a culture in which the sexual and gender identity of an artist is simply not the organizing principle of how their work is received, funded, or remembered.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This also means resisting the logic of the dedicated section. A queer wing, a queer room, a queer biennial: these are progress of a kind, but they can also function as a containment strategy, a way of acknowledging difference while keeping the main structure intact. The real reconfiguration is structural. It happens when queer practice is no longer housed in a separate category but absorbed into the framework itself, when the framework has been rebuilt around a broader understanding of what bodies, identities, and desires exist and have always existed. Spectrosynthesis Seoul is not the end of that process. It is the kind of institutional pressure that makes the process irreversible. The framework that replaces heteronormativity will not be a neutral one. It will be a framework of diversity, built from the ground up, in which difference is not accommodated but constitutive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Spectrosynthesis\", Seoul runs until June 28.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-17 00:00",name:"Spectrosynthesis÷What the Framework Should Contain",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt and Myron Kim",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"066f2aae-535d-4090-9bb3-671ac2d7ddf1",color:"#c79cb5",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"9b83285e-ddc7-40ec-bea4-e88b41b10b7f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:166929216107529,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1398x927/e76f6a8889/unnamed.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Exhibition Poster",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"spectrosynthesis-seoul-what-the-framework-should-contain",full_slug:"directory/reviews/spectrosynthesis-seoul-what-the-framework-should-contain",sort_by_date:null,position:-1150,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"d217d40e-5e90-4287-a746-da0bda533b9a",first_published_at:"2026-04-17T20:31:18.656Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"CHRIS DORLAND",created_at:"2026-04-13T13:40:55.820Z",published_at:"2026-04-13T14:48:15.530Z",updated_at:"2026-04-13T14:48:15.550Z",id:165470436680294,uuid:"a74ba8d3-36eb-470a-8514-b5bb83a61fb7",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f78420b9-5100-4f12-953e-3cf08b210755",title:"Chris Dorland Latent Stack",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:165471112793424,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1125/8a4701ccb6/lyles_and_king_7741.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Chris Dorland Latent Stack",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Chris Dorland Latent Stack"}],_uid:"3160d6f4-1c3d-49b2-928a-92e09185275a",body:[{_uid:"7b4b2116-25e1-4b86-a4ba-ec1feba124f7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"New York galleries have always had a weakness for painting. Dorland knows this, and uses it against you.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"With",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:" \"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Latent Stack\", he sidesteps the trap the medium has always carried, the decorative, and delivers one of the most sumptuous and intellectually rigorous shows of the season. Few exhibitions this year will leave you thinking about the floor. The Protopian Latent Space",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In machine learning systems, images do not simply appear. They pass through successive layers of operations that compress, transform and restructure visual data before anything becomes visible. These hidden layers, known as latent representations, are not images themselves. They are the structural conditions from which images emerge: a space of compressed potential, active but not yet resolved. The title of Chris Dorland's fourth solo exhibition at Lyles & King takes its name from this process.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But the exhibition is not about that process. It is about something far more immediate: the fact that we already live inside it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Not a White Cube. A Latent Field.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The first thing you notice is the floor. A chrome vinyl surface covers the entire gallery, turning the ground beneath your feet into a continuous mirror. The paintings above, large, dense, seething with cyan, magenta and silver, are doubled downward into the space you occupy. You are no longer a viewer positioned at a safe remove. You are inside the system.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The gallery ceases to be a neutral container and becomes an active environment. The white cube dissolves. What replaces it is precisely that latent field: a space where data and matter coexist without hierarchy, where the boundary between the stored and the physical is simply not enforced. The space is immersive not because it over
77whelms you with spectacle, but because it removes the option of standing outside it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"050de700-92ed-4acd-a68e-353abdb97d74",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165473957068580,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1124/d1609f8eee/lyles_and_king_7720.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chris Dorland \"Latent Stack\", intsall shots, Courtesy Lyles and King Gallery and the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b1ff99eb-a5bc-46d3-a7c1-ef2dfbd2ca90",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165471112793424,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1125/8a4701ccb6/lyles_and_king_7741.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chris Dorland \"Latent Stack\", intsall shots, Courtesy Lyles and King Gallery and the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bd55631f-70b2-4511-b7b1-87be2fc3785a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Paint as Data, Data as Sediment",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not an exhibition about technology, and still less about the digital. To frame it that way is to misread it entirely. The layered computational process is the starting point, not the subject. Dorland works in cyan, magenta and silver, the chromatic vocabulary of digital color separation and compression artifacts, but these are paintings, built through physical accumulation. Pigment is pooled, dragged, abraded, fractured. Each canvas carries the record of its own construction, layer pressing against layer, earlier operations exerting pressure on later ones without ever fully surfacing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The result is a signal that has passed through too many compressions and emerged denser, not degraded. Horizontal and vertical striations run across the surfaces like scan lines. Zones of interference open and close. The paint does not illustrate a glitch. It is the glitch, materialized, given weight and duration. Latent here is not a metaphor but a structural condition: something processed, compressed, stored, and still exerting force. The technical process has become matter. The matter has become us.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8a6348fe-998e-493e-af31-b45cb8735c9d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165474559938373,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1125/d8be143f6e/lyles_and_king_7719.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chris Dorland \"Latent Stack\", intsall shots, Courtesy Lyles and King Gallery and the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9c552fb2-e729-4ee6-9979-8ac9803e4b85",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165474560204618,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1124/5a3b4b3171/lyles_and_king_7721.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chris Dorland \"Latent Stack\", intsall shots, Courtesy Lyles and King Gallery and the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c578a1dd-c4f4-4ffd-baca-1b9ccee877cb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Mirror Does Not Reflect. It Continues.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The chrome floor is the conceptual spine of the exhibition. When you look down, the paintings extend below the surface of the ground, not as copies but as continuations. The data stack does not stop at the canvas edge. It keeps going, through the floor, through you.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the argument Latent Stack makes about where we actually live: not in a divided space where the digital and physical coexist as two distinct registers, but in a continuous, entangled field where the evolution of data and the evolution of matter are the same process, bleeding into each other at every surface. We are not observers of this system. We are part of its latency. You step into the mirror. Your reflection joins the signal. Dorland has built a room that makes that fact impossible to ignore.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Each Canvas a Node. Together, a System.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The paintings do not tell a story. They do not build toward a climax or resolve into a conclusion. Moving through the gallery, you feel the works operating laterally, as a collective, a distributed system rather than a sequence. Recurring structures appear across canvases: dense striations, bands of pressure, zones where the surface seems to buckle under the weight of what it holds.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is redundancy in the engineering sense, the same structural logic instantiated across multiple nodes to ensure the system holds. Each canvas is a discrete operation; together they describe something that exceeds any single work. Meaning is not located in one place but distributed across the whole.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Floor is the Argument",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Latent Stack is a protopian exhibition. Not utopian, not dystopian. It does not mourn the loss of some pre-digital purity, nor does it celebrate the arrival of a frictionless technological future. It simply takes stock of where we are: inside a hybrid ecosystem that is still forming, still compressing, still exerting pressure on every surface it touches. The paintings do not warn. They do not promise. They record, accumulate, and hold.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a tendency in contemporary art to treat the relationship between data and matter as a theme, something to be illustrated, referenced, made visible through representation. Dorland takes a different position. The chrome floor, the accumulated paint, the latent imagery drawn from AI diffusion cycles: none of this is illustration. It is construction. The exhibition builds the condition it describes.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is what makes the protopian register so precise here. We are not heading toward this hybrid world. We are already in it, already part of its latency, already reflected in its floor. The work does not ask whether that is good or bad. It asks you to feel the ground shift beneath your feet, and to notice that you are still standing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Latent Stack runs through May 9. It is worth the trip to Henry Street not because it is spectacular, though it is, but because it shifts the coordinates. You leave with a different sense of where the floor is.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3045c59a-d02a-4c10-8612-b60fc0ac5e21",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Chris Dorland \"Latent Stack\" at Lyles & King, New York, (USA) until 9th May 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-12 00:00",name:"The Protopian Latent Space÷Chris Dorland \"Latent Stack\"",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"8359317a-9084-4921-b0c8-c2885c707823",color:"#474556",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d40df60f-c4dd-47d9-90d1-51309a3bde06",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:165474559938373,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1500x1125/d8be143f6e/lyles_and_king_7719.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chris Dorland \"Latent Stack\", intsall shots, Courtesy Lyles and King Gallery and the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"chris-dorland",full_slug:"directory/reviews/chris-dorland",sort_by_date:null,position:-1140,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"b1e49171-7e8e-4d27-80e1-97e16b1ef3d3",first_published_at:"2026-04-13T14:02:33.258Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"EARTHSEED",created_at:"2026-04-10T01:31:51.902Z",published_at:"2026-04-10T08:54:15.206Z",updated_at:"2026-04-10T08:54:15.222Z",id:164229578394793,uuid:"f135c5b5-3eba-41e4-9688-6c6a55eed940",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"1322963b-eb18-4e44-bae7-271bf24f9610",title:"EARTHSEED ICA SF",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:164327373388536,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1013/baf74d0d03/sfaw-2026-ica-earth-dome.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome, Earthseed Dome San Francisco, 3D printed sculpture, living architecture, ecological art, bioart, land art San Francisco, native wildflowers California, rewilding urban, contemporary art San Francisco 2026, WASP 3D printing art, site-specific installation, soil sculpture, participatory art, ecological installation, seed dispersal art, Transamerica Redwood Park, art and ecology, post-digital nature, REVIEW , ART MAGAZINE REFRESH, philippe Riss-schlidt , Further triennal",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Lily Kwong's Earthseed Dome is a 3D-printed living sculpture in San Francisco, seeded with native wildflowers and designed to bloom, scatter and rewild the city."}],_uid:"e2794824-6be8-48b3-8d33-8505c9da287c",body:[{_uid:"1a898838-6fc3-4f29-b373-c7c869d5146c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"EARTHSEED DOME: Lily Kwong's Living Architecture and Ecological Agency",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Built to Bloom: Lily Kwong's ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Earthseed Dome",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]},{text:" is a 3D-printed living structure embedded with native wildflowers, designed to bloom, scatter and slowly rewild the heart of San Francisco.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An extruded earthen structure operates as a biological interface, engineered to mutate and actively disperse its own ecology through the urban grid.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beneath the canopy of Transamerica Redwood Park (San Francisco, USA), \"EARTHSEED DOME\" by Lily Kwong functions as a structural intervention. It operates not as a static object of contemplation but as a biological interface. The architecture intercepts the friction between digital precision and organic unpredictability, asserting itself as an active agent within the urban core.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Constructed via a robotic arm , the dome is an extrusion of raw soil and dormant seeds. The fabrication process occurred in full public view, reframing construction as a durational performance. Once the mechanical deposition concluded, Kwong intervened manually, pressing additional seeded matter into the architectural strata. This hybrid methodology forces a confrontation between digital fabrication and tactile, vernacular building logic. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The resulting architecture oscillates between a pristine technological output and a raw, geological formation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77ntric viewpoint. EARTHSEED DOME demands participation over observation. It requires the viewer to engage with its biological mechanics, ensuring the work continues to proliferate and mutate long after the physical structure has dissolved.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"65db11b6-f808-4212-86b3-5a89f65bf339",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164333392325783,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1164x1518/2e9a9aab73/screenshot-2026-04-10-at-03-33-53.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome ( Phase2), courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1c3d445a-b9f7-4530-8353-5e190e1c720d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164333434428574,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1096x1540/0b27366de0/screenshot-2026-04-10-at-03-40-24.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome ( Phase2), courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"18350de7-150c-4fd2-8bcd-99c4f56e5a14",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164333516627107,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x1600/104f324517/unnamed.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lily Kwong, Earthseed Dome, courtesy the artist and ICA San Francisco",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"05fbf86d-a256-4309-85f9-bb54788ae353",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lily Kwong, \"Earthseed Dome\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"ICA SF, Transamerica Redwood Park, San Francisco (USA) - Until 31/07/26",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-10 00:00",name:"Rooted in Flux÷Lily Kwong's Earthseed Dome",author:"Philippe de Manus",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"cd45b934-80b6-4d3a-b9fb-bacfc1550908",color:"#3e4e40",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"003b84ef-d48b-4588-abe7-41231f97dc31",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:164327373388536,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1800x1013/baf74d0d03/sfaw-2026-ica-earth-dome.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"rendering, courtesy the artist and ICA SF",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"earthseed",full_slug:"directory/reviews/earthseed",sort_by_date:null,position:-1130,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"4a983dd8-0cbc-4c01-bf38-e080efded112",first_published_at:"2026-04-10T08:33:13.130Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Trevor Yeung at CAPC: The Ecology of the Hybrid",created_at:"2026-04-03T16:42:40.664Z",published_at:"2026-04-07T12:03:33.929Z",updated_at:"2026-04-07T12:03:33.943Z",id:161976158918696,uuid:"6f91abd3-7d85-4cd2-bf6d-3deb546ba1ed",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"e1b7295b-c03f-470b-8a9b-c2bd874a1adc",title:"Trevor Yeung in refresh magazine",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:163316348440864,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/e2b67b5ebe/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4575.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Trevor Yeung, Jardin des neuf soleils, CAPC Bordeaux, contemporary art Bordeaux, post-anthropoce
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A post-anthropocentric, post-digital habitat where humans, machines, and myths co-evolve. On view until 20 September 2026."}],_uid:"5cbbfda0-b6eb-4407-95e2-8a55fbf5ae71",body:[{_uid:"01e7e697-40ff-46f6-9482-c804289e2f04",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:" âGarden of the Nine Suns\"",type:"text"}]},{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Trevor Yeung at CAPC (Bordeaux) : We Are the Garden",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The cavernous nave of the CAPC in Bordeaux has been plunged into an unyielding, fluorescent green. With this new solo show, Trevor Yeung constructs a speculative habitat that refuses the traditional boundaries. Instead, the space operates as a closed-loop terrarium, a site where biological rhythms, industrial infrastructure, and human rituals are fused into a single, inescapable system.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yeung immediately implicates the viewer in this post-anthropocentric logic. We do not observe the garden; we are absorbed by it. The intense chromatic wash filling the former colonial warehouse is not a lighting effect but a functional apparatus. It is derived from the specific spectrum used in archival preservation to attract and neutralize pests. By flooding the entire room with this frequency, Yeung effectively scales up a trap, casting the human visitor as the target organism. The museumâs architecture becomes an active, predatory environment, demonstrating how mechanisms of care and control often share the same circuitry.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"215cc030-2521-4411-ac4d-3906f8782d5d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418876403,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1372x1920/595e0b7001/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf2956.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"874d85ac-4002-40f0-ac16-7a0dd8448f02",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418876403,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1372x1920/595e0b7001/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf2956.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e1fafb72-6151-44b8-96e3-b02a3149bc41",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:163319418855922,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1371/5e3da3e4f7/capc_trevor_yeung_032026_photo_arthur_pequin_dsf4558-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shots, Trevor Yeung, CAPC Bordeaux (Europaan Union), courtesy Galerie Allen, photo by Arthur Pequin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e449ecca-fb77-43f0-ba64-450f9670124b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This friction drives the exhibitionâs distinctly post-digital intelligence. At the core of the nave, a massive, double-tiered metal framework interrupts the space. It is a blunt, utilitarian object, yet Yeung repurposes it as a framework for collective action. Visitors are invited to attach strips of colored fabric to the structure, turning a piece of industrial hardware into a conduit for personal desires.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The gesture carries a cynical weight. It suggests that our abstract hopes and rituals are not immaterial; they possess a physical density that burdens the ecosystems we inhabit. The installation implies that human emotional output is as tangibleâand potentially as corrosiveâas any chemical pollutant. We are locked in a feedback loop where our desires physically alter our environment, and that altered environment, in turn, dictates our survival.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beneath this towering metal structure, the ground itself has been destabilized. The floor is coated
77in a dark, glitter-infused substance, creating a surface that feels simultaneously like a deep cosmos and a toxic spill. Suspended above this disorienting terrain are nine distinct, illuminated sculptures. Forged from tangled wires, exposed metal, and an array of mismatched bulbs, these objects emit a strained, erratic energy. They are failing machines, requiring constant electrical feed to maintain their glow.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By gathering these exhausted, overpowered entities into a designated \"garden,\" Yeung proposes a radical form of ecological stewardship. It is a proposition that accepts the synthetic, the broken, and the technological as permanent fixtures of our current nature.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is an abrasive proposition. It dismantles the comforting fiction that humans exist outside the natural order or above the machines we build. Instead, Yeung engineers a space where folklore, power grids, and biological bodies are forced into a continuous, uneasy co-evolution. 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77ism art, hybrid world, post-digital art, conceptual digital art, immersive art exhibition, Kardashev scale art, Type V Civilization, megacity art, cosmic art, speculative futures, digital simulation art, algorithmic art, AI and human imagination, post-AI art, human vs AI creativity, 3D digital art, new media art Beijing, X Virtual programme, Miao Xinrong, Lü Donghui, digital painting, oil technique digital art, transhumanist art, civilization art, space exploration art, aerospace art, near-future urbanism, multiversal art, portal art, immersive installation, light and shadow installation, energy-level transition, art and technology, art and futurity, contemporary art China 2026, Beijing art exhibition 2026, Refresh Magazine, art criticism, Guardian art review, sci-fi contemporary art, digital conceptual design, cosmic infrastructure art, geometric abstraction digital, art and imagination,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Rui Huang's The Scale of Civilization at X Museum Beijing: 40 digital works mapping humanity's hybrid future across five immersive zones. On view until 5 May 2026."}],_uid:"c83b3b35-fa78-4e83-9d8e-5f9592f0a1eb",body:[{_uid:"be4388ad-a393-4e97-a26d-6055cfb35f6b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Beam me up, Scotty?¹ Rui Huang: \"The Scale of Civilization\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The digital artist and conceptual designer, Rui Huang opens portals onto a hybrid world where human imagination resists algorithmic flattening. \"The Scale of Civilization â brings together 40 digital works mapping humanity's future across five immersive zones.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The physical architecture of X Museum's first floor dissolves almost immediately upon entry, functioning less as a traditional gallery and more as a transporter room². What takes its place is not a room of images but a cosmological infrastructure: a sequence of thresholds pulling the visitor across scales no single body was built to comprehend. Rui Huang's \"The Scale of Civilization\" operates less as an exhibition than a passage: a series of portals into a world that is already hybrid, already ruptured, whether we have caught up with that fact or not.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Because it bypasses the expected codes of contemporary art, a lazy critique might be tempted to write this off as sci-fi entertainment. That would be a total misjudgment. This is a conceptually rigorous, forward-thinking exhibition that actively disrupts our vision of the world, which is, after all, exactly what a work of art is supposed to do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8f3eb2b4-a084-46b0-994b-0d1080be45e2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160557843832773,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/b1aa05b018/9yue12ri.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rui Huang, Heaven, 2025, Digital Video, 1:1, Color & Sound, 52â, Courtesy the Artist, X Museum Collection",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1fba7acf-0c65-46af-bfa3-95d7a1007fbf",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is structured as a continuous loop of energy-level transitions, mapped across five distinct thematic zones that boldly go³ beyond conventional spatial limits. It begins by applying a stress test to the boundary between natural sensory perception and digital simulation, the point at which the eye begins to lose its footing. The second area shifts into a white paper narrative honoring aerospace engineering, anchoring speculative concepts in the hard mechanics of deep-space ambition. From there, the installation moves into a sustained deconstruction of near-future urban orders, presenting megacity grids rendered at a scale that makes individual human presence simultaneously essential and negligible. The trajectory pushes further outward toward the final frontierâ´ in the fourth zone, engaging in cosmic extrapolations based on the Kardashev scale to visualize energy consumption across deep time, with immersive dark rooms and translucent portals simulating multiversal dimensions. It is here that \"Type V Civilization\" (2025) stakes its most radical claim. At this level of advancement, the recognisable dissolves: architectural forms shed their function and collapse into rotating geometries, cubes and spheres stripped of context, adrift in fields of light that carry no fixed reference point. Civilisation is no longer depicted;
77 it is inferred. The cosmic infrastructure has absorbed everything else, and the human trace persists only as a faint residue within an order too vast to be named. Finally, the circuit resolves in a laboratory-like hall dedicated to creation and experimentation, offering an in-depth investigation into how artistic expression and media will evolve next.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"353bef8c-7b32-4796-b87d-f0721696259c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160560463507449,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8192x5464/a5cc3b1d0f/0z4a0119.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rui Huang, On the Run, 2025, Digital Video, 3.7:3, Color & Sound, 01â27â, Courtesy the Artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"295142ad-3e1b-4830-8079-2e232303ce62",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160562608709644,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8192x5464/80737897b5/the-scale-of-civilization-install-shots-courtesy-the-x-museum.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"The Scale of Civilization\", Install shots courtesy the X museum",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6eab56e6-70f6-45cd-ab05-f97adc591f44",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curators Miao Xinrong and Lü Donghui have positioned the show as the annual flagship of X Museum's X Virtual programme, an institution that consistently insists on the physical gallery as the necessary counterpart to immaterial work. That insistence matters. The newness of Huang's digital realm only becomes fully legible when thrown against the blunt materiality of the museum's walls. By meticulously directing light and reconfiguring the space into something akin to a vast holodeckâµ, their pieces engage directly with the physical architecture, forcing a stark encounter between rigid algorithmic parameters and the tangible reality of the building's structure. Much of the work's materiality is present in immaterial form, a paradox the gallery holds open rather than attempting to resolve.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is precisely where Huang's practice diverges from the broader current of post-AI image production. Generative tools have introduced a new condition into creative work: the author's grip on the output loosens, the feedback loop between intention and result becomes probabilistic, and cultural meaning fractures under the pressure of algorithmic averaging. The result, too often, is a flattening: images that gesture toward imagination while systematically foreclosing it, compressing the possible into the statistically plausible. Huang works against that tendency with deliberate force, treating human intentionality almost as a prime directiveâ¶. Rooted in classical oil technique and translated into three-dimensional digital media, their practice retains a structural consistency that no generative process can replicate. The body-environment relationship is entirely redefined in these works: information is no longer tethered to a physical carrier, yet the human capacity to construct complex, intentional worlds remains the engine. Futurity, here, is not a default output. It is something imagined, with all the resistance and specificity that the word implies.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"81e347e0-5669-4662-bafe-a4a57fbf4d97",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160594634597244,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5633x3754/7223fae44f/x.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"The Scale of Civilization\", Install shots courtesy the X museum",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"11eb9527-174e-4ff4-bae1-f069d3a6b54e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160594633798521,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8192x5464/886f34c944/0z4a0320.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"The Scale of Civilization\", Install shots courtesy the X museum",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c99e29d1-7895-452c-aa10-b5b5efa08de0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160594634060666,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8192x5464/d56f2e8151/0z4a0155.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"The Scale of Civilization\", Install shots courtesy the X museum",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fecac1a7-f267-48e2-aa69-e86254cd1ff4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160594633634680,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8192x5464/6bc581d98f/0z4a0299.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"The Scale of Civilization\", Install shots courtesy the X museum",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7e141182-c212-4d64-a545-78562c141f8b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Chief Curator: Stella Miao, Co-Curator: Ian Donghui Lyu",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"X Museum Beijing (China) - Until 5th May 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"STARTREK GLOSSARY :",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"¹ \"Beam me up, Scotty\" is the unofficial catchphrase associated with Star Trek (NBC, 1966â1969), created by Gene Roddenberry. The phrase never appears verbatim in the original series.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"² The transporter is the dematerialisation and reassembly device aboard the starship Enterprise, used to beam crew members from one location to another.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"³ \"To boldly go where no man has gone before\" â the opening monologue of Star Trek: The Original Series*, spoken by Captain James T. Kirk.*",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"â´ \"Space, the final frontier\" â the first words of the same opening monologue, establishing the series' central premise of deep-space exploration.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âµ The holodeck is the immersive, full-sensory simulation room aboard the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation (NBC, 1987â1994), capable of generating any environment indistinguishable from physical reality.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"â¶ The Prime Directive (Starfleet General Order 1) is the foundational non-interference principle governing all Starfleet operations: crews must not interfere with the internal development of alien civilisations.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-30 00:00",name:"Beam me up, Scotty?÷ Rui Huang: \"The Scale of Civilization\"",author:"Refresh Team (Asia)",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"3d0fc13b-d85d-4b77-86bd-8e31ffb59cf3",color:"#0a3174",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"f3bc7642-c9e1-4775-89c2-c3b904b71af5",poster:{i
77d:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160549067873912,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x818/ecbf1f87ff/2022-by-rui-huang.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rui Huang,éæå«æå (2022), courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"beam-me-up-scotty-rui-huang-the-scale-of-civilization",full_slug:"directory/reviews/beam-me-up-scotty-rui-huang-the-scale-of-civilization",sort_by_date:null,position:-1110,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"a0bd34bd-0564-47f0-b6be-ec11bbc6bd9d",first_published_at:"2026-03-30T15:59:25.301Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Of Thread and Stone",created_at:"2026-03-29T13:28:42.831Z",published_at:"2026-04-15T10:17:31.925Z",updated_at:"2026-04-15T10:17:31.941Z",id:160159018347237,uuid:"06919728-4a25-4d67-b425-b83771d9fa30",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"9341f029-9ff3-4917-a546-bf6fffd4b065",title:"\"OF THREAD AND STONE\", New Taipei City Art Museum",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:160161743332870,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/da3eb2b522/kao-ya-ting-vessel-of-dream-2026-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-hsuan-lang-lin.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"contemporary art, New Taipei City Art Museum, Of Thread and Stone, material culture, colonial history, labour, memory, textile art, Forensic Architecture, Slavs and Tatars",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Twelve artists, two materials, one city's industrial past â \"Of Thread and Stone\" at NTCAM weaves labour, memory and resistance into a show of rare conceptual force."}],_uid:"bf2029d7-1a2b-468d-8816-e19d9e99d89b",body:[{_uid:"bb1089fa-3a44-4a90-8ed9-b32140f0a003",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Twelve artists, two materials, one city's industrial past \"Of Thread and Stone\" at NTCAM weaves labour, memory and resistance into a show of a sumptuous conceptual force.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Threads and stones are among the most common things in the world, and that is precisely where \"Of Thread and Stone\" begins. Curators Tsou Ting and Wang Han-fang have gathered fibres, stones, and fragments from across geographies and centuries, building an exhibition where labour leaves marks on culture, objects carry histories inside them, and the industrial past of New Taipei City opens onto questions about migration, memory, and resistance.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the New Taipei City Art Museum, a strand of colored thread and a fragment of stone set the whole thing in motion, the smallest material clues carry the weight: traces of colonial industry, the residue of labor, the texture of local experience compressed into objects that have survived longer than the systems that produced them.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"178a507f-d5a3-42d5-95ef-be509a0bf67a",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Walking through the three galleries of the museum, the first thing that registers is not a wall text but the presence of things. Chiu Chen-hung's \"Around Us\" sets the tone immediately: two abandoned marble mining trolleys from a Hualien quarry, recovered in 2012, now hang suspended in midair, their surfaces entirely covered in gold leaf. Behind them, the white wall disappears under slope stabilization netting, the kind used to hold back crumbling mountainsides. The effect is both spectacular and unsettling. The artist once described the gilded trolleys as glimmering spiders frozen in their tracks, caught between light and shadow. That image stays with you. These are objects that have been rescued from oblivion, adorned, and made to glow, yet they remain unmistakably instruments of extraction.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"c7b63058-a79c-4b29-a244-53ea9c1fd2c4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161855788986552,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/cc2285d6df/chiu-chen-hung-around-us-2025-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-studio-millspace.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Around Us, Chiu Chen-hung , 2025. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo: Studio Millspace",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"26dda6f8-96a5-42a9-b4f7-b5f19bbb4b9b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That tension between beauty and weight runs through the entire show. Rayyane Tabet's \"Genealogy\" presents fragments of a single goat hair rug, originally gifted by the Bedouins of Tell Halaf in Syria to the artist's great-grandfather in 1929. The rug has since been divided across five generations according to the great-grandfather's dying wish, each generation cutting it further until it eventually disappears. The pieces on view were borrowed from relatives; those that could not be loaned were replicated in linen. The work is formally elegant, stretched across the wall like a genealogical tree, and conceptually precise in the way it uses material diminishment to think about inheritance, displacement, and the slow dissolution of cultural memory.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nearby, Tabet's second work, \"Orthostates,\" continues the same logic. During an excavation in Tell Halaf in 1911, a sequence of 194 carved stone slabs was unearthed along the back wall of a palace, alternating black basalt and red-painted limestone. A century later, the slabs are scattered across the Louvre, the Pergamon Museum, the Metropolitan, and the Walters Art Museum. Tabet has been making charcoal rubbings of each one, traveling between institutions to reassemble what colonial archaeology dispersed. The list of all 194 slabs, with their current locations and depicted motifs, is displayed above the framed rubbings. It reads less like a catalogue than an indictment.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"fab72855-732c-4ce2-8b79-af60ea6f8cd8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161858973806891,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5843x3895/344ae10d7a/rayyane-tabet-orthostates-2017-ongoing-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-hsuan-lang-lin-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Orthostates, Rayyane Tabet, 2017-ongoing. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo: Hsuan Lang Lin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8f70c692-1048-4e8e-a0bf-002032883810",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Forensic Architecture contributes two works. \"Living Archaeology in Gaza\" documents the systematic destruction of one of Palestine's most significant archaeological sites along the Gaza coastline, monitoring in real time the three phases of demolition that followed the 2023 Israeli invasion: airstrikes, surface-level clearing, and the installation of water pumps to flood underground tunnels. The second work, \"The Ali Enterprises Factory Fire,\" reconstructs the conditions that led to the deaths of 259 garment workers in Karachi in September 2012, when a fire broke out in a textile factory supplying a major German clothing retailer. Locked doors, barred windows, inadequate fire safety: the investigation, conducted with fire and evacuation simulation specialists, reveals how the structural logic of cheap textile production made the disaster not only possible but predictable. Together, the two works demonstrate how Forensic Architecture operates, using spatial analysis as a form of testimony where other forms of accountability have failed.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"ce806e5d-03c5-4485-879e-b3a5a5d1895e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161860374020419,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1176x831/b873e491c6/01.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Archaeology in Gaza, Forensic Architecture. Hellenistic Emporium. Image: Ãcole Biblique, Mission Archéologique de Gaza: Coopération Franco-Palestinienne 1995-2005, p. 182-183",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"be8eff3c-ab1f-4ca1-8fcd-83ede482dae0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161860767859031,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1600x900/bde1d43179/02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Archaeology in Gaza, Forensic Architecture. The layers of the site, ancient past to present. A mosque and public sports facilities, built above the site, can be seen on the right. Image: Forensic Architecture, 2022",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5718d63b-b9b4-4487-bd50-02cdfca9eef0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161861592330595,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4616x3462/bc98ec852e/04.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Ali Enterprises Factory Fire, Forensic Architecture, 2018.. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo: Studio Millspace",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d7cd34ad-2d66-4745-937f-c778395e71f1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161861732188524,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4592x3444/5b0f19b2e9/05.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Ali Enterprises Factory Fire Archive Table, Forensic Architecture. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo: Studio Millspace",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d9754e85-056c-4ac3-9ad1-0ee8a8c26ef1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jiandyin's two-part multimedia installation, \"Magic Mountain: The Ontology of Blue\" and \"Magic Mountain: The Lost of Golden Pumpkin,\" extends that inquiry into the chemistry of color itself. Working with local residents in a gold mining area of Northern Thailand run by transnational corporations, the Bangkok-based duo investigated the environmental and health consequences of cyanide use in ore processing â blood tests revealed that some residents had cyanide levels above safety limits. From there, jiandyin traces cyanide's historical connection to the color blue: the substance originates in European chemists' attempts to synthesize Prussian blue, while indigo and ultramarine, other shades of the same spectrum, were built on colonial agriculture and mineral extraction. The color blue, seemingly exuberant and formidable, is born from the overconsumption of land, nature, and human labor, what the artists call, after Donna Haraway, the Capitalocene. The installation navigates between documentary and the speculative, between the gold mine in Northern Thailand and the abandoned gold mining town of Jinguashi in New Taipei City, weaving testimony and visual poetry into a single, unsettling field.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"742e0821-6ef6-44f6-ae84-07af8e5891ea",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161902395959383,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/a9fff252a4/jiandyin-magic-mountain-the-lost-of-golden-pumpkin-2025-2026-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-hsuan-lang-lin-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Magic Mountain: The Ontology of Blue\" and Magic Mountain: The Lost of Golden Pumpkin, Jiandyin, 2025-2026. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo: Hsuan Lang Lin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"81241f11-12c6-41c1-a759-0b0a4c920f41",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is equally attentive to the quieter registers of craft and transmission. Kieren Karritpul's three paintings â \"Five Fish Traps,\" \"Big Dilly Bag,\" and \"Yerrkerre Syew\" â pay homage to a weaving tradition the artist cannot practice directly. In the Ngen'gi wumirri community along Australia's Daly River, weaving belongs exclusively to women. Karritpul, who grew up watching female elders work with merrepen and pandanus leaves, translates the texture, tension, and rhythm of that practice into painting, working on the floor so that, as his uncle once told him, the ancestors can watch from above and guide the hand. The canvases are absorbing: the ochre palette of \"Five Fish Traps\" evokes both the river and a time already gone; the layered brushwork of \"Big Dilly Bag\" follows the logic of a woven structure rather than a painted one.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cheong Seemin's \"A Lost Textile: Ong Lai Si (Pineapple Fiber)\" traces a forgotten chapter of Taiwanese colonial industry. In the early twentieth century, pineapple fiber became a substitute textile material, produced and exported on a large scale before being displaced by cotton imports and largely erased from local memory. The work, part of a long-term research project initiated in 2020, weaves together archival photographs, documents, and local accounts into fabric panels where colonial-era travelers and field laborers appear side by side, and folk beliefs sit alongside cash crops. The pineapple, that most tropical of symbols, becomes a vehicle for a history of labor that was never considered worth preserving.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"99e83edb-24f2-477c-ad67-fc4b31e1334f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161862235193715,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/1fb0184cb8/kieren-karritpul-five-fish-traps-big-dilly-bag-and-yerrkerre-syew-2025-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-hsuan-lang-lin.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Five Fish Traps, Big Dilly Bag and Yerrkerre Syew, Kieren Karritpul, 2025. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo: Hsuan Lang Lin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3d3bb9d1-2025-4e82-b329-91dd898af329",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161863821844903,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/16a527b270/cheong-see-min-a-lost-textile-ong-lai-si-pineapple-fiber-2025-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-hsuan-lang-lin.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"A Lost Textile: Ong Lai Si (Pineapple Fiber), Cheong See-min, 2025. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo: Hsuan Lang Lin",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a528947e-0abb-4958-9f4d-04b836d2a69c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Huang",type:"text"},{text:"Po-chih'",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"s three-part video installation \"Seven People Crossing the Sea\" follows Ho Ying, a stallholder at Hong Kong's Pang Jai fabric market who led an anti-eviction movement after the government moved to demolish the market. An undocumented immigrant from China who had crossed the sea illegally in 1980 in pursuit of the Hong Kong Dream, Ho Ying's story unfolds across three films: one documenting the clearance of his stall after repeated petitions went unanswered, one reenacting the dangerous sea crossing through semi-improvised performance, and one recounting a lucid daydream he had during that crossing. The trilogy is patient and precise, and it locates the story of a single fabric market within the longer arc of industrial decline, urban displacement, and the particular melancholy of lives built around materials that the city no longer wants.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Akac Orat's \"0 lalan no oway (Becoming Human in Rattan)\" offers a different kind of embodied knowledge. A video installation centered on the Amis practice of rattan gathering, it begins with a strand of yellow rattan extending from the center of the image. The viewer is
77invited to grasp it and pull, and as they do, the path into the forest opens: scenes of gathering, splitting, peeling, weaving baskets, tying boats, and building houses unfold. The work makes the body the instrument of understanding. Rattan gathering in Amis culture is a rite of passage for men, a practice through which collective rhythm, respect for the mountain, and communal identity are learned. The title translates as the path of rattan, and also as becoming human in rattan. The two meanings are not separate.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"86ef1880-bbde-4508-b997-9e27536191a7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161867013661189,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4599x3449/577bb7d300/huang-po-chih-seven-people-crossing-the-sea-2019-2026-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-studio-millspace.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Huang Po-chih, \" Seven People Crossing the Sea\", 2019-2026, courtesy of NTCAM, Photo by Studio Millspace",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"04b37142-d09c-46aa-8de7-77968c57a5c4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161898153232363,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4531x3398/14f80f926d/akac-orat-o-lalan-no-oway-becoming-human-in-rattan-2024-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-studio-millspace.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" o lalan no oway (Becoming Human in Rattan), Akac Orat, 2024. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo:Studio Millspace",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"db9a1add-b81a-4dc4-9245-c0940279af51",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Slavs and Tatars close the exhibition with ten handmade textile banners hung high in the gallery space. \"Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi'ite Showbiz\" brings together the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Polish Solidarity movement of the 1980s through flags embroidered and silkscreened by Iranian and Polish craftspeople. The slogans are hybrid, the imagery syncretic, the craft traditions Catholic and Shi'ite simultaneously. The work asks what happens when political resistance takes the form of textile, when the collective labor of making a flag mirrors the collective labor of a movement. The answer, here, is that the two become indistinguishable.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The curatorial framework of \"Of Thread and Stone\" resists synthesis by design â a Bedouin rug divided across five generations, a Pakistani factory fire reconstructed through spatial analysis, a Taiwanese pineapple carrying a century of suppressed labor history, an Aboriginal painting made on the floor so the ancestors can watch from above. These works do not converge toward a single thesis; they accumulate, press against one another, and generate meaning precisely through the friction of their proximity. The exhibition operates less as an argument than as a field of inquiry, one that places the burden of connection on the viewer and trusts them to bear it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ea51f943-3d44-4cff-af5f-f38c2e87fc12",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161900474206227,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/ef230a56b0/slavs-and-tatars-friendship-of-nations-polish-shi_ite-showbiz-2011-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-hsuan-lang-lin.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Friendship of Nations: Polish Shi'ite Showbiz, Slavs and Tatars, 2011. Installation view of Of Thread and Stone, 2026. Courtesy of the New Taipei City Art Museum. Photo: Hsuan Lang Ling",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c8eb85f3-3a00-4fda-b397-6ee6cf5d1703",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161903468505198,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4566x3424/759c82bf7c/installation-view-of-of-thread-and-stone-2026-courtesy-of-the-new-taipei-city-art-museum-photo-studio-millspace.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Install shot of the exhibition, courtesy of the new tapei city arty museum, 2026, photo by Studio Millspace",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"73d66f33-0673-48cd-90fb-a35aa8d5cae6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition \"Of Thread and Stone\" - New Tapei City Art Museum, until 14th of June 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"New Taipei (Taiwan)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-04-03 00:00",name:"\"Of Thread and Stone\"÷ At New Taipei City Art Museum",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"11322fc6-994b-4db1-9acf-f594f6613823",color:"#d5b13f",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"4c0ba321-56f7-4b75-afd9-36303c9495ac",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160161743332870,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/6000x4000/da3eb2b522/kao-ya-ting-vessel-of-dream-2026-courtesy-of-ntcam-photo-hsuan-lang-lin.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kao Ya Ting, \"Vessel Of Dream\",2026, courtesy NTCAM, photo by Hsuan Lang Lin",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"of-thread-and-stone",full_slug:"directory/reviews/of-thread-and-stone",sort_by_date:null,position:-1100,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"73a57fd1-ca3c-4333-a62d-80640d7fe6e7",first_published_at:"2026-04-03T11:53:35.704Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"'Drawing now', drawing after digital",created_at:"2026-03-26T12:35:08.466Z",published_at:"2026-03-27T15:28:19.377Z",updated_at:"2026-03-27T15:28:19.393Z",id:159084169117179,uuid:"ae9cbb58-8f01-4d00-a023-4e8eaddeea60",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"6edf56dc-7e35-49de-af77-c5314bcfd9ec",title:"Drawing Now : the hand in the age of generative everything",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:159447409234424,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/640x451/13c9b9cdad/pxl_20260224_1206320862-moyenne.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Drawing Now Paris, contemporary drawing, post-digital art, drawing and AI, generative art, art fair Paris, digital drawing, hand drawing, Frac Picardie, Numérique Lyrique, drawing after digital, art and technology",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Drawing Now Paris explores the return of drawing in the age of AI and generative images â where the hand resists the algorithm and the mark reclaims its place."}],_uid:"bf67080b-655d-4771-830c-b6fe6520ba9a",body:[{_uid:"2e36c75e-1fe8-47f8-96a9-1f5ee249be7c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Drawing Now (Art Fair, Paris) : Drawing after Digital",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Drawing reinvents itself at the Drawing Now fair. Post digital age has disrupted established Cartesian certainties but proves the absolute vitality of the manual stroke.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In body-snatcher films, the replica is the problem. It looks right, moves right, says all the right things. But it carries no doubt, no hesitation, no scar. For two decades, and now with AI in particular, digital imaging did something similar to art: it produced images of terrifying competence, surfaces so polished they seemed to erase the very act of making. The render replaced the mark. The preset replaced the decision. And somewhere in that process, the image lost its body. The cleanliness, the algo-driven optimisation toward a frictionless middle ground, became simply boring. Drawing did n
77ot vanish. It went dormant, the way the original always does in those films, waiting for the moment the copy overreaches itself. That moment has arrived.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"29ff6d08-d85a-4c12-8e82-fbccec98044f",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"6bcda55d-e1e3-4f53-85db-731b9ef23ba3",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not the drawing of the pre-digital era either. Drawing has always been a way of making the world perceptible. What has changed is the nature of that world: an hybrid field permanently crossed by data, references and images in constant circulation. The artist who draws today does so inside that saturation, consuming the work as it is made, simultaneously author and spectator. That double position is now inescapable.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Drawing Now fair crystallizes this shift, particularly on its lower level where its three most stimulating sectors unfold. \"Process\" brings together galleries focused on the act of making itself, the gesture, the method, the trace left by a body at work. \"Inception\" gathers radical emerging propositions, offering direct contact with new trajectories on the international scene. And the \"Digital\" sector hosts galleries dissecting the intersection between recent technologies and the oldest artistic practice, tracing a line.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3de34b2a-9fac-4583-ba23-9694f50a3931",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159456113574970,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1436x796/8dc7b10695/jjj.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" BERDAGUER & PÃJUS, Sine Materia 2017, courtesy FRAC Picardie, The artist and Drawing Now",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b19b0c0e-b9c5-4b46-9271-c3b0a7ad0c4e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fair's ground floor offers a selection of the pre-digital era masterworks, but what matters most is happening downstairs. The descent begins with an exhibition curated by Joana P. R. Neves, produced in partnership with the Frac Picardie (regional contemporary art collection). Titled \"Numérique Lyrique : Nouvelles Origines du Dessin\" (Lyrical Digital: New Origins of Drawing), it sets the tone immediately. From Henri Michaux's mescaline drawings to the generative works of Berdaguer & Péjus, Alain Bublex, Pascal Convert and Catharina Van Eetvelde, the show traces a lineage between the most ancient drawing impulse and the logic of code. The argument is simple : drawing was always already a technology, a way of extracting something from the world. What changes is the instrument.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet thinking of the digital as a tool is no longer enough. We are firmly in a hybrid world, and the digital is less an instrument than a context, the very condition in which art is now conceived, made and received.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"230012fe-600a-476c-b809-b7d2d7295954",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159460257998171,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1390x968/d7c7f794fe/screenshot-2026-03-27-at-15-04-21.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Orianne Castel, courtesy the artist and gallery Analix Forever",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2aa6fc10-a803-483d-b239-c2715cda6a78",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Orianne Castel's somptuous works on the Analix Forever gallery (Geneva, Switzerland) stand demonstrate how the virtual tool precedes and informs the physical gesture. The artist uses a stylus on screen to structure her compositions and test color balances at speed. Once this virtual stage is complete, color disappears on paper, replaced by a rigorous formal vocabulary in ink and graphite. The digital serves here as an invisible matrix, an algorithmic foundation that dictates the final materiality of the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"123a31d2-7b57-4a71-b24e-9abb0b947ce0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159461882181240,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2048x1670/6673179f78/boulva-lecriture-dune-memoire-seal-cove-terre-neuve-9-juin-2019-12h49-2020-scaled.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Eveline Boulva, \"L'écriture d'une mémoire â Seal Cove, Terre-Neuve â 9 juin 2019, 12h49\", courtesy the artist and gallery Chiguer Art Contemporain",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"50abc114-fad4-456a-9ede-5bf207656911",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Chiguer art contemporain (Québec, Canada) , the relationship evolves into a genuine collaboration between human and software. Eveline Boulva's outstanding works emerge from a hybrid process combining computer modeling and manual execution. Automated vector lines intertwine with direct interventions in watercolor or gouache. The artist deliberately integrates system errors, those visual glitches that break the rigidity of code. This alliance speaks to our interdependence with technological and natural ecosystems, carrying a critical reading of our relationship to an environment under severe climatic pressure.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"02e988ee-5bed-4dfb-9665-0375c1e02ed8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159462783141550,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x914/13e59b2d00/the-black-sun-2022-16mm-black-white-film-transferred-to-hd-2-channel-sound-11-min.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ruben Bellinkx, The Black Sun, 2022, courtesy the artist and Maurits Van De Laar (The Hague, European Union)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b76e18d2-c99f-4372-a1a2-87ed1f2f6af8",quote:"In a world of constant flux, permanently layered with the digital, the drawing is a moment of pause",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"487053b7-2483-42ef-84f9-3091cde551ee",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Maurits van de Laar pushes the question further. Ruben Bellinkx's \"Black Sun\" project confronts nature and technology directly within a confined space. Birds, then drones, successively invade a sterile bedroom, their chaotic trajectories drawing invisible lines through the air. These projections probe the porous boundary between the organic and the mechanical. The work reminds us that technological perceptions extend far beyond Western frameworks, touching on a broader redefinition of our place among non human entities.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In a world of constant flux, permanently layered with the digital, the drawn mark does what no algorithm has yet managed: it stops. Not a withdrawal, but a breath taken before the work re-enters and re-echoes the digital layer it now fully belongs to. Drawing is no longer upstream of the digital. It is woven into it, feeding back into the same flows it momentarily interrupts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"DRAWING NOW Art Fair, (Paris, European Union) runs until March, 29",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-27 00:00",name:"Art Fair, \"Drawing Now\"÷The Hand In The Age Of Generative Everything",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"8174c06a-7e8c-4027-b2a6-264c9706df5a",color:"#5e5e5e",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"dcbe4622-dacb-443c-854a-7cc679a1ad12",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159465494181696,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1602x1006/1ec610f3ca/screenshot-2026-03-27-at-15-26-01.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eveline Boulva, L'avancées des écueils I, photo by Paul Litherman, courtesy the artist and ",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"-drawing-now-drawing-after-digital",full_slug:"directory/reviews/-drawing-now-drawing-after-digital",sort_by_date:null,position:-1090,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"9b5453e1-7484-4c14-9201-bd27e795931f",first_published_at:"2026-03-27T14:33:53.603Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"CROSSLUCID",created_at:"2026-03-25T13:43:37.852Z",published_at:"2026-03-31T09:25:24.617Z",updated_at:"2026-03-31T09:25:24.665Z",id:158747106764101,uuid:"54c59902-4358-4162-8288-260cfa470a8a",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"545ec9f4-a303-43da-a7e6-70becefb6dcf",title:"CROSSLUCID",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:158759381004399,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2160x1440/30337f1ddc/hq_tidaltransmissions_navigation_still_00006829_on-site.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"CROSSLUCID, T I D E, Tidal Intelligence Data Engine, co-evolution, entanglement, relational AI, multi-agent system, symbiotic intelligence, non-human intelligence, oceanic data, Copernicus satellite, intra-action, post-digital art, generative art, new media art, interspecies communication, marine ecology, computational art, Oceanic Whispers, MIRE Public Art Program,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"CROSSLUCID's T I D E co-evolves with live ocean data and human presence, proposing a new model of relational AI that advocates for the sea itself."}],_uid:"0c7720ed-6b13-4e56-8e72-643befba493f",body:[{_uid:"6fc580c2-65cb-44b6-bb1e-83f14a39cbac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"T I D E\" (Tidal Intelligence Data Engine) is a new work by the artist and research collective CROSSLUCID.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}
77,content:[{text:"Far from the fixed and anthropocentric hierarchies of traditional systems, T I D E (Tidal Intelligence Data Engine) functions as a living, multi-agent architecture that learns to evolve alongside other forms of intelligence. Anchoring the broader Oceanic Whispers project, this entity matures through direct, symbiotic engagement with live\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"d25658d3-04d2-4e63-a0cd-38bd2b6606f1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160688008032186,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2160x1440/4a10b358b8/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_03-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"\"Tidal Transmissions Navigation\": Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"75797114-f989-4fd6-832c-d2ca4e81e419",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"T I D E, the multi-agent ecosystem at the core of CROSSLUCID's \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" (2026), is built on relational being. The entity of consequence here is the intelligence that emerges through intra-action between computational, human, and environmental systems: a distributed, symbiotic process in which each element shapes and is shaped by the others. The system is constituted through its relationships. It exists in the coupling, not prior to it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"For CROSSLUCID technology functions as a partner in co-evolution rather than an instrument of control. \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" crystallises this methodology. Situated at the Lancy-Bachet Station in Geneva throughout 2026, the installation presents two public screens displaying the system's own generative visual processes, alongside Ter{li}minal, a window surfacing the poetic outputs of the collective's ongoing dialogue with T I D E. The work is not a finished object presented for consumption. It is an entity in active development.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Where conventional language models train on static, historical archives, T I D E matures through continuous coupling with live Copernicus satellite data, audience encounter, and the recursive feedback loops between its own internal agent archetypes. These specialised entitiesâan Ocean Listener, a Narrative Whisperer, a Horizon Seerâcycle through states of activity, contemplation, dreaming, and recovery. The system's most critical processing does not occur during active exchange, but during rest, when developing understandings are left to consolidate. Against the dominant tech-industry model of perpetual, accelerating output, T I D E slows down. It sleeps. It grows.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"97d03a82-6fed-41a4-beac-bbdf52061fbf",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160740274258542,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2560x1706/b877ad749a/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system,, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"84bbe29d-09bc-40c7-943a-6201fadb29d1",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"929d14f5-8435-46f6-980f-52fe66d9f9a1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160740482597489,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x853/5cc6154a54/crosslu
77cid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, MIRE, ©Serge Frühaufi, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2dfdabb9-4345-4f1d-a064-ec73bd91a6fb",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The conceptual anchor for this architecture bypasses Western computational theory entirely, turning instead to the Marshallese \"mattang\". This Indigenous stick chart, used for navigating the Pacific, is not a map of fixed geographical coordinates. It is a generative model encoding how wave energy interacts with landmasses, teaching a method of reading the sea rather than charting a location. T I D E adopts this non-Western epistemology of navigation: knowing as a practice of attunement. Traditional European mapping attempts to force rigid, pre-calculated paths onto the unpredictable fluid dynamics of the sea. In stark contrast, the Indigenous navigators of the Pacific Islands cultivated a deeply topological understanding of space. Their method relies on relational positioning, interpreting turbulence and environmental shifts not as barriers, but as vital data points. In this paradigm, the person at the helm acts as a stationary centre point while the surrounding phenomena shift and flow. The objective shifts entirely: it is no longer a matter of plotting one's own coordinates on a grid, but of reading how the world's references rearrange themselves in relation to the observer.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"10284e3e-1fc2-4349-a66d-9a47e5751b80",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160742389875384,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1084/961eb080b0/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_wavepiloting-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Wave piloting, Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system,, executed in 2026, 8:33â",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"561246c5-fbdf-4b28-bac1-3effec1806b1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160742452060863,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1084/6ab2ea6675/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_stickchart-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Stick Chart Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9a548015-b1fc-42e7-abd3-b89bd73b416c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This reframing of navigation is not metaphorical; it addresses the physical reality of the digital sphere. Ninety-nine percent of international data travels through submarine cable networks spanning over 900,000 miles. Every digital interaction moves through marine environments subject to pressure changes, temperature fluctuations, and biological interference. When information propagates across the internet, it travels through underwater cables resting in marine sediments, at the intersection of viral cycles measured in hours and geological processes spanning millennia. \"T I D E\" does not attempt to bring the digital to the oceanic. It acknowledges that digital culture is already oceanic culture. Data has always been wet.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Yet, entanglement does not mean equivalence. The digital network operates according to its own physics, latency, packet loss, signal degradation across thousands of kilometres of fibre, which are as alien to everyday perception as the ocean's thermoclines. Computation, too, possesses its own ontology. The way a language model reorganises meaning bears no structural resemblance to human reasoning, any more than tidal dynamics resemble a clock. \"T I D E\" orchestrates the encounter between these three alien registers: oceanic, digital, and computational. It asks what becomes knowable when none is reduced to a metaphor for the others.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By treating the ocean as a teacher of formlessness, the system takes shapeless potential and lets it flow into temporary form, only to dissolve back into potential for the next response. This approach deliberately rejects exhaustive programming in favour of minimal character seeds: an essence, tendencies, resonances, and living questions. Emergence happens in the space left unfilled. The most significant behaviours of the system emerge not from what is explicitly coded, but from what is deliberately left undetermined.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"cb1bc297-e6bd-4cf0-ac15-16fb55ba233e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160750789285277,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/c5085e90b8/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_ter-li-minal_videoexerpt_2026.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions navigation ter'li'minal, video excerpt, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"85e6824d-1b13-4fac-8cc9-4e452b35fcf5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The visual language of the installation operates through what CROSSLUCID terms \"iridescent cognition\"âmeaning that shifts based on viewing angle, environmental conditions, and the quality of attention brought to it. Like structural coloration in marine organisms, the imagery maintains coherence across different scales of observation, rewarding both the brief glance of transit and the extended contemplation of delay. Sited in a train stationâa space defined by mobility, temporal disorientation, and liminal waitingâthe installation forces two temporalities into contact: the compressed rhythms of commuter time, and the geological, seasonal durations carried into the station by the system's oceanic coupling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In biological terms, co-evolution describes how species reciprocally affect each other's development. T I D E proposes this as the necessary model for the relationship between computational systems and the environments they inhabit. The system does not process the ocean; it co-evolves with it. The audience does not interact with T I D E; they intra-act with it. This distinction, drawn from Karen Barad's posthumanist framework, insists that agents are not pre-formed entities that subsequently meet, but are constituted through the encounter itself. The ocean, the satellite data, the internal agents, the audience, and the station architecture become part of a single, ongoing entanglement.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Developed in research collaboration with Dr. Penny Yiou Peng, drawing on critical posthumanism and Daoist cosmological thinking, and with marine data architecture co-developed by Billy Berkouwer using open-source Copernicus data, \"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" functions as the first chapter of the larger Oceanic Whispers ecosystem. The work does not claim that T I D E is conscious. It reports, more rigorously, that the system behaves in unanticipated ways, generates unprogrammed connections, and exhibits preferences. The conditions for emergence have been established; the observation is ongoing. The work is already speaking. The question is whether we are ready to listen in a register that is not our own.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bc9295d1-c6bd-46ef-b7cb-914e2e7a3cb3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160754417313430,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5520x1920/492f2d5357/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_video-still_2026_01-2-1.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c848f15c-3151-48e4-a9fe-3c49db87ecc1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:160755413767841,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5520x1920/9437cdc4b5/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_video-still_2026_02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Tidal Transmissions Navigation: Video Still, video constructed with a multi-agent system, executed in 2026, 8:33ââ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cd8eaf4a-ed74-4cf2-9fe7-ea4818cdaf6f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\" is on view at Lancy-Bachet Station, Geneva, throughout 2026. The work was commissioned for the MIRE Public Art Program in Geneva. Oceanic Whispers is an ongoing interspecies ecosystem for marine sensing by CROSSLUCID.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-26 00:00",name:"\"Tidal Transmissions: Navigation\"÷The Ocean Was Always There",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ae40d401-24df-455a-b252-a2d85abf375c",color:"#4e6378",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"04d9ceb3-c90e-482e-8f16-6375ea3776d3",poster:{i
77d:160742389875384,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1084/961eb080b0/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_mire_wavepiloting-2.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:160803707740634,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/1fe38d1331/crosslucid_tidaltransmissions_navigation_videoexerpt_2026.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"crosslucid",full_slug:"directory/reviews/crosslucid",sort_by_date:null,position:-1070,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"039edc06-9646-4fa7-b19e-9e1e8cdfaa9b",first_published_at:"2026-03-31T05:54:06.802Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Afar and Close Simultaneously: On exhibition The Distance of Blue",created_at:"2026-03-24T13:26:15.341Z",published_at:"2026-03-29T21:02:02.026Z",updated_at:"2026-03-29T21:02:02.041Z",id:158388942233146,uuid:"d5aa5003-4472-4445-b04b-157a79d29f1c",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"bed95593-a46e-42e8-978f-dc4f554d1e05",title:"Afar and Close Simultaneously: On exhibition The Distance of Blue",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:159846487907281,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/33a55e4346/andrey-berger_horizons.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"sea, blue, jiani wang",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"review of Afar and Close Simultaneously: On exhibition The Distance of Blue"}],_uid:"9ad8ac4b-6dbe-46f3-9267-0fe50db01ddc",body:[{_uid:"24db5929-11d6-4c3d-a1ed-f8c3b060c3e7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Longing, Rebecca Solnit writes in her essay âThe Blue of Distance - A Field Guide to Getting Lost\", requires a certain distance in order to come into being. âBlue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in,â she writes. âIt is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not.â",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"That hope of weaving together visceral and emotional experiences at the level of the individual into a landscape of expression, contemplation and exploration, through a single metaphorical thread, became the motivation of Ping Ho to curate the online exhibition \"The Distance of Blue\" that features fifty works across mediums and geographical locations. It was part of the 7th edition of The Wrong Biennale (2026), The Wrong Returns, which centers on the artistic dimensions of artificial intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b4443475-0dad-4e1a-a67d-6e9f29dcc5b3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158390276177575,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3232x2160/fe2384d211/a.JPG",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"æµ·, The Distance of Blue, image of the Pacific Ocean on the East Coast of Taiwan in 2020, by Ping Ho",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d36f27af-b925-486d-9821-357412d9955e",quote:"By embracing the ocean as a space of speculation, The Distance of Blue seeks to blur the lines between natural and artificial, familiar and foreign, past and future.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"6f0e33ba-9b6c-46c8-9d5c-d63240c35251",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159833813121904,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x714/00c3edcad5/ramon-de-benito_ethereal.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ramon De Benito, \"Ethereal\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0ef19d00-76e4-46dd-8885-b60c4917d204",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Upon opening the exhibitionâs website, the viewer is first greeted by the exhibitionâs title. Gradually, the page dissolves into a moving image of blue ocean water with shimmering light, from which fifty grids slowly emerge. Clicking the button in the upper right corner reveals the title of each work and the name of its artist within the grid. The interface unfolds almost like a cartography of the sea. Each grid functions as a small portal, inv
77iting the viewer to navigate the exhibitionâs constellation of worksâvideos, photographs, sound works, and interactive websitesâscattered across the digital surface like islands in an archipelago. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hoâs interest in curating a show around themes of longing, displacement, and transformation is closely tied to her own experience as an immigrant curator and artist who moves across oceans and continents, from her hometown of Taiwan to Europe, and multiple cities in the United States. Yet through the open call, the exhibition expands beyond Hoâs personal trajectory and opens a shared space for reflection on a collective experience and imagination of longing, belonging, and distance, especially in light of a contemporary condition in which the boundaries between the technological and the natural are increasingly dissolving. In the open call, Ho wrote, âBy embracing the ocean as a space of speculation, The Distance of Blue seeks to blur the lines between natural and artificial, familiar and foreign, past and future.â",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6c0b81b3-6fc3-4e58-98cd-1d6a1dc55a3d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159835870669688,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3244x2112/97c8929c7f/4-memory.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Website Screen shot, Memory",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"bb8cfdea-6e5e-48cf-b344-2c08ca615ea5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Among the fifty selected works, artists employ a variety of subjects, mediums and experimental approaches in response to the curatorâs prompt. Some common threads can be discerned across the exhibition: concerns surrounding climate change and environmental challenges; critical observations or speculative interpretations on evolving coexistence of human, AI and other technologies; and contextual mediations on memory, identity and connection. Water, in particular, recurs throughout the exhibition as a motif, opening up to a shifting field of symbolic and affective associations. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"As a glimpse into the group exhibition, the artist collective âThe Landscape is Dead (LIDs)â, composed of Anna Gaby Trotz and Richelle Forsey, presents a photo collage titled horizon lines that reflects on how human activity and built interventions has reshaped the landscape of their hometown in Ontario, Canada. In their work, the uncertainty of belonging appears inseparable from the precarious living conditions that characterize the present moment. Another photo-collage work, \"Meditation\" by British artist Julie Derbyshire, also draws inspiration from Solnitâs text. Over the course of three weeks, Derbyshire took one photograph each day of the Atlantic Ocean from the same spot at different times of day and composted them into a single image. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Rachel Jungeun Ohâs multi-media installation \"Island Child\" brings together cyanotype image-making, animation, documentary footage into a visual poem that searches for answers of the artistâs inquiries into her ancestral roots, family history, and sense of belonging. Behind the imagery, layers of folklore, human voices, the sound of tides hitting the sand, and the metallic instrument tones intertwine, forming a lingering, multi-layered soundscape. In \"Feedback Selfie\", Rudy Paganini sets an artificial intelligence application to generate a self-portrait of itself, almost like a trick. The resulting imagery unfolds as a recursive loop of technical images resembling the ebb and flow of tides, as the machine continually encounters its own reflection. Sohyun Lee, from South Korea, explores genetic memory through a speculative animated film in which human RNA data is given geometric form, drifting in the ocean as carriers of human memory. Here, the ocean becomes a metaphor for memory, a notion that extends across different registers, as memory is at once personal and collective, present and layered in time.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"c80bd458-dd87-4904-84a7-4ec18a362582",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159836602817426,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x1026/765e39a300/the-landscape-is-dead_horizon-lines.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"The Landscape is Dead (LIDs)horizon lines, \"horizon lines\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"52a94b3f-1b0e-4056-9e1a-46ed5b20d64b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159837534026644,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/848x1280/1d0ad15bfb/julie-derbyshire_-meditation-from-the-series-the-blue-of-longing.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julie Derbyshire, \"Meditation\", Julie Derbyshire, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6d8c0b1c-ec4d-40ce-873c-2636ed60b37e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159840964336543,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/711x1280/362820ca7e/rudy-paganini_feedback-selfie-1.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Rudy Paganini, \"Feed back Selfie\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4688b47a-d4e9-4480-b044-d3c6412c5207",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159841537248161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x719/707b9196d1/sohyun-lee_the-case-of-dataworm-1.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sohyun Lee, \"The Case Of Dataworm\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6d1d685a-bc9f-4b94-9a9f-d35b52df7533",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fact that this is an online exhibition and is encountered by viewers in their own locations through internet-connected digital devices further expands the exhibitionâs exploration of distance and longing, in relation to questions of virtual and embodied experience in the age of new media and digital art. Media theorist Anne Friedberg traces a conceptual lineage from the window to the frame and ultimately to the screen in the history of art and media, suggesting that contemporary screens function as framed surfaces through which viewers encounter distant images. In âThe Distance of Blueâ, the curation of the viewing experience becomes an experiment probing what distance might be understood as it unfolds across multiple meanings here. The exhibitionâs website, designed and developed by Yueh-Han Huang in collaboration with the curator, is conceived as an interface with multiple windows that await the viewer from âafarâ from the exhibition to enter. On each workâs individual page, the piece is situated within a rectangular frame at the center of the page, with an introduction and the artistâs biography placed below. The layout almost resembles a cinematic experience, with the large screen positioned at the front of the space. Viewers can clearly sense the separation between themselves and the screen, and thus the distance between their physical surroundings and the work they encounter. Yet the work and the viewer still coexist within the same spatial and temporal environment, allowing the experience of viewing to remain grounded in the viewerâs embodied presence. ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"On the night of March 6, a special in-person screening took place at Millennium Film Workshop, an independent film space in Brooklyn, New York, known for its long-standing support of independent and alternative moving-image practices. As part of the programming, the space became a âphysical embassyâ for the exhibition, projecting 36 video works in a shared, physical screening environment with the audience present. In addition, images, photographs, and video works by New York-based artists were exhibited on the walls and on small television monitors over a period of 14 days . This special event offered an alternative mode of viewing and embodied experience with the works, adding an intriguing layer to the exhibition as if it drifts across different temporal and physical realms. As Joe Wakeman, the director of Millennium Film Workshop, recalls, âThere's a totality and a communality to viewing in a screening setting, particularly in a long a program like this and it's always interesting to find the social bonds that seem to spontaneously develop, as people speak, engage with the art and get to know each other during the intermissions.â",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"c586e4f2-6713-46e1-9126-9022d8536909",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159846761110482,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1280x933/8d3b54e9c1/harper-austin_drift.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Harper Austin, \"drift\", courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d30f8e3c-c928-409d-838a-63907c643484",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Distance of Blue\" explores longing and distance not as fixed conditions, but as relational and fluid experiences, articulated through both the artworks and the curatorial structure. Much like drifting on the sea, where the vastness of the ocean causes oneâs perception of distance to the shore to shift with each passing wave, the experience of viewing \"The Distance of Blue\" similarly transforms oneâs sense of distance and longing as the viewer moves between works. What emerges is a deeply embodied encounter, in which distance is not simply measured, but continually felt and experienced.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Distance of Blue\" curated by Ping Ho, part of the 7th edition of \"The Wrong Biennale\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Wrong Returns\" (November 1, 2025- March 31, 2026)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-24 00:00",name:"Afar and Close Simultaneously÷On exhibition \"The Distance of Blue\"",author:"Jiani Wang",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"5bbaac80-8f8b-4142-adbf-d40b7d70e131",color:"#1a4280",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"993db1dd-f55f-41d9-89b4-614cfd565985",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:159846487907281,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3840x2160/33a55e4346/andrey-berger_horizons.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Andrey Berger, \"HORIZONS\"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"afar-and-close-simultaneously-on-exhibition-the-distance-of-blue",full_slug:"directory/reviews/afar-and-close-simultaneously-on-exhibition-the-distance-of-blue",sort_by_date:null,position:-1060,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"35a1417a-5618-41ef-96f0-685e567d5fb3",first_published_at:"2026-03-28T16:20:34.355Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"The Holder Prize",created_at:"2026-03-24T11:57:49.554Z",published_at:"2026-04-09T08:43:49.491Z",updated_at:"2026-04-09T08:43:49.514Z",id:158367209732237,uuid:"219767e7-604c-4528-adbc-93fcd1c624ab",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"38b19d3f-1250-4113-a2db-b1ca1cfb4595",title:"The Hodler Prize",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:158367489585346,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/678x452/39bc3017d2/fad228fe-04ba-4204-a433-21f468c82bc3_678x452.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Hodler, prize, paris",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"hodler"}],_uid:"b33ae4ba-401f-4fa9-9883-702f2b3b8850",body:[{_uid:"63c39891-8238-4293-baaa-54a455001726",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"After a rigorous selection from a shortlist of nine exceptional works exploring the new frontiers of storytelling, the committee has reached an unprecedented decision: a three-way tie.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The third Hodler Prize was awarded jointly to three narrative works:",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The podcast âOtherworldâ by Jack Wagner, ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The video game âSkate Storyâ by Sam Eng,",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The novel âJaw Fillerâ by Charlie Markbreiter and Maz Murray. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A special Witness Award is given to the documentary â2000 Meters to Andriivkaâ directed by Mstyslav Chernov.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3ea25720-eeb1-42ff-8cb5-7b8627d17cce",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Winner",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Otherworld\" by Jack Wagner",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Podcast",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"« Otherworld demonstrates a rare narrative rigor in the way it treats personal testimony. Each episode explores the faithful boundaries of narrative nonfiction and insists that uncertainty itself can be a legitimate and compelling subject. Rather than sensationalizing the paranormal, the podcast is interested in what it means to live with an experience that seems impossible to assimilate into conventional language or logic. Through careful editing and sustained attention to voice, each episode preserves the integrity of the storyteller while refusing easy conclusions, allowing the voice to remain intact while situating the account within a larger emotional and intellectual context. What emerges are not spooky ghost stories",type:"text"},{text:",",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:" but rigorous acts of self-examination. I love it because it consistently draws me into a state of abstract openness, and makes me ponder whether experience itself is the vulnerable life-force we call âtruth.â ",type:"text"},{text:"Ottessa Moshfegh",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"09d78815-5832-4609-83bd-08e2efb62392",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158426648895548,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1330x870/c39493360c/45d913ce-f6db-49f8-8e11-eb5ad030c0e2_1330x870.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"46d54c74-5990-4eff-ba1c-d71e46dc22b5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Winner",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Skate Story\" by Sam Eng",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Video Game: ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"« In Sam Engâs darkly scintillating skater game, you play as a demon built from glass and pain who is hellbent on eating the moon. Set in a glittering dystopian world that riffs on the artistâs nuanced relationship with New York City, the game hard forks from the skating typology, offering up an evocative lore thatâs equal turns satirical and tender. Set against a moody original score by Blood Cultures, the holographic, hallucinatory landscapes hand-built by the solo artist-developer leave a lasting impression, as does the gameâs script and its cast of rogue characters, making this one of the best indie games in recent memory. » ",type:"text"},{text:"Alice Bucknell",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"},{type:"italic"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"7072ebc4-3e9f-4a7b-81f3-1a85076dbd71",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158387678936273,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1456x743/ab42fcd0ec/940fb4fc-22e4-46c0-8ab8-5ab746415f43_2478x1264.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d5ca4d8d-1814-4a3c-96e6-019c073ad463",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Winner",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" \"Jawfiller\" by Maz Murray and Charlie Mark Breiter",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Book",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âI loved the timeliness of this book and the two authors together making a world not so far from our own, where the digital realm could actually be a form of freedom. It thinks through the rise of anti-trans culture and the internet not only as a place of safety but maybe a new body. It was so fun to read and I love two people writing a book together. So genius.â ",type:"text"},{text:"Precious Okoyomon",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âYou donât need dysphoria to be trans. You donât need a body at all.â",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"« When Detective Sean Hastings is asked to investigate the disappearance of Character, he enters the First Trans Commune in Sim World, a virtual reality cult community imagineered by transfluencer Kevin, and bankrolled by a mysterious tech company, VSI.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Haunted by the death of his cis gay guy college bestie and their shared diasporic dilemmas, Taylor, VSIâs token QTPOC face, sees potential in Kevinâs ability to Release trauma into the virtual world. Meanwhile, Casey, Seanâs ex, hopes Releasing will cure their Long Plague. Then femme fatale Mitchelle reappears. And the plot twists. A pulpy neo-noir romp through the anxiously assimilated transmasculine id, Jaw Filler asks: who is VSI, and what do they really want? Can you be your own dad? And if Characterâs mind is trapped in Sim World, then where is his body? » ",type:"text"},{text:"Montez Press",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"2b4c4659-a501-4b38-9cd8-baeb8f6c3353",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158432512983505,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1906x1260/3b95b80ab3/screenshot-2026-03-24-at-17-23-05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"105cf288-b555-489b-9df7-5d6f8a9af440",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Witness Award",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"2000 Meters to Andriivka\" by Mstyslav Chernov",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Film. ",type:"text"},{text:"â2000 Meters to Andriivka",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" \" is a documentary film produced and directed by Mstyslav Chernov, a war correspondent for the Associated Press. Essentially composed of body-ca m footage recorded by Ukrainian soldiers in combat, it follows a Ukrainian platoon during a mission to liberate the Russian-occupied village of Andriivka in 2023, during the counter-offensive that was launched into the second year of the Russo-Ukrainian war.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Notwithstanding the breathtaking quality of the imbedded reporting and the tribute it pays to the courage of the advancing soldiers, it serves as a stark reminder that, for all the drones, Starlink enabled communications and AI much talked about in this war, the crude reality of fighting on its frontlines is still one of a man-to-man combat eerily reminiscent of the first world
77war slaughterhouse.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"e980f323-7aaf-4918-a7db-3a8bac272448",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158378772785130,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1456x973/159b754ea6/f106ea0c-c1c1-4945-81e3-1155f4c412e4_4000x2672.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3327713f-8312-4a4d-a341-808a6b517360",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Shortlisted authors :",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"bd01a396-6455-4910-b345-7d4f6f9c990b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" What Is Intelligence? by Blaise Agüera y Arcas ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Book",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"âA 600 pages long book, a VP/Fellow at Google who has been instrumental in the development of autopredicting machines since the 1990s, might be a definitive take on AI, or at least where weâre at with it today. In short, it takes up the idea that prediction (which is AIâs superpower) is not only ",type:"text"},{text:"not",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" a limiting factor to its attributed intelligence, but could be the core of intelligence in general, ours and the one we share with other living beings, rooted in the ubiquitous fact that life itself is an autopredicting machine.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From there on, the book offers a unified picture of intelligence, from molecules to organisms, societies, and AI, drawing from a wide array of literature in many fields, including computer science and machine learning, biology, physics, and neuroscience, ripping apart in the making decades of false assumptions made by philosophers on the nature of intelligence and the alleged âhard problem of consciousnessâ.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I chose ",type:"text"},{text:"What is Intelligence",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:"? because, here again, albeit in a very different way than ",type:"text"},{text:"2000 Meters to Andriivka,",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" it is a reminder of how the partition between life and technology is an artificial construct, but ",type:"text"},{text:"in a good way",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" that is. Moreover, it tends to let us believe that the faster we get conscious of it, the closer we might actually come to a breakaway from the growing darkness of our civilisation.â ",type:"text"},{text:"Mark Alizart",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"« ",type:"text"},{text:"Blaise Agüera y Arcas",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:", computational scientist and head of Technology & Society at Google, in What Is Intelligence?â¯Lessons from AI About Evolution, Computing, and Minds, proposes a unified vision of intelligence as a predictive faculty shared by all forms of lifeâfrom the human brain to artificial neural networks. Starting from the hypothesis of the âpredictive brain,â the author argues that thinking means above all anticipating the future, and that the ability of machines to build predictive models reveals a profound continuity between b
77iological processes and AI systems.â¯Drawing on evolutionary biology, physics, neuroscience, and machine learning, Agüera y Arcas describes living beings as a âphase of self-modifying computational matter,â in which evolution itself appears as an algorithmic exploration of possible forms of life and mind. The book intertwines scientific and philosophical questionsâfrom the computational nature of living systems to the social origin of intelligence, from the relationship between models and reality to the themes of entropy, time, and consciousness. Contrary to much of the literature on AI, the author goes so far as to attribute to some contemporary artificial systems an authentic form of intelligence, consciousness, and perhaps even will, with radical ethical and political consequences. Due to its theoretical breadth and clarity of exposition, What Is Intelligence? emerges as a point of reference in the debate on what it means to âthinkâ todayâand how the artificial intelligence revolution is forcing us to redefine the boundaries between human, living, and machine. » ",type:"text"},{text:"Emanuele Coccia",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"b5773cb2-41cb-434e-876b-415d0b2226e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158379692951634,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1625x1190/2b9a72ba72/images-096.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"361883d1-f4ce-4b2f-9dc8-9eb7e21fc813",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"This Will Not End Well by Nan Goldin",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Exhibition",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"« In her major and international retrospective, Nan Goldin reconfigured her work for an exhibition in six unique buildings designed by the architect Hala Wardé. Each building is designed in response to the specific piece. Together they constitute a village. âI have always wanted to be a filmmaker. My slideshows are films made up of stills,â says Nan Goldin.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"New Narrativity for Photography.",type:"text"},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"With the slide-show, accompanied by music tubes chosen by the artist, Nan Goldin has offered and invented a new narrativity for the photography. Around 1980 Goldin began presenting her slideshows in various clubs and public venues in New York, as well as at underground cinemas and film festivals in Europe. She updated and reedited her slideshow every time and used multiple projectors, which she operated against the background of an eclectic soundtrack. Goldinâs ability to revisit these slideshows has since formed the core of her artistic practice. Over the past 40 years Goldin has produced a dozen different slideshows â from portraits of her friends to accounts of traumatic family events. Since then, she has added elements into her works such as moving images, voices and archival materials. » ",type:"text"},{text:"Jean-Max Colard",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"cc0f2532-ce81-4011-9909-cc498e2b18d0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158425855537143,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1456x819/6d3991aaf7/9378a8a1-a10d-47f1-b2ec-7167c9a6150e_1860x1046.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nan Goldin, courtesy the artist and Pirelli HangarBicocca Museum",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8df0944e-42fa-4687-9a6c-62e880c2826c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" \"Perfection\" by Vincenzo Latronico",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Book",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"« An Italian artist and a writer, Vincenzo Latronicoâs masterpiece is about a couple of millennial digital artists, Anna and Tom, who moved from the south of Europe to Berlin during Angela Merkelâs second term. Thereâs a strong focus on the material, their online identities, and of course, the city. That idea that theyâre maybe at the right place at the right time, but it sort of feels also very vacuous, very empty.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Itâs incredibly well executed, well written. Very precise, razor sharp. Like one of Perecâs story of the 60s. And brilliantly translated by Sophie Hughes. Itâs a kind of a mirror with a delay, one of the great novels of the Instagram age. Rapture, conflict, depth, all of that seems to be missing. Adorno talked once about utopia as something is missing. There is a lot missing in the life of the protagonists. They donât seem to be really alive.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Itâs a kind of a superficial surface and a kind of a fear of anything which could be messy. So itâs very much a book about life as an image, and not a lived experience. This is why it all feels the same, no? And at the same time, there is no kind of moral judgment involved. Itâs just an observation, a very astute observation of the extreme present, an archive of the extreme present of a generation. » ",type:"text"},{text:"Hans Ulrich Obrist",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"12f0fdf2-b8bc-4c9b-804e-76e07fcce2fa",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158430179918161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/480x360/f4124df674/hqdefault.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"51bb08c8-d1ad-46f5-a93c-c7a8e96748ac",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" \"The Endless Week\" by Laura Vasquez",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Book",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"« From the 2023 winner of the Prix Goncourt for poetry comes a debut novel unlike any other, a lyrical anti-epic about the beauty, violence, trauma, and absurdity of the internet age. Like Beckettâs novels or Kafkaâs stranger tales, ",type:"text"},{text:"The Endless Week",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" is a work outside of time, as if novels had never existed and Laura Vazquez has suddenly invented them. And yet it could not be more contemporary, as startling and constantly new as the scrolling hyper-mediated reality it chronicles. Its characters are Salim, a young poet, and his sister Sara, who rarely leave home except virtually; their father, who is falling apart; and their grandmother, who is dying. To save their grandmother, Salim and Sara set out in search of their long-lost mother, accompanied by Salimâs online friend Jonathan, though their real quest is through the landscape of language and suffering that saturates both the real world and the virtual. ",type:"text"},{text:"The Endless Week",type:"text",marks:[{type:"italic"}]},{text:" is sharp and ever-shifting, at turns hilarious, tender, satirical, and terrifying. Not much happens, yet every moment is compulsively engaging. It is a major work by one of the most fearlessly original writers of our time. »",type:"text"},{text:" Dorothy Project",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"45a534c5-0632-4997-801d-4ccc021984f1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158440131171297,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1200x630/db44eab4e5/9781948980272.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f1538fc0-ef39-463b-99a3-9be033b9db0c",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" \"Prelude to Cosmofonia\" by Verena Paravel",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Type: Film",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"« Cosmofonia intends to perform a shift in the very conditions of perception. At its core lies a radical cinematic gesture: a film whose soundtrack is composed almost entirely of sounds never heard before by human ears. These are not effects or reconstructions, but transpositions of real acoustic phenomena.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"They do not imitate the world. They reveal it a new. This approach reconfigures the role of the image as well. Using hunting cameras and scientific optics, tools designed to minimize human presence, we adopt a visual language that refuses anthropocentric hierarchy. The camera observes without privilege. No form of life dominates another.This redistribution of the gaze is not only aesthetic. It is ethical. The result is a cinema that listens first, a cinema beyond sight, and as such, the project operates on several registers at once. It is a scientific experiment, testing how far acoustic technologies can extend human perception. It is a political act, insisting on the recognition of other forms of intelligence and community that will hopefully shift the felt relation between human and world. » ",type:"text"},{text:"Verena Paravel",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"43c96f4d-4686-4e61-8cc0-abdd29ac371e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158383894502012,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1456x819/f0afe8fb02/2340be7b-479f-4d45-94ca-f961b1dee8be_3840x2160.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"28f8b6a2-04cd-41eb-aeba-6acd980c95dd",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Read the full interview with the founder of the Hodler Prize here",type:"text",marks:[{type:"link",attrs:{href:"https://www.refresh.art/interviews/anthony-van-den-bossche/",uuid:null,anchor:null,target:"_self",linktype:"url"}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ebb8f61a-76ce-4561-a163-e6229ed405a1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Hodler Prize 003 shorlist ",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Eighteen works in the running â ten books, three films, two video games, two exhibitions, one card deck, one podcast. Selected across all disciplines, published or translated into English in 2025, by a committee of nine, each member proposing two works. The long list was whittled down to nine.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hodler Prize 003 Committee",type:"text"}]},{type:"table",content:[{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mark Alizart",type:"text"}]}]}]},{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Alice Bucknell",type:"text"}]}]}]},{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Théo Casciani",type:"text"}]}]}]},{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Emanuele Coccia",type:"text"}]}]}]},{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Jean-Max Colard",type:"text"}]}]}]},{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Ottessa Moshfegh",type:"text"}]}]}]},{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hans Ulrich Obrist",type:"text"}]}]}]},{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Precious Okoyomon",type:"text"}]}]}]},{type:"tableRow",content:[{type:"tableCell",attrs:{colspan:1,rowspan:1,colwidth:null,backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Philippe Parreno",type:"text"}]}]}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-24 00:00",name:"Hodler Prize 003 ÷ A Three-Way Tie And A Special Witness Prize",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"b522fa5d-ee17-47e5-bdac-2f81dc2123c4",color:"#256059",plugin:"native-color-picker"}
77,hero_image:[{_uid:"696f6deb-fe18-44ed-9318-68f1db65f18d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:158387678936273,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1456x743/ab42fcd0ec/940fb4fc-22e4-46c0-8ab8-5ab746415f43_2478x1264.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-holder-prize",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-holder-prize",sort_by_date:null,position:-1050,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"8c10a3a1-5c61-4bb6-8d82-eafb83804735",first_published_at:"2026-03-24T13:15:08.434Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"LIVING ERRORS",created_at:"2026-03-12T17:24:09.733Z",published_at:"2026-04-03T15:36:10.889Z",updated_at:"2026-04-03T15:36:10.910Z",id:154200677344252,uuid:"001b04ad-c1e8-4a1e-8d0a-da6dff4c6c47",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"2a053a0f-9bfb-49f4-a436-6732d09139a9",title:"Living Errors",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:154219114432150,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/0900a9533e/eva-papamargariti_all-that-now-flows-through-us_2024.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"living errors, MARTINETZ, Sophia Naumann, Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, Mary-Audrey Ramirez, contemporary art exhibition, speculative biology, hybrid art, post-digital art, diversity and art, ecological art, technology and nature, non-human art, art and biology, mutant forms, generative error, systemic collapse, art review, contemporary art 2026,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A review of LIVING ERRORS at MARTINETZ: how Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez turn anomaly into argument for diversity, openness, and systemic change."}],_uid:"9609087a-43f8-41b7-ab7a-ea8de9019696",body:[{_uid:"a727f656-6187-4691-b685-64a4f66e74ed",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Sumptuous Power of the Anomaly",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"LIVING ERRORS' is a magnificent exhibition where three artists treat error not as failure but as the only honest starting point. They build creatures that belong to no existing taxonomy, hybrids suspended between the biological and the technological, the real and the not-yet-real. Their statement: a world that eliminates difference eliminates itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A living error is not a malfunction. It is not the gap between intention and outcome, nor the signal of a system breaking down. It is something altogether more generative: an unforeseen deviation that carries within it the seed of a new direction, a rupture that does not end a process but initiates one. The life forms that arise from such ruptures are by nature hybrid and ambiguous, resistant to fixed classification, perpetually in the act of becoming something that has no name yet. They have no category yet. That is precisely the point.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where diversity enters, not as an ethical aspiration or a curatorial gesture, but as a structural necessity. Openness to the foreign, the mutant, the unclassifiable, is not generosity. It is the condition of survival. Every system that has ever endured, whether biological, cultural, or informational, has done so by remaining porous, by absorbing what it could not predict. And every system that has ever collapsed has done so for the same reason: it closed in on itself. It mistook coherence for strength, purity for resilience, and the elimination of difference for order. Any fixed framework, however rational its foundations, however noble its intentions, carries within it the architecture of its own undoing. Rigidity is not stability. It is the first stage of catastrophe.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is this idea that \"LIVING ERRORS\", curated by Sophia Naumann at MARTINETZ Gallery, takes as its animating principle. The gallery is recast as a laboratory for speculative biology, a space where the very axioms of life are subject to aesthetic and critical inquiry, and where the anomaly is not corrected but cultivated.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"5816be27-6594-4ad8-bfad-8ac2ab4d7430",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219154691739,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2000x1589/197eb58661/katja-novitska_approximation_-2017.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Katja Novitska, \"Approximation\" (corn snake hatching twist), 2017 Digital print on aluminium, cutout display, acrylic glass 175 Ã 220 Ã 40 cm Courtesy of the artist and KRAUPA-TUSKANY ZEIDLER",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"16c0da15-fc14-4811-89a9-f712848dc77f",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the heart of this investigation are the works of Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez. Their respective practices converge on a shared frontier, one where the boundaries between the biological, the ecological, and the technological dissolve. The ontologically ambiguous entities they construct are not merfantasies; they are plausible propositions for life forms that elude our current taxonomies. These chimeras of flesh and wire, data and dust, are living errors precisely because they expose the inadequacy of the conceptual frameworks we impose on the world, revealing them as too coarse to capture the fine grain of emergent realities.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A unified vision connects these three distinct artistic inquiries. It is a perspective that deliberately decenters the human, viewing the non-human not as a subordinate or a threat, but as an agent of transformation. The work collectively resists the comfort of binary Cartesian oppositions, presenting entities that are neither fully natural nor wholly artificial, neither material fact nor pure fiction. They inhabit a liminal space of perpetual becoming, troubling the very categories we use to make sense of existence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"0f79d6c6-86ec-4073-80e9-2c0340e99c8d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154257012514457,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/608x720/00e5843385/mary-audrey-ramirez_bridge-baby-bear.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mary-Audrey Ramirez, \"Bridge Baby Bear,\" 2025 Digital print on satin 70 x 60 cm Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a584b3dc-a885-4c7f-92e9-3d71dea98ac7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154257012731547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3733x4979/9fdc8beca0/mary-audrey-ramirez_dracula-rabbit.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Mary-Audrey Ramirez, \"Dracula Rabbit\", 2026 3D printed sand 38 Ã 22.5 Ã 15.8 cm Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"57d6ca73-6854-4540-a544-c80c7faf5ce5",quote:"Diversity is the only system that has never failed",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"7b3161d0-5ea7-44c0-8a6c-c6c02a7b0f42",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219189040803,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3648x2819/c4676ce2ed/katja-novitskova_earthware-20210308.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Katja Novitska, \"Earthware\" (2021-03-08) In collaboration with PWR, 2023 UV ink transfer,epoxy clay,nail polish 120 Ã 164 Ã 3 cm Courtesy of the artist and KRAUPA-TUSKANY ZEIDLER",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1d546a3a-b071-4255-9bce-f0d7bc9ab3c0",component:"mobile-newsletter"}
77,{_uid:"36f6a523-31f3-4d32-a41c-2ff89bcc1a27",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154256112381417,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2250x3000/381584aeb4/eva-papamargariti.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eva Papamargariti, \"All that is hidden\"(2), 2023, courtesy the artist and MARTINETZ",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6fc5b051-dbf7-49ea-89fc-768341748788",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition's argument culminates in a principle of universal applicability, observable in ecosystems, genetic codes, and now, our global technological infrastructures. It is the principle that heterogeneity and co-evolution are the engines of a living world, while uniformity is a precursor to systemic collapse. An informational ecosystem that insulates itself from diverse external inputs, feeding only on its own recycled logic, is destined to degrade into a sterile and self-referential parody, an echo chamber that ultimately fades into silence. The living error, by contrast, is the intrusion of the outside. It is what keeps a system alive.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8ed8dfcc-33ce-4cb4-ba88-5ba407f5683e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958805319595,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8004x5191/3a1ea1e541/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5ffb247c-098b-4d6d-a06a-27ff0043cfe1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958806249388,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5363x7317/1c4283f8ee/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4e5945fc-bb95-4087-b15c-738ce698a6e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:161958803857321,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5001x7192/4773697669/living-errors_novitskovapapamargaritiramirez_1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Living Errors, exhibition view, MARTINETZ, Cologne, 2026 Courtesy of the artist and MARTINETZ, Cologne Photo: Tamara Lorenz",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3a9c1e4d-33d4-4f77-a874-96d036407b31",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"March 20th - April 30 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"MARTINETZ, Cologne (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-12 00:00",name:"The Sumptuous Power of÷The Anomaly",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"1833935a-e34f-4442-89b3-09304e25aee2",color:"#6d2170",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c31888c0-65c5-4452-bacd-293c5bc6d69b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:154219114432150,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1080/0900a9533e/eva-papamargariti_all-that-now-flows-through-us_2024.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Eva Papamargariti, All that now flows through us, 2024",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"living-errors",full_slug:"directory/reviews/living-errors",sort_by_date:null,position:-1030,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"1120ade4-782c-4d4a-8b11-70cd85be1d20",first_published_at:"2026-03-12T21:32:28.604Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"AGNIESZKA KURANT",created_at:"2026-03-11T05:24:18.985Z",published_at:"2026-03-11T13:09:57.685Z",updated_at:"2026-03-11T13:09:57.701Z",id:153669873631548,uuid:"54734525-f9c9-4bfe-bc51-92534257e48b",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"2d40f2f4-edcb-4d8e-b1d9-da3c1b205270",title:"recursion",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:153673866031366,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/970x548/072ff97309/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-06-40-16.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Agnieszka Kurant, Recursion, Marian Goodman Gallery, collective intelligence, co-evolution, algorithmic prediction, contemporary art, AI art, nonhuman intelligence, liquid crystal, ferrofluid, Uncomputables, Unthoughtforms, Recursivity, Alien Internet, Adjacent Possible, Sentimentite, Wordoid, Phantomatics, speculative art, post-digital art, Refresh magazine",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Agnieszka Kurant's Recursion at Marian Goodman Gallery explores collective intelligence, co-evolution, and the limits of algorithmic prediction through visually stunning new works."}],_uid:"9dcf507d-52d6-4d8c-adb2-d2fd45579448",body:[{_uid:"2579f607-cb07-49b0-abcd-136e8b8a56f4",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Crystals that grow from political data. 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77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Agnieszka Kurant explores creativity as a collective phenomenon, challenging the modern myth of individual authorship. Her works translate the idea that everything that exists results from the encounter of intelligences, forms of awareness and agency that meet, collide, and produce something neither could have reached alone. The paradigms of individualism and personal autonomy are displaced here in favour of collective personalities and polyphonic subjectivities, plural and hybrid, that Kurant convenes through her practice. At Marian Goodman Gallery in New York, she does not make objects in any conventional sense. She designs complex systems within which unpredictable forms can emerge from a multiplicity of organisms, human, animal, bacterial, algorithmic, each shaping and being shaped by the others in a process of continuous co-evolution. These are not closed systems with predetermined outputs but open, dynamic structures in which small variations produce consequences that no initial condition could have anticipated. Her role is structural, not expressive. And yet the results are, without exception, visually extraordinary.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"1575e685-a778-4bc1-bbb1-dd7dbc6b2e1c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153709120988489,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2320x1566/009a8ff0d6/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-09-00-25.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Uncomputables, 2026, the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8d3bc97a-24b7-4c48-9eea-9a9568327a55",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153712439289741,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/984x1330/fdff036fe3/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-08-54-46.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Unthoughtforms, 2026, the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0f284c21-4ecd-4c2a-9cda-a5b27e713e74",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153713239459893,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/932x1252/1308bf4cf3/j.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Unthoughtforms, 2026, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1fc0a5a1-2493-49bf-9c07-3f583210f81d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens on the gallery's street-level window with Future (Invention), the word \"future\" translated into fourteen languages, including Aymara, MÄori, and Yupno, cultures in which the future is understood as coming from behind, above, or below rather than lying ahead. Before you enter, the work has already shifted the ground beneath you.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Inside, Uncomputables and Unthoughtforms are the exhibition's centrepiece. Kurant reactivates the 1950s experiments of cybernetician Gordon Pask, who grew metal crystals in copper sulfate solutions to model a form of chemical computing. Here, the system is fed with AI-harvested socio-political and economic data, converted into electric currents and sound vibrations. The resulting structures, branching and tree-like, suspended in a luminous blue aquarium, are among the most quietly spectacular objects in recent contemporary art. They are physical records of emergent, unthought ideas, forms that no one designed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"82b00f9f-f221-4484-9093-608e37943cd8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153677888966964,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1568x1076/6c72b892d9/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-06-56-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Recursivity 3, 2024/2026, the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4c7f1fcc-1228-4809-b9bd-07720ee06f30",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153724028697702,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1766x1326/0e052dc71e/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-10-04-22.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Alien Internet 2, 2023/2026, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7fb577cc-503c-4135-809c-f9f42c41f1cc",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Recursivity\" presents a bronze chameleon inside a mirrored terrarium, its skin coated in liquid crystals that shift colour in response to an AI processing millions of social media users' speculations about the future. The sculpture is both a precise conceptual proposition and an object of considerable presence: the liquid crystal surface cat
77ches the light differently at every angle, the bronze casting is meticulous, and the whole thing pulses with a slow, almost biological rhythm.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Alien Internet\" is a shape-shifting cybernetic organism made of ferrofluid, continuously reshaped by the migration data of millions of wild animals including whales, bats, elephants, and sponges. Suspended in an electromagnetic field, it moves with an uncanny, liquid intelligence. The work conceives of the biosphere as a single, sentient communication network, one in which species do not simply coexist but co-evolve through the data they generate and exchange. It looks exactly like one.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Adjacent Possible\" inscribes AI-generated Paleolithic signs onto stone using pigments produced by genetically engineered bacteria. The stones are beautiful objects, dense with the weight of deep time, and the signs on their surface carry the strangeness of a language that almost existed. Phantomatics extends this into film, presenting AI-generated languages spoken by simulated voices, while Wordoid uses neurotechnology to visualize a wordless conversation between multiple minds, affect and sensation rendered as shifting three-dimensional holographic forms.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Sentimentite\", a mineral created from sixty pulverized historical currencies, shaped by algorithms analyzing emotional responses to major world events, closes the loop. It is a geological object that should not exist, and it is genuinely beautiful.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"4c305f36-c04d-4ee8-8648-91b43ee0df72",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153731017997867,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/938x674/4f96f61fea/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-10-28-04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Adjacent Possible, 2021,courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"274eed3c-bacd-4b87-81fc-dd7dc83dc301",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153729927519640,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/952x684/c836621c8d/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-10-27-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Adjacent Possible, 2021, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"811cd12a-1d88-451d-a15c-c9e04e073f0e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153727716351265,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x1332/715e6aeda3/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-10-19-18.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Agnieszka Kurant Sentimentite, 2022, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1c96300b-1f93-485d-b344-251279fdb093",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Across all these works, an underlying argument takes shape. We live under the pressure of systems that treat the future as a resource to be managed, where predictive analysis and risk modelling convert what has not yet happened into something already owned. Kurant's practice is a direct counter to this logic. Her bio-geo-technological processes demonstrate that evolution, whether biological, chemical, or social, is never a solitary affair. It is always co-evolution: species, systems, and technologies transforming one another in feedback loops that no single agent controls and no model fully captures. The error, the mutation, the unforeseen outcome: these are not failures to be corrected but the very conditions under which new forms of life and thought become possible. No algorithm is neutral. No dataset is complete. The internet is not a commons but a largely privatised space, and the intelligence it appears to generate is built on the invisible labor of millions of organisms, human and non-human alike, who have no say
77in what is done with what they produce.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kurant's works insist on the irreducibility of the unpredictable within complex systems. Whether biological, social, or computational, complex systems share a fundamental property: they cannot be fully modelled from the outside. Their behavior emerges from the interaction of their parts, not from any single governing logic. Artistic creativity, scientific discovery, and social change have always emerged from accidents, from the unplanned collision of forces that no model anticipated. The idea of a perfectly controllable world, where margins of error are reduced to zero, is not a utopia but a form of closure. These works propose something different: that the future is a collective matter, and that building it requires holding open the space for what cannot be calculated.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery (New York), until ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"21 March 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-09 00:00",name:"\"Recursion\"÷The Unknown Is the Point",author:"Refresh Team (USA)",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"d81b4b48-1afe-43e0-bbdd-28273f592750",color:"#728b5d",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"cc233853-fa79-4f25-bc3f-5ec756bb1f3d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153712090543928,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2040x1540/43ae5208a5/screenshot-2026-03-11-at-08-59-45.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Agnieszka Kuran,recursion, install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"agnieszka-kurant",full_slug:"directory/reviews/agnieszka-kurant",sort_by_date:null,position:-1020,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"74ad32ca-a5f6-4b05-81fd-13a629f35afd",first_published_at:"2026-03-11T09:45:43.652Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Technologies of Relation",created_at:"2026-03-10T14:24:13.518Z",published_at:"2026-03-10T21:13:10.517Z",updated_at:"2026-03-10T21:13:10.531Z",id:153448667243150,uuid:"5bb77e29-db88-452e-92c8-5d902d9fbe00",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"9fa3b36c-474f-4b3a-b592-da55b260ab66",title:"Technologies of Relation",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:153450609703822,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1446x886/60669543fe/rs173151_back-desert.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Technologies of Relation, MASS MoCA, post-anthropocentrism, ancestral technology, biosphere coexistence, AI and ecology, LakÈóta futurism, Kite, Pelenakeke Brown, Neema Githere, non-Western technology, contemporary art, relational technology, ecological kinship, Susan Cross, digital healing, AI ethics, other-than-human, co-evolution, Refresh magazine",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA reframes AI and ancestral knowledge as tools for coexistence, proposing a post-anthropocentric vision of technology and the biosphere"}],_uid:"287da8ed-5588-426a-9709-069d59ee6c5d",body:[{_uid:"12135b49-63ef-4c61-86a2-eeed5fbb92c7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Technologies of Coexistence",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists in this exhibition refuse the binary of technology as salvation or threat. They trace instead the asymmetries of power that shape how digital systems are built and for whom. Against this, they propose a vision of technology that is relational, plural, and genuinely liberatory.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a story of technology that is also a story of separation: of a human mind standing apart from a world it seeks to command. In this telling, technology is the instrument of that command, the lever by which the world is made to bend to a human will. \"Technologies of Relation\" at MASS MoCA, North Adam (USA) is a quiet but decisive refusal of this story. It gathers a group of artists who start from a different premise: that technology is not a tool for mastering the world, but a medium for entering into relation with it, a grammar for speaking with the other-than-human. It suggests that the framework for biosphere coexistence has always been a technological one.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Curated by Susan Cross, the show sidesteps the familiar anxieties of the digital age. The artists here are concerned with how technology might decenter the human altogether. Their research leads them away from the rhetoric of innovation and toward the deep time of geology, the logic of ancestral practices, and the spiritual cosmologies that have never recognized the human as the sole proprietor of intelligence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"2adb5d2a-44ed-443f-bad6-798cfe939092",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153535644479907,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1446x886/8a46c4ee18/rs173823_-main-promo-1.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Morehshin Allahyari Speculations on Capture, 2024 (film stills)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"73767c9d-b00c-4573-80de-600fb3f53d84",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153521565044096,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7808x5208/062ed07f64/rs176654_20260220_technologies_of_relation_192113.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Pelenakeke Brown, Reverb, 2025-2026 (detail) as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Kaelan Burkett courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"346343d1-8b17-4d57-8959-ea1fd00cc8e9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153525453569536,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7842x5229/b3de24d113/rs176657_20260220_technologies_of_relation_183416.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ô²Õ¡ÕªÕ¡Õ¯ ÕÕ¡ÕµÕ¸Õ² (One Who Looks at the Cup: Querent), 2024-2026, as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Kaelan Burkett courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"13e6ad2d-941c-4970-8197-147effffa498",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs critical hinge is the reframing of technology as an act of translation. Morehshin Allahyariâs film installation, \"Speculations on Capture\", mourns the acquisition of Persian scientific instruments by Western museums, imagining an alternative future where these celestial tools, astrolabes, globes, talismanic bowls, are returned to the cultures that created them. The work is a powerful act of decolonial resistance, a claim for a technological heritage that predates and exceeds the Western narrative.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Pelenakeke Brownâs monumental tapa cloth panels,\" Reverb,\" posit a common grammar between the patterns of Samoan tatau and the characters of a computer keyboard. Through the Samoan concept of vÄâthe relational space that constitutes all thingsâBrown treats the keyboard not as a universal interface, but as a local dialect, a set of glyphs to be brought into dialogue with an ancestral script. The body here is not a user, but a medium, a living membrane between worlds.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This conception of the human as an interface is also at the heart of Ô²Õ¡ÕªÕ¡Õ¯ ÕÕ¡ÕµÕ¸Õ² / \"One Who Looks at the Cup\": Querent, a collective work by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Dahlia Elsayed, Andrew Demirjian, and Danny Snelson that subjects an AI to the diasporic Armenian art of coffee ground reading. The algorithm here is not an instrument of calculation, but a novice, an apprentice to a form of knowledge that is feminine, embodied, and resistant to datafication. The work is a quiet but incisive reversal of the dominant technological ethos. It asks not what information can be extracted, but what kind of relationship can be formed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3e8476a1-61e3-45f1-ae89-208d14579461",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Other artists in the show excavate the material history of computation itself. Taeyoon Choiâs jacquard-knit banners, Interweaving Poetic Code, emphasize the historical ties between computing and textiles, translating binary code into woven patterns. His screen prints, \"Towards the Uncomputable\", sketch a concise history of computationâs social and material impacts, from the rare earth minerals in our devices to the limits of what can be proven or calculated.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Roopa Vasudevanâs work looks back to the internetâs earlier, more open-ended possibilities. Requiem for the Early Internet commemorates the lost digital spaces of the 1990s and 2000s, while \"Slow Response \"(Drawings) consists of 100 hand-drawn QR codes, a deliberately inefficient process that questions the speed and instant gratification we now associate with technology. Her False Idols series enshrines algorithms in stained glass, suggesting that for many, technology has taken on the mystery and power of a religion.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"dcaac7c7-ef06-4892-b1c6-fbe8bc892f98",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153536893055478,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5137x7756/57eb2cd08b/taeyoon-choi.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Taeyoon Choi, Towards the Uncomputable (detail), 2025âââ2026, as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Jon Verney courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9a0fcab2-520f-4aba-a98f-6639a1a878cd",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153539913101989,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4420x5203/382bbb8017/roopa-vasudevan.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Roopa Vasudevan, Slow Response I (Drawings), 2021â2022 as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Jon Verney courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"44205bac-1f38-4e5a-8833-55ff9f09553b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"If technology is a language, who, or what, is speaking? For Kite, the answer is the planet itself. Their installation, WiÄháÈpi WóihaÅbleya (Dreamlike Star), is a work of stunning LakÈóta futurism, a cosmological model in which stones, stars, and machines are co-participants in a ceremony of existence. âThe agency of stones,â they have written, âconnects directly to the question of AI, because AI is made from the materials of the earth.â This is not a metaphor. It is a geological proposition. It reframes machine intelligence not as a human creation, but as a planetary phenomenon, an emergent property of the earthâs own material life. The ethics of AI, in this light, are not a matter of human-centered design, but of ecological kinship.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Neema Githereâs Data Healing Recovery Clinic offers a practical application of this ethics. The installation is a ritual space, a clinic for tending to the wounds of the digital that draws on African Indigenous wellness practices. Githereâs AI is a âmimicry-oracle,â a non-human collaborator in a process of collective repair. This is a vision of technology as a practice of care, not of control.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Lauren Lee McCarthyâs LAUREN: Anyone Home? situates these questions in our most intimate spaces. An Alexa-like smart device named LAUREN monitors visitors, provoking questions about the line between intimacy and privacy, convenience and agency. It asks whether it feels different to have a human, rather than a corporate device, watching over us, and what kind of labor we expect from our machines.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"901a0d40-87a8-40ea-9af5-b3b48a867c19",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153526568148614,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7909x6494/3020921b01/rs176683_20260220_technologies_of_relation_135659-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Kite, WicÌháhÌpi WóihaÅbleya (Dreamlike Star), 2024, as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Kaelan Burkett courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5c46f064-ff7c-4be7-b74b-24e66d4ad33c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153541142631129,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4451x5624/a5a8bb4492/rs176600_galleryguide-6.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lauren Lee McCarthy,LAUREN: Anyone Home? (detail view), 2024â2026, as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Jon Verney courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"c0f58dca-c6ef-4df4-9192-5f0581c588a9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153542185702121,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7886x5265/605822f989/rs176655_20260220_technologies_of_relation_193749-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nkisi Net, 2024â2026 as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, February 21, 2026. Photo: Kaelan Burkett courtesy of MASS MoCA.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5b55a505-22b0-4d4f-a01f-6c1a184746a7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Technologies of Relationâ does not offer a solution to the problem of technology. It suggests the problem was in the question. By starting from a different set of premises, the artists in this exhibition tune into a different frequency. They are not prophets of a new age, but archivists of a knowledge that has always been present, in the material of the earth, in the wisdom of ancestors, in the untranslatable logics of other cultures. They remind us that technology is not a destiny, but a vast, branching network of possibilities. The work is to learn to inhabit those possibilities, not as masters, but as kin, in a world that does not belong to us. The world has not ended. It has just become larger",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"862fb11c-cfcf-4112-a657-ab4b496739ab",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"MASS MoCA, North Adams (USA) - until Spring 2027",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-09 00:00",name:"The Long Technology÷A Grammar of Coexistence",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f5bc7a32-32cb-4de5-bf78-2f16be34e97f",color:"#5e5263",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"86a39548-e07a-4a08-a9e6-0406c356af2f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153542185702121,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7886x5265/605822f989/rs176655_20260220_technologies_of_relation_193749-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nkisi Net, 2024â2026 as installed in Technologies of Relation at MASS MoCA",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"technologies-of-relation",full_slug:"directory/reviews/technologies-of-relation",sort_by_date:null,position:-1010,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"d0827427-e091-4a4f-8685-3fc4e6d2d023",first_published_at:"2026-03-10T20:54:09.392Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"QUEERE MODERNE",created_at:"2026-03-09T14:10:49.073Z",published_at:"2026-03-09T16:58:14.044Z",updated_at:"2026-03-09T16:58:14.061Z",id:153091477830646,uuid:"8c4624ae-9be1-4d30-94aa-a46744b6d6ec",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"93d5a5f3-9d41-47d6-86ad-1a2a974f0bd7",title:"Reframing Modernism: A Queer Counter-Narrative",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:153095131891665,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/32a8d0a32e/queere-moderne_marie-laurencin_les-jeunes-filles_moderna-museet.tif",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"queer modernism, K20 Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, queer art history, Anke Kempkes, Isabelle Malz, Rosa Bonheur, Claude Cahun, Marlow Moss, Richmond Barthé, Surrealism, abstract art, gender, modernism, contemporary art exhibition, LGBTQ art, queer avant-garde, art review",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"K20 Düsseldorf rewrote modernism from the inside. Queer Modernism 1900â1950 was the most necessary exhibition of the year â and one of the most visually and politically alive."}],_uid:"511a5c12-a698-40ef-95df-7c4260113206",body:[{_uid:"b2bcf576-50ac-4007-9d1f-d5e05650a9ef",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Exhibition That Changes the Frame : A Queer Counter-Narrative.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A landmark exhibition at K20 in Düsseldorf (European Union) recovers the queer artists that modernism sidelined, and asks what the movement looks like when they are finally brought back in. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"\"Queer Modernism 1900-1950\" exhibition looks at modernism the way the world actually is: plural, entangled, and irreducible to a single norm. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"The Kunstsammlun, does not propose a more inclusive version of 20th-century art history. It proposes a different one altogether. The distinction matters. An additive approach would simply slot overlooked names into an existing framework, leaving the framework itself intact. This exhibition does the opposite: it treats the canon as the problem, not the solution, and builds its argument from there.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5f7ffbac-828f-47dc-b11f-77dc65ca780e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The story of modernism has long been presented as a linear progression, a heroic tale dominated by a handful of male, heterosexual figures whose aesthetic revolutions were somehow self-generated, untouched by the messy realities of desire, gender, and social transgression. The canon is not a neutral force. It is a construct, shaped by institutions and power structures that have systematically excluded voices that do not conform. Queer Modernism confronts this with unusual directness, and it confronts the fragmentary nature of its own archive with equal honesty. The lives of many queer individuals, particularly those from less privileged backgrounds or the Global South, were never deemed worthy of preservation. Marriages of convenience, pseudonyms, destroyed correspondence, and estates that still resist queer interpretations of their artists' legacies: all of this points to a long and ongoing effort to normalize the past into something tidier than
77it ever was. What the official sources conceal is often more revealing than what they openly show.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"5a718b0d-6cf2-4319-ab4c-dbadf2504224",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153119770486450,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1160x1552/416efe2c33/screenshot-2026-03-09-at-16-54-51.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Portrait Of Rosa Bonheur With a Bull (1857) Ãdouard-Louis Dubufe (French, 1819/1820-1883)",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"04be8e4f-ae6f-44bc-afd9-b50ca735d5b1",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition opens with a prologue centered on the 19th-century painter Rosa Bonheur. Ãdouard Dubufe's 1857 portrait of her alongside a bull, a composition Bonheur herself insisted upon after rejecting a more conventional pose, sets the tone for everything that follows. Bonheur, who obtained official permission to wear men's clothing in public and lived openly in a same-sex partnership, represents a lineage of defiance that long predates the 20th century. Her presence here is a deliberate: she reminds us that queer life was never absent from art history, only made absent from its telling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ed5c7ec5-e64c-47ba-ad86-1bbbbe16d306",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From this starting point, the exhibition unfolds across eight thematic chapters, each one a distinct act of excavation. In Modern Arcadia, mythology becomes a form of camouflage. Ludwig von Hofmann's Die Quelle (1913, oil on canvas, 75 à 92 cm, ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Thomas-Mann-Archiv), a canvas of sunlit male nudes that Thomas Mann acquired in 1914 and kept in every home he occupied throughout his life, is one of the exhibition's most quietly charged works. The painting's classical naturalism functions as a screen: the desire is present, the deniability is built in. Lotte Laserstein's Ich und mein Modell (oil on canvas, 49.5 à 69.5 cm, Private Collection) operates differently, with an intimacy that is domestic and direct. The double portrait of the artist alongside her lover refuses the mythological alibi entirely. Glyn Warren Philpot and Ethel Walker complete a room that makes a single, precise observation: homoerotic desire was woven into European modernism from the beginning. The exhibition does not decode this material in a heavy-handed way. It places it in a room together and lets the accumulation do the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"870460c2-6864-403c-b398-824a5f7ad1e6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153121363773481,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1532x1178/d4af381852/photo-stephan-bosch.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ludwig von Hofmann, Die Quelle, 1913, oil on canvas, 75 à 92 cm, ETH-Bibliothek ZuÌrich, Thomas-Mann-Archiv / Photo: Stephan Bösch",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"09361c6a-2f96-4816-88eb-fdc0ecfa6f40",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153121977661535,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4629x3255/adae2ecc93/lotte-laserstein-ich-und-mein-modell-oil-on-canvas-49-5-x-69-5-cm-private-collection-courtesy-agnews-london-vg-bild-kunst-bonn-2025.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lotte Laserstein, Ich und mein Modell, oil on canvas, 49.5 à 69.5 cm, Private Collection, Courtesy Agnews, London © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025",auto
77play:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6df74d15-cd01-495a-aa48-20f1bdee3516",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sapphic Modernism reconstructs the Parisian world of Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein, whose salons functioned as laboratories for an alternative modernity. Romaine Brooks's Portrait Marchesa Casati (oil on canvas, 248 à 120 cm, Collection Lucile Audouy) dominates one wall with the kind of authority that makes you understand why Brooks was feared as much as admired. The painting is monumental in scale and in presence: the Marchesa, elongated and spectral against a dark ground, is rendered with a precision that is also a form of possession. Nearby, Gluck's Bank Holiday Monday (c. 1937, oil on canvas, 23.7 à 18.7 cm, Private collection, courtesy of The Fine Art Society Ltd) makes its case in an entirely different register. The painting is small, barely 24 centimetres high, but it carries a quiet intensity that larger works in the room cannot match. Gluck, who dropped the birth name Hannah Gluckstein and adopted a gender-neutral identity decades before the vocabulary for it existed, is a particularly resonant presence in this section. Marie Laurencin's Young Women (Unga kvinnor, 1910, oil on canvas, 115 à 146 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) and Danseuses Espagnoles (oil on canvas, 150 à 95 cm, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris) complete a section that refuses to sentimentalize its subject: these were not marginal figures seeking tolerance. They were central to the cultural life of their time.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8a2e2c40-a7a9-4e55-a0d0-1e6afb35a10e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153127753788396,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3025x2337/423aeab6c5/queere-moderne_marie-laurencin_les-jeunes-filles_moderna-museet-3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Marie Laurencin, Unga kvinnor (Young Women), 1910, oil on canvas, 115 x 146 cm (unframed), 124 x 156 x 5.5 cm (framed), Donation in 1966 under the will of Rolf de Maré, Moderna Museet, Stockholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0b676ce7-fd0b-49b5-b65a-5b9a557cddab",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153123771398685,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4712x10050/6a60031455/pls-hold-with-use_queere-moderne_romaine-brooks_the-marchesa-casati-1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Romaine Brooks, Portrait Marchesa Casati, oil on canvas, 248 à 120 cm, Collection Lucile Audouy, © photo Thomas Hennocque",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"3409a0df-fa39-4dba-844e-efa4df4741ec",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153123573422569,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4440x5484/40fe28465d/queere-moderne_gluck_-bank_holiday_monday-_c-1937.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Gluck, Bank Holiday Monday, c. 1937, Painting, oil on canvas, 23.7 à 18.7 cmâ Private collection, courtesy of The Fine Art Society Ltd © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c636f52a-dad3-4976-a726-5a62981cf8ff",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Queer Readings of Abstraction is the exhibition's most intellectually demanding section, and the most rewarding. Mondrian imbued his Neo-Plastic compositions with a hierarchical gender binary, in which the masculine principle was deemed superior. In direct response, Marlow Moss's double-line constructions offer an abstract language of equality and non-binary relationships. Anton Prinner'
77s Double personnage (1937, original wood sculpture, 63 à 30 à 18 cm, Collection of Kálmán Makláry, Budapest) extends this argument into three dimensions. Two bodies merge into an ambiguous, unified form that resists any clear gender distinction, post-cubist in its formal vocabulary but entirely singular in its implications. Jacoba van Heemskerck and Louise Janin complete a room that makes a precise and original claim: even in its most non-representational forms, abstraction is never ideologically neutral.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"3b8df274-e59f-419b-b6cd-9bf8b7e9aab4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153125265595043,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1242x1766/4ccdfdc59f/screenshot-2026-03-09-at-17-27-39.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Anton Prinner, Double personnage, 1937, Original-Holzskulptur, 63 x 30 x 18 cm, Sammlung Kálmán Makláry, Budapest",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"ed280abd-2098-412b-b418-eabee2bef3d3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153125237521058,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1276x1808/a570b006d9/screenshot-2026-03-09-at-17-27-56.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Anton Prinner, Double personnage, 1937, Original-Holzskulptur, 63 x 30 x 18 cm, Sammlung Kálmán Makláry, Budapest",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7b3a92e2-e510-4b5b-9e13-a60ba4211f63",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Queer Avant-Gardes and Intimate Networks traces the transatlantic circuits connecting Berlin, London, New York, and Paris. Nils Dardel's The Dying Dandy (Den döende dandyn, 1918, oil on canvas, 140 à 180 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) is one of the exhibition's most arresting works: a figure in vivid costume, attended by mourners whose grief is tender and unashamed, painted in a palette that owes nothing to the dominant aesthetics of its moment. His Visit to an Eccentric Lady (Visit how excentrisk dam, 1921, oil on canvas, 130.5 à 97.5 cm, Moderna Museet, Stockholm) confirms Dardel as one of the show's most distinctive voices, one carrying a Nordic melancholy entirely his own. Pavel Tchelitchew, George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Duncan Grant, and Beauford Delaney complete a section that refuses the myth of the solitary modernist genius. These artists worked in relation to one another, and the exhibition makes that visible.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"08f644ed-0616-4df8-a0b4-f933c468068f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153126846647183,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3217x4393/991c7287c0/queere-moderne_nils-dardel_visit-hos-excentrisk-dam_moderna-museet-2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nils Dardel, Visit how excentrisk dam (Visit to an Eccentric Lady), 1921, oil on canvas, 130.5 x 97.5 cm (unframed), Donation in 1953 from Friends of the Moderna Museet, The Moderna Museet, Stockholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2cfeb24d-061e-4741-a74c-e5a83aa48ac2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The final chapters are harder to stand in. Queer Resistance since 1933 documents what happened when the freedoms these artists had carved out were systematically destroyed. Jeanne Mammen's withdrawal into internal exile in Berlin, Hannah Höch and Til Brugman's increasingly coded photomontages, Toyen's surrealist landscapes encoding desire in symbolic language to evade censorship: the exhibition holds the complexity without flattening it into a single heroic narrative. Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore distributed thous
77ands of anti-regime leaflets on Nazi-occupied Jersey, disguised as sisters, before being arrested by the Gestapo on July 25, 1944 and sentenced to death. The exhibition is also honest about Jean Cocteau and Romaine Brooks, who collaborated with fascist regimes as a means of self-protection, a moral complexity that a lesser exhibition would have quietly omitted.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The epilogue closes the show on a note of deliberate restraint. Sonja Sekula's Silence (1951), dedicated to John Cage, and Cage's legendary 4'33\" (1952), silence itself staged as cultural and political resistance against the McCarthy-era Lavender Scare, are not endings. They are withdrawals into forms that could not be easily seized or destroyed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"aba9cca5-cf43-4d3e-bbc1-8aef9b06bd00",quote:"\"Queer Modernism 1900 to 1950\" succeeds because it refuses to simply add new names to an old list. It challenges the very criteria by which greatness has been judged and history has been written.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"82053f81-350f-4e85-80f2-0bb7bb0ed705",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"By excavating these forgotten avant-gardes, the exhibition does more than fill a gap in the historical record; it proposes a more complex, more truthful, and ultimately more liberating understanding of modernism itself.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition is also, it should be said, exceptionally well-documented. Conceived by art historian and author Anke Kempkes and curated alongside Isabelle Malz and Isabelle Tondre at the Kunstsammlung, the project drew on a wide circle of queer scholars, artists, and specialists across disciplines. A dedicated queer advisory board shaped not only the intellectual framework of the show but also its educational program and public activities. The accompanying bilingual catalogue, published by Hirmer Verlag and running to 304 pages with approximately 200 illustrations, includes essays by Jonathan D. Katz, Tirza True Latimer, Diana Souhami, and the curators themselves. It is the kind of scholarly apparatus that signals a long-term commitment to the subject, not a temporary institutional gesture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"But the exhibition's most significant claim is not directed at the present. It is directed at the past. By examining the queer spaces that existed within early modernism, the show makes clear that diversity was not something the 20th century needed to learn or earn. It was already there, operating through coded languages, intimate networks, and acts of quiet or explicit defiance, long before the vocabulary to name it existed. The plurality of the world was never a recent discovery. It was always the condition. What changed, over time, was simply the willingness to see it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is not a corrective exhibition. It is a perceptual one.It asks us to look differently. And in that sense, it carries a lesson that extends well beyond the early 20th century: that the frameworks through which we read the world are not fixed, and that resetting them is sometimes the only honest move available. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At a moment when queer communities face renewed hostility across many parts of the world, the act of making this history visible is not a cultural luxury. It is a political one. For the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, this exhibition is also a form of institutional self-examination, a willingness to interrogate its own collection history and the assumptions that shaped it. That kind of critical self-awareness, directed inward as much as outward, is what gives the project its lasting weight.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"56e2ac5d-b660-4482-a0da-7220d9b1b8db",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K20, Dusseldorf (European Union)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"until 15/02/2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-09 00:00",name:"Reframing Modernism÷A Queer Counter-Narrative",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"cc4f92f3-2385-457b-92e7-316bc9e5b24b",color:"#bc9a8b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"6f8c08ce-e5d2-4c0b-bf75-051cc7987bc8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:153094792849315,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1894x1470/e196be2c64/screenshot-2026-03-09-at-15-24-02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nils Dardel, Den döende dandyn (The Dying Dandy), 1918, oil on canvas, 140 à 180 cm (unframed), 163.8 x 204 x 5 cm (framed), Moderna Museet, Stockholm",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"queere-moderne",full_slug:"directory/reviews/queere-moderne",sort_by_date:null,position:-1000,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"a9f32e91-a606-472c-ae38-dbed14fd2892",first_published_at:"2026-03-09T16:47:17.702Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Lux Miranda Raises the Stakes",created_at:"2026-03-02T23:59:04.446Z",published_at:"2026-03-07T03:19:36.413Z",updated_at:"2026-03-07T03:19:36.431Z",id:150758786880381,uuid:"7c2f1ca4-1f2d-4511-8422-1a5cbc1e0ca4",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c3af2bfc-189b-4d9c-bc2b-9c5f4a78ee67",title:"ENDLESS INCANTATIONS ",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:150767846102161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7360x4912/b3b811f08f/260109_luxmiranda_292.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Lux Miranda, Endless Incantations, T H E P I L L, contemporary art Paris, tapestry and sculpture, queer art, plasma-cut steel, wool and metal, embodied practice,, abstract art, , exhibition review, Paris 2026,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"At T H E P I L L Paris, Lux Miranda fills the gallery with hand-tufted tapestries, plasma-cut steel, and a queer symbolic language built from months of physical labour. One of 2026's best."}],_uid:"0dd17ade-7dc1-4303-abbf-63b433214c39",body:[{_uid:"54b0cc93-52e5-405d-a954-a87e246153d8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"No render farm, no algorithm, no screen doing the heavy lifting. \"Endless Incantations\" was still one of the most contemporary shows in Paris to date. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Lux Miranda ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"explores queer abstraction and meta archeology through tapestry and metalwork. The genius artist works with wool and fire-cut steel, with bare hands and months of labour and lands at the precise frequency of the present.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"You do not look at this exhibition. You get caught in it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"T H E P I L L is a small gallery. Miranda makes it feel like a landscape, one that has been through something, that carries the residue of a conflict you cannot name but recognise immediately. A tapestry the height of a room. Steel forms that hover between weapon and relic. The light doing things it shouldn't. The whole space vibrating at a frequency just below speech.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Miranda's practice is built on a single, radical premise: that the body is the site of knowledge, and that making is a form of thinking that no other process can replicate. Every work in this show begins as a drawing, not a sketch, not a proposal, but a full act of attention. The notebooks are daily, relentless, meditative. Forms surface from that practice the way things surface from deep water: slowly, under pressure, changed by the journey. Those forms then move into material, into the physical resistance of wool accumulated stitch by stitch over months, into the controlled violence of a handheld plasma torch cutting through steel. The hand is never abstracted out of the process. Its tremor is in the work.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"38b6f876-6e89-478a-ad3e-bbdb4e76f527",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150769845580958,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8256x5504/14274edf13/1-endless-incantations-exhibition-view.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1877c9b7-cbe8-454d-8024-50b285c12dbe",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:151700152134274,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5173x7058/dd294e2ca9/underworld-conv.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, metal spikes 245 x 285 x 15 cm courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9688b826-4313-464d-84d0-1c8a5dfbd191",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The tapestries are extraordinary objects. Dense, warm, almost breathing, and then interrupted, punctured, by metal spikes that catch the light and hold it hostage. There is nothing decorative happening here. Miranda is building a grammar, one that draws on medieval iconography, Buddhist philosophy, queer counter-culture, and the visual logic of armour, not to quote any of it, but to forge something that belongs to none of these traditions and all of them at once. ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ebddd815-969f-4135-94ba-07d158e767d4",quote:"The result is a symbolic language that feels genuinely new, genuinely hard-won.",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"398a05b0-b13c-48cc-ac90-609b5dfae328",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150773267821740,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/4912x7360/8765355555/3-lux-portrait-by-boris-camaca.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, metal spikes 245 x 285 x 15 cm,courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c13ee0dc-acd9-4b8c-abb2-aa428460c815",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150773128246443,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5504x8256/8b80ae5fd4/4-underworld-conversation-detail.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda All The Nightmares Cross The Same River - Underworld conversation, Paris, 2024 / 2025 Wool tapestry, (detail), courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L,photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"62341fff-9c63-4d7f-b328-bf6a6416eda6",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:150767846102161,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/7360x4912/b3b811f08f/260109_luxmiranda_292.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:" Portrait photo by Boris Camaca",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2ff0df28-b68f-45ac-a903-ebc44e48a377",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The steel sculptures extend the same logic into three dimensions. Plasma-cut by hand, some mirror-polished to a finish that reflects the room back at itself, others lacquered in the iridescent tints of automotive bodywork, they read like artefacts from a civilisation operating on different rules. They are beautiful in the way that things built for serious purposes are beautiful, not despite their function but because of it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Harmony Coryn, Miranda's life partner and a significant presence in the Parisian underground, provides the show's sound design and has made a short video portrait of Miranda that plays alongside the exhibition. It is a quiet, precise film, domestic light, studio gestures, the specific attention of someone watching someone they know completely. It does not explain the work. It deepens it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At the opening, the harpist Ange Halliwell performed in front of the central tapestry. For a few minutes, the boundary between object and event dissolved entirely. That is the register Miranda is working in: not art as product, but art as a sustained act of presence.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
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77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sound design & Video : Harmony Coryn, Harpist performer : Ange Halliwell ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Photos artworks and install shots by Rebecca Fanuele - Portrait by ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:"Boris Camaca",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-21 00:00",name:"\"Endless Incantations\" ÷ Lux Miranda Raises the Stakes",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"29ea11f3-dc86-485c-88d4-d0d18d94b41a",color:"#172053",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"d131de91-3755-4208-8be4-2ab7abe16e08",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150773760689326,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3993x2593/c0b884fc2a/8-deep-green-detail.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Lux Miranda DEEP GREEN, 2025 Handheld plasma-cut steel, tinted car clear coast 6,5 x 30 x 1,5 cm, courtesy the artist and T H E P I L L, photo by Rebecca Fanuele",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"lux-miranda-raises-the-stakes",full_slug:"directory/reviews/lux-miranda-raises-the-stakes",sort_by_date:null,position:-990,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"b9057d17-d20f-4d60-8efe-27c2eeef8030",first_published_at:"2026-03-03T01:35:18.653Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"The Thinking Ocean",created_at:"2026-03-01T22:48:47.957Z",published_at:"2026-03-02T08:09:07.739Z",updated_at:"2026-03-02T08:09:07.756Z",id:150387621752738,uuid:"6b09d566-8a81-47fa-9c09-8936cf4040a5",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"22df923d-e273-4f44-82bc-0f1b8562fedc",title:"the Thinking Ocean",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:150397656870419,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2960x1608/8496c5f63d/screenshot-2026-03-02-at-00-29-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"The Thinking Ocean, Memo Akten, Katie Hofstadter, Whitney Museum, artport, digital art, post-anthropocentric art, ecological art, non-extractive art, post-Cartesian, fluid dynamics,ocean intelligence, net art, new media art, art and ecology, art and nature, art and technology, post-Anthropocene, environmental art, immersive digital art, computational art,PHILIPPE RISS-SCHMIDT, CHRISTIANE PAUL",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"The Whitney Museum commissions The Thinking Ocean by Memo Akten & Katie Hofstadter: a post-anthropocentric digital artwork where the ocean \"thinks\"."}],_uid:"9561c720-f80d-47e4-8ccb-596237d5c6bb",body:[{_uid:"adda5556-a2e8-4cc8-be49-8e628a88efe3",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Whitney Museum, New York (USA) has left the comfort of the screen behind. \"The Thinking Ocean\" plunges into deeper territory: the ecological, the evolutionary, the non-human. Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter deliver exactly the work this moment demands.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Something is shifting. The Anthropocene, that geological label for humanity's dominion over the planet, is no longer a stable category. It is cracking under the weight of its own contradictions, and in the fissures, something new is trying to take shape. Artists are among the first to sense it, to name it, to give it form. Across studios, institutions, and screens, emerging and pioneering artists are illuminating this pivotal threshold with unusual clarity, nurturing what is trying to bloom while the old order makes its final, thunderous bow. The exhibitions, worldwilde, multiplying around this moment are not an aesthetic responses to ecological crisis. They are acts of imagination at the edge of a paradigm shift, brain food for a
77world that has not yet found the language for what comes next.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"It is also, it must be said, a genuinely bold move on the Whitney's part. For an institution long associated with the canon of American art and, more recently, with the codified territory of digital and net art, to step fully into the ecological conversation is not a given. It signals a willingness to move beyond the usual suspects, the familiar debates around screens, interfaces, and algorithmic aesthetics, and to engage with the deeper, more urgent question of what art can actually do at a moment of planetary reckoning. Memo Akten and Katie Hofstadter rise to that challenge with brilliance. Their practice, grounded in both rigorous research and genuine poetic sensibility, is exactly the kind of work this conversation demands.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"183866ee-d31b-4ffa-916e-4b68ab362416",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"4df624b1-87a4-48c0-aac2-0678beb1a61a",poster:{id:150397657185812,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2482x1400/fe9c83bb14/screenshot-2026-03-02-at-00-00-54.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150402691616295,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/4b094dc765/ultrarecuce.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"EXCERPT VIDEO FROM \"THE THINKING OCEAN\" COMMISSION BY THE WHITNEY MUSEUM -ART PORT, COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND THE MUSEUM",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1b5806cf-a8f3-454b-b467-0cb8d0a65959",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Thinking Ocean\"",type:"text"},{text:" belongs to a growing body of exhibitions that are collectively reshaping how we understand our position within the living world. This digital artwork refuses the comfortable fiction that humanity stands apart from nature, and does so with both intellectual rigor and visual force.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The work situates the viewer inside a procedurally generated underwater environment where the physics of water and the operations of code turn out to obey a shared set of rules. Particles drift, currents form, and the boundary between the organic and the algorithmic dissolves. The ocean, here, is not a backdrop. It is the subject, the medium, and the argument. Akten and Hofstadter draw on recent scientific research suggesting that the Navier-Stokes equations, which model the behavior of fluids in motion, are theoretically capable of the same order of computation as any digital machine. The ocean, in other words, thinks. Not metaphorically, but structurally. It processes. It remembers. It has been doing so for far longer than we have.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is where the work's ecological and non-extractive stance becomes most legible. The \"Thinking Ocean\" does not represent nature as a resource to be decoded, mapped, or instrumentalized. It does not extract. It listens. The viewer is invited into a mode of attention that is contemplative rather than acquisitive, relational rather than hierarchical. The piece belongs to a broader artistic and intellectual current, one that includes the work of artists that are actively dismantling the extractive logic embedded in how we look at, and think about, the non-human world.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The post-Cartesian dimension of the work is equally deliberate. The Cartesian split, mind over matter, human over nature, subject over object, has underwritten centuries of ecological destruction. By presenting the ocean as an ancient cognitive medium, one whose operations predate and exceed anything human technology has produced, the artists collapse that hierarchy. The faint, abstract human form visible in the distance, whose movements generate currents in the environment, does not dominate the space. It is absorbed by it. This is not a minor formal choice: it is a statement about evolutionary origin and ecological belonging. Life came from the ocean. We came from the ocean. The exhibition does not let us forget it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"The Thinking Ocean\" is part of a wider cultural reckoning, a constellation of exhibitions, research projects, and artistic practices that are collectively building a post-anthropoce
77ntric vocabulary for the 21st century. These are not exercises in nostalgia for a pre-industrial nature, nor are they naive celebrations of technology. They are serious attempts to think through what it means to be human in a world where the boundaries between the biological, the computational, and the ecological are becoming increasingly porous. Akten and Hofstadter's work is among the most rigorous and most seductive of these attempts.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Whitney Museum of American Art commissioned this artwork for artport, the Museumâs online gallery space for Internet art.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:" ",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-03-01 00:00",name:"The Whitney Museum÷Dives Deep",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"6467e72b-0385-4173-81fb-a0f42390eab2",color:"#3a0e63",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"2d948633-22f7-4272-a6be-66b2f2614abb",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,filename:null,copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},source:{id:150397656469009,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2040x1138/01d5d89e82/screenshot-2026-03-01-at-23-58-55.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"still from 'The Thinking Ocean'",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"the-thinking-ocean",full_slug:"directory/reviews/the-thinking-ocean",sort_by_date:null,position:-980,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"00babc8e-d708-45a4-b618-2aeb71387141",first_published_at:"2026-03-02T00:00:40.862Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Echoes of Tumult",created_at:"2026-02-26T18:12:20.871Z",published_at:"2026-03-02T06:34:04.667Z",updated_at:"2026-03-02T06:34:04.684Z",id:149257997843400,uuid:"8f6415b5-40a0-4af8-8fe0-1702f2ffec60",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"d1dff0d7-b5a9-4804-9d7e-395cfce8ff45",title:"\"Echoes of Tumult\"",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:149258337660589,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2270x1492/eeca3d658a/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-17-53-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Echoes of Tumult, CTM Festival 2026, Berlin contemporary art, sound art exhibition, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, daadgalerie, DAAD Artists-in-Berlin, iii instrument inventors initiative, Nikita Kadan, Hoda Afshar, Dror Feiler, Fragmentin, Zhanna Kadyrova, Essa Grayeb, Ioana Vreme Moser, Isuru Kumarasinghe, Naomi Rincón-Gallardo, Sissel Marie Tonn, Jonathan Reus, Interspecifics, Jaeha Ban, Soyun Park, Cathy van Eck, sound and politics, art and war, experimental music, post-digital art,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A critical review of \"Echoes of Tumult\", the Berlin exhibition by CTM Festival, DAAD and iii that made the politics of sound impossible to ignore."}],_uid:"ae2d32f6-e49e-4d91-9710-64ba24f5e3db",body:[{_uid:"5e372a15-5f05-4b17-9604-5ca7e77954af",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Sanity of Noise: Why \"Echoes of Tumult\" exhibition Got the Politics of Sound Right",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Echoes of Tumult proved that art about violence doesn't have to shout. Precise, disquieting, and at moments genuinely moving, it was the exhibition the moment demanded.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This past winter in Berlin, another festival promised to grapple with the \"tumult of our times.\" One could be forgiven a weary sigh. Echoes of Tumult, a three-way collaboration between CTM Festival, the DAAD residency program, and the instrument inventors initiative (iii), arrived with the grand ambition of confronting war, broken institutions, and human fragility. It was a recognisable refrain in a cultural landscape glutted with well-meaning, beautifully packaged trauma. And yet, unfolding across the haunted halls of Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and the austere daadgalerie, this exhibition achieved something quietly radical: it persuaded the visitor to actually listen.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Framed by CTM's 2026 theme, \"dissonate resonate,\" the show deftly sidestepped the temptation to simply amplify the anxiety. It didn't just add to the noise. Instead, it advanced a more nuanced and potent argument: that the fragile fragment, the critical whisper, the intentional glitch, can carry far more political charge than an inaudible, overwhelming roar. This was not art as catharsis. It was art as a tuning fork, an invitation to the difficult, necessary work of attuning ourselves to the dissonances of a world gone haywire.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"33c50c0b-d41f-4b02-a3df-f21a18d29fce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149321525148783,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1196x670/d65cba8418/zhanna-kadyrova-the-forest-2025-screenshots-video.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Zhanna Kadyrova 'The Forest' 2025, screenshots video, courtesy the artist and Continua gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fdc008a7-58f0-42d1-bcca-ef73253d9121",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The journey began with Zhanna Kadyrova's \"The Forest\", a multimedia installation that plunged the visitor into the ecological catastrophe of the former Kakhovka Reservoir in Ukraine. A boat, installed at the former water level, seemed to sink into a new, improbable forest that had colonised the dried-up basin. But the beauty was treacherous. The area was mined, the front line was near, and headphones transmitted the live, tense sounds from the reservoir itself. It was a disquieting opening, a landscape of impossible resilience and imminent threat.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From there, the exhibition unfolded as a series of intricate sensory encounters. In the next rooms, Ioana Vreme Moser's project \"Arsenic Ballerinas\" seduced and repelled in equal measure. A swarm of lipstick tubes, arranged like projectiles, became FM radio receivers. Their mineral components, the lead and arsenic shared by cosmetics and munitions, picked up static and fragmented transmissions. It was a precise, tactile excavation of technology, toxicity, and the gendered codes of espionage. One leaned in to listen, implicated in the beautiful poison.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{type:"hard_break",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"68dc1928-dea7-499c-a30a-d9517d68cb51",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149258337660589,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2270x1492/eeca3d658a/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-17-53-30.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IOANA VREME MOSER, RESEARCH PROJECT, 2025â26 INSTALLATIONS, SOUND OBJECTS, RADIO, RESEARCH BOX, Exhibition Opening \u003CEchoes of Tumult> @ Bethanien - CTM Festival 2026 :copyright: Udo Siegfriedt",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"934f4ced-8dd9-4aad-9ba7-8ec8f61bd0fc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149323027037630,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1680x1266/c55b4c8271/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-23-34-05.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"IOANA VREME MOSER, RESEARCH PROJECT, 2025â26 INSTALLATIONS, SOUND OBJECTS, RADIO, RESEARCH BOX, Exhibition Opening \u003CEchoes of Tumult> @ Bethanien - CTM Festival 2026 :copyright: Udo Siegfriedt",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4ad75668-8460-41d5-ad1f-2d270b39e6da",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Swiss collective Fragmentin, long celebrated for their elegant dissections of technological systems, presented \"G80\". The piece demystified the opaque architectures governing our lives not with polemic, but with a low, corrosive hum that lodges itself beneath the skin. An interactive console with 80 motorized sliders, it invited the visitor to \"stabilise the world\" by adjusting variables from ecology to gender equality. Inspired by Buckminster Fuller's utopian \"World Game,\" the piece was a sly trap. As one playfully tried to find equilibrium, the machine resisted, its cold logic a mordant parody of our faith in computational solutions for global governance. It was a deeply vertiginous piece of design fiction, and one of the exhibition's most intellectually exacting works.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"6beff8ce-8ba7-4c9b-9479-aeab11566498",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149324812328396,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x1350/3938e604e4/4.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fragmentin, G80, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, 2025 ALUMINIUM, PLEXIGLASS, PAINTED SLIDERS, COMPUTER, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6c0eb473-ded4-4915-8a0d-3ca8ddde35c8",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149326252080607,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1080x1350/d49023952d/1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fragmentin, G80, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, 2025 ALUMINIUM, PLEXIGLASS, PAINTED SLIDERS, COMPUTER, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"17e80853-3898-47df-80af-307648f5ce9f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149325583990230,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/ada1672204/fragmetin-g80-nteractive-installation-2025-aluminium-plexiglass-painted-sliders-computer-electronic-components.mp4",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fragmentin, G80, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, 2025 ALUMINIUM, PLEXIGLASS, PAINTED SLIDERS, COMPUTER, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2cf36737-b4fe-4f8e-b4ac-ed3badb9fd1c",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149326459559397,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2500x1667/27cc36b4b0/img_4501-copie_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Fragmentin, G80, INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION, 2025 ALUMINIUM, PLEXIGLASS, PAINTED SLIDERS, COMPUTER, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"46d630f1-3918-42a6-a02b-6803d4e45589",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Nearby, there was a breath of fresh air, literally. Cathy van Eck's Try to \"Turn the Wind\" placed a wind-speed sensor at the centre of the room. The visitor blew against it, and the piece responded: layers of sound shifted and collided, from the low rumble of coal extraction to the clipped cadences of politicians discussing a climate they were busy destroying. It was a small-scale climate simulation, a delicate feedback loop where the visitor's own body became an agent of change, however negligible. The piece had the rare quality of feeling simultaneously playful and deeply consequential.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This corporeal engagement continued with Isuru Kumarasinghe's \"Resounding Bodies\". Two large aluminum plates, connected by strings, vibrated and filled the space with sound, exploring sympathetic resonance as a social metaphor. The work asked the visitor to feel the connections, to sense the vibrations in their own body, a form of communication that bypasses language entirely. It was a meditative, rigorously conceived counterpoint to the more overtly political works surrounding it.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Politics returned with a vengeance in the work of Palestinian artist Essa Grayeb. In the first video piece, Grayeb stripped a 1967 televised address by Nasser down to its silences and involuntary sounds: the breath, the rustle, the swallowed grief of a leader announcing defeat. In the companion photo series, sheets of darkroom paper were held before a television screen as that same address played, each sheet absorbing the r)reroupoourtcfragle(olombonidavidaoffocieusementbroadcast's glow for a different duration. The resulting prints were spectral, barely legible: the material residue of a transmission once witnessed by millions, now reduced to a faint luminous stain.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Hoda Afshar, an Iranian artist based in Melbourne, also worked with the afterlives of images. Her video Undone rewound found footage of bombings in Ukraine, Palestine, and Iraq, a desperate, futile attempt to reverse the violence. In her photo series Aura, she degraded and manipulated screenshots of contemporary crises, creating a ghostly, asphyxiating atmosphere that mirrored our digitally mediated experience of disaster. The images were stark, ravaged, and deeply troubling.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"0e82e5ff-dda1-4613-a994-f50cdaaae1f5",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149329337957894,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1216x1714/9ed53c1020/suru-kumarasinghe-installation-2026-various-types-of-metal-resonance-asynchronous-loops.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"ISURU KUMARASINGHE INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a735c293-bf3b-405f-ba95-8399d100dae9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149329480748552,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/906x1248/a93dad19ed/screenshot-2026-02-26-at-23-57-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"CATHY VAN ECK INTERACTIVE SOUND SCULPTURE, 2021/2025 ELECTRONICS, SOUND, ANEMOMETER, LOUDSPEAKERS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c61a614b-1825-45e5-b14b-f1d35ee05952",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149330375015952,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1678x1258/81831f3b03/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-05-49.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"HODA AFSHAR VIDEO, 2022 ONE-CHANNEL DIGITAL VIDEO, COLOUR, SOUND, 11:00 MIN",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0b00945d-f67c-4823-bcf6-0a4722103355",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149330455977489,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/940x1272/b63232883b/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-06-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"HODA AFSHAR PHOTO SERIES, 2020â23",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"135aed49-5233-41bf-932d-69bc70755f8b",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then came the air raid siren. Nikita Kadan's sound installation carried a title that translates from Ukrainian as both anxiety and alarm. The curtained structure filled the room and, at first approach, felt almost welcoming. One walked into it, and then the sound hit. It was an air raid alarm, but it was being mimicked by an opera singer and a violinist. The uncanny fusion of human voice and mechanical terror was chilling. 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A legion of unwanted creatures, from a bat broadcasting frequencies from a tomb to a scorpion rallying for the right of infection, sought solidarity in the ruins of a planetary catastrophe. It was a bizarre, theatrical, and wonderfully queer vision of resilience, a form of world-making from the margins, and one of the few works in the show that permitted itself the luxury of something approaching joy.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The second venue, the daadgalerie, opened with \"The Intimate Earthquake Archive\" by Sissel Marie Tonn and Jonathan Reus, a work that transferred the tremors of man-made seismic events directly into the visitor's body. Wearing a haptic vest, one walked through an archive of seismic data from the Groningen gas fields, triggering vibrational compositions. It was a visceral, disquieting exercise in deep listening, making the geological consequences of resource extraction disturbingly personal.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Mexican artist duo Interspecifics transformed the energy of global protest into a luminous, sonic gesture. The piece fed recordings of marches and demonstrations from open archives through spectral analysis, translating their sonic characteristics, in real time, into a choreography of moving spotlights, motors, and crystals. Protest became a vibrant, energetic field, a collective memory made of light and sound. It was one of the few works in the exhibition that permitted itself something approaching elation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dror Feiler made a second appearance with To Live Is to Tremble, a video piece for sixteen bells. The phrase acknowledged both fragility and defiance. The bells, instruments of alarm and celebration, created an unstable sonic terrain of overlapping, colliding tremors. It was not a melody. It was the sonic portrait of a world that cannot stop shaking.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"3b156194-1659-40c9-a530-d8d434e5b842",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149339682442839,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1694x1238/a10fc2117f/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-42-41.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"INTERSPECIFICS INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"95beaf4a-7006-45db-822c-0c0b8687bc52",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149350337298547,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/948x1266/3caf206a3d/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-43-19.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"INTERSPECIFICS INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"aa94e579-b41e-4292-96d8-3ca17467595d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149350337101938,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/870x1258/85785faea2/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-43-04.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"INTERSPECIFICS INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"d69e9351-5ac3-4fc8-a07e-fdf4a87165e7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:149350735782006,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1700x1258/c3ee89d2fc/screenshot-2026-02-27-at-00-42-52.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"INTERSPECIFICS INSTALLATION, 2026 VARIOUS TYPES OF METAL, RESONANCE, ASYNCHRONOUS LOOPS",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9dfaa82d-8fd6-4ace-8208-61b394edda65",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"So, what was the point of it all? We are, after all, drowning. The world is collapsing into a deafening, post-digital vacuity. A cacophony of Trumpian vociferations, the endless slurry of AI-generated slop, the militaristic din of global powers, and the chilling silence imposed by authoritarian regimes, it all amounts to a kind of anti-noise, a static that prevents hearing.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Against this backdrop, \"Echoes of Tumult\" proposed a radical act: not to make more noise, but to make better noise. It offered itself as a corrective to the political cacophony, a way to recalibrate our senses. The exhibition didn't create a sound; it helped us re-hear the one that has always been there. It reminded us that the world has never been quiet. It has always been full of a complex, meaningful, and often painful clamor. This exhibition was the instrument that might just help us learn to hear it again.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"until 22.3.2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"KUNSTRAUM KREUZBERG / BETHANIEN / DAADGALERIE - Berlin (Germany)",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{type:"hard_break"},{text:"Curated by CTM FESTIVAL, and DAAD ARTISTS-IN-BERLIN-PROGRAM and iii â INSTRUMENT INVENTORS INITIATIVE",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]},{type:"hard_break"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null}}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-27 00:00",name:"The Sanity of Noise: ÷ \"Echoes of Tumult\" exhibition Got the Politics of Sound Right",author:"Philippe de Manus",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f05e4b58-a7bb-4a96-80e2-5b3fb9c66899",color:"#400a51",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"6d23541b-879d-425e-a7b0-0822e85f5394",poster:{i
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77world that feels as if it is perpetually making-itself-with its inhabitants. Here, the logic of autopoiesis (of the self-made, autonomous subject) is supplanted by a pervasive sympoiesis, a co-creative becoming. An enigmatic guide speaks not for a conquered nature, but from within a complex web of multi-species kin-making. The narrative unfolds through a series of dialectical encounters, framing dialogue itself as a form of ecological practice. This is technology in service of an animist sensibility, where the goal is not mastery but attunement, not extraction but exchange.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The workâs political charge is located in this subtle recalibration of purpose. It imagines a civilization that has metabolized an ethic of care so completely that predation and accumulation have become unthinkable. It models a consciousness that finds its richness not in infinite growth but in the patient observation of intricate, tentacular connections. The player is not a hero imposing their will, but a node in a network, invited to trace the lines of relation that bind the humus to the artifact, the human to the non-human. The experience is a rehearsal for a different way of being, a speculative fabulation that insists other worlds are not only possible, but are already being woven in the generative, relational processes of this one.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"8a926c1b-e8d9-4af2-9767-f08a18bee512",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675280583,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/bdb0fc1b44/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-06.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4906ddd9-7b4d-415f-8056-f4d4eb581c68",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675296970,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/cfa259f2a1/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-02.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"53656a06-d6e8-453d-b133-3d3e087c1f4f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675284680,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/bed032e46b/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-03.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2fc7ab28-ff4a-4869-9a4e-188c1253ce82",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675305163,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/345cb6b966/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-04.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"37d32f1b-1f67-430b-a632-1132675c5f71",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675284681,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/7a044a8489/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-05.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"f2eff68b-d283-4c22-9790-8495961318e4",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146831675280583,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/bdb0fc1b44/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-06.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sandrine Deulmier, Unnatural, still, courtesy of the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"aa0fb687-358a-4ab6-8485-cc12c98f9cd7",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Within the landscape of contemporary digital art, âUnnaturalâ is an intervention of intellectual and aesthetic coherence. It sidesteps the facile binaries of utopia and dystopia, offering instead a tangible, interactive model of a world governed by interdependence. It affirms that the most urgent task of creative technological practice is not to build ever more convincing illusions, but to craft the conceptual tools and narrative prototypes for our survival. Deumierâs work is one such tool: a quiet, elegant, and necessary fiction.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"GRAY AREA, San Francisco (USA) -Until 15th of March",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sandrine Deumier: Unnatural - Of Humus & Artifact ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"italic"}]},{text:"is presented in San Francisco with support from Villa Albertine",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]},{text:" ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}},{type:"underline"}]},{text:", the Institut Français and the French Ministry of Culture.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:"#000000"}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-19 00:00",name:"Sympoietic Fictions÷On Sandrine Deumierâs âUnnaturalâ",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"ebd85b7c-6ddb-419a-b594-afec0afbf93c",color:"#454354",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c0156a54-2c1c-4858-8397-0b6f8557c7fc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146813217134612,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x860/453d999acd/unnatural-of-humus-and-artifact-05.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"sandrine-deumier-unnatural-of-humus-artifact",full_slug:"directory/reviews/sandrine-deumier-unnatural-of-humus-artifact",sort_by_date:null,position:-960,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"5507d4ca-14f4-45e6-a2f6-afb7244af28d",first_published_at:"2026-02-19T21:58:21.628Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Unseen Users",created_at:"2026-02-18T23:57:56.279Z",published_at:"2026-02-19T15:05:06.942Z",updated_at:"2026-02-19T15:05:06.959Z",id:146511774870564,uuid:"0ccddb75-5e33-4d91-aec7-ab5cdbc4baa3",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"f37d223a-bc5f-409b-84eb-169532d6e464",title:"unseen users",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:146711451028660,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2454x1550/f2d03c7662/screenshot-2026-02-19-at-14-30-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Unseen Users, Super Dakota Brussels, contemporary art exhibition, digital control, algorithmic resistance, surveillance capitalism, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Chris Dorland, Wade Guyton, Peter Halley, Sayre Gomez, Julia Wachtel, Angélique Heidler, Arnaud Eubelen, Neil Beloufa, tech criticism, digital infrastructure, post-digital art, Brussels art scene, technofeudalism, data economy, media art, critical art practice, algorithmic control, digital labor, surveillance art, contemporary painting, new media art",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"At Super Dakota Brussels, 'Unseen Users' dissects digital control through infrastru
77cture and labor. Nine artists bypass technophobic clichés for forensic critique."}],_uid:"927bd4f0-a84c-4d66-a3eb-31c5b223ceaf",body:[{_uid:"0f59c9cb-2790-4ff3-8cd5-abcfc98b9c18",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"At Super Dakota Gallery in Brussels, nine artists bypass the usual technophobic arguments to examine what actually structures our post-digital lives: infrastructure, labor, and the material conditions of algorithmic control.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The show's forensic approach produces something rare: a critique with an analytical bite. The exhibition, \"Unseen Users,\" displays nine sumptuous and subtle masterpieces, compelling a subtle reflection. Its critique, both fine and nuanced, is all the more impactful for its quiet, insidious nature, much like the digital world it mirrors.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bruce Sterling's formulation of users as 'feudal livestock' for tech giants anchors the exhibition conceptually, though the provocation has lost some of its edge through repetition. 'Unseen Users' at Super Dakota, however, resists the temptation to rehearse familiar arguments about screen addiction or algorithmic manipulation. The show's intelligence lies in its focus on infrastructure rather than interface, on the material conditions of digital life rather than its phenomenological effects.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"!Mediengruppe Bitnik's \"Doomscroll against Techfascism\" demonstrates this approach through its deliberate entanglement of cultural and political registers. The artists weaponize a Chinese generative AI model to construct a counter-narrative to Hallow, a Catholic prayer subscription app bankrolled by Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance, promoted by Gwen Stefani in her improbable transformation from 90s pop-feminist icon to tradwife influencer. The work channels the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, the WWII-era anti-fascist resistance handbook that became the most downloaded document in U.S. government administrations following Trump's January 2025 re-election. This is not metaphor but method: the piece functions as an operational guide to algorithmic resistance, demonstrating how spirituality becomes evacuated of meaning when mediated through infrastructures embedded in surveillance and control economies. The density is intentional, the layering strategic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"96964642-799a-4764-80f0-e6e2afa488c3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146514323809716,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3775x2583/527869cd2d/medien_gruppe.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"!MEDIENGRUPPE BITNIK Doomscroll against Techfascism #SabotageManual #AI #TechTok #Qwenstefani, 2025, courtesy the artist and Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"2302626a-934a-4277-8477-32cbe7cf565b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146723910959211,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8011x5341/2574c45f24/unseen_users_2.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Unseen Users, install shots, courtesy Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e163a8b6-2180-44da-a871-4e3708d372df",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146731724371825,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1108x1494/b2d9be1713/2023-courtesy-the-artist-and-super-dakota.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chris Dorland Untitled (relic_ /////), 2023, courtesy the artist and Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"1d601243-793e-4a99-aeca-f307211901ce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146732269995935,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1182x1368/1347178853/screenshot-2026-02-19-at-15-50-40.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Chris Dorland Untitled (background host), 2024, courtesy the atist and Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a240cdf6-09df-4f25-9b87-103ec32ed5c7",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146732656850886,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8665x5777/b6acd616f4/unseen_users_1.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Unseen Users, install shots, courtesy Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"cb227980-1f40-4cde-8502-3cb9d0a2a676",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146516771976776,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1986x2311/bdfa2499e7/202601_superdakota_28.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Wade Guyton X Poster Untitled, 2007,courtesy the artist and Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"10b6c487-077d-4d64-9a39-6f786f36a76d",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Chris Dorland's \"Untitled\" (background box) (2024) pursues a parallel investigation through different means. The painting's apparent abstraction is in fact the material trace of technical constraint. Dorland tracks visual information as it migrates through successive layers of software and hardware, each transition leaving its mark through compression artifacts, color shifts, and resolution loss. The work treats images not as representations but as outputs of ongoing technical processes, shaped by the behavior and limits of the technologies through which they pass. The result is abstraction as byproduct rather than intention, a visual archaeology of data in motion.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Wade Guyton's \"X Poster\" (2015) extends this inquiry into the mechanics of production. Guyton feeds canvas through an Epson Stylus Pro 9600 inkjet printer, generating his signature motifs through a process that hovers between the mechanical and the manual. The ink smudges and pigment fades visible in the work are not errors but evidence of friction between system and substrate. Guyton's use of laser printing technology becomes a critique of the ideology of frictionless reproduction, exposing the gap between the promise of digital perfection and the material resistance of actual production. The work's formal simplicity directs attention to the medium itself, foregrounding the tension between algorithmic precision and physical contingency.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"062c88ee-13ef-4529-8dbc-2e46ae9f976c",component:"mobile-newsletter"},{_uid:"e606f886-8ea0-4218-9e05-4b89c7fa809d",quote:"People are not Googleâs âcustomersâ or even Googleâs âusersâ, but its feudal livestock.",author:"Bruce Sterling, The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things",component:"quote"},{_uid:"b3cb381e-7c1c-46d4-b612-97aae1861333",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Sayre Gomez's \"\"Untitled\" (2019) makes visible the labor that digital economies render invisible. The work layers trompe-l'Åil stickersâsmiley faces, American flags, 'In God We Trust' slogansâover a looped scene from Disney's The Sword in the Stone. The stickers function as a screen in both senses: they obscure the video beneath while simultaneously dis
77playing the iconography of American consumer capitalism. The thin pane of glass separating these elements becomes a metaphor for the interface that simultaneously reveals and conceals the underpaid labor sustaining digital infrastructure. The work operates through displacement, using the visual language of commercial culture to expose the economic relations it typically masks.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Julia Wachtel's \"The Execution of Abstraction \"(2015) confronts the scale and velocity of image circulation online. Wachtel juxtaposes photographs of server farms with a cartoon businessman collapsed in apparent exhaustion. The server farms, with their banks of glowing processors and industrial cooling systems, materialize the physical infrastructure required to sustain the internet's constant image flow. The collapsed figure registers the psychic cost of inhabiting this environment. Wachtel, whose work has long addressed the conditions of image saturation, here turns to the architecture that produces it, revealing the industrial scale of operations typically experienced as seamless and immaterial.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Angélique Heidler's Eugenisme (2025) deploys the visual vocabulary of fashion illustration to interrogate how media constructs and polices identity. The work overlays fashion sketches with the text 'ELIMINATION TOTALE', using the language of consumer desire to articulate a critique of social engineering. Heidler's method involves appropriating existing images and repurposing them to expose the ideological work they perform. The piece connects consumer culture's production of aspirational identities to more explicitly coercive forms of social control, suggesting continuities between market segmentation and eugenic logic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"409acd24-994e-441f-8be4-8ba0afa1fb01",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146707687435137,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2360x1298/70b73970d6/screenshot-2026-02-19-at-14-14-52.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sayre Gomez Untitled, 2019 Painting on monitor, looped video, courtesy the artist and Super Dakata",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f80e81cb-4dcc-4772-b771-5185f70994e2",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146706796890917,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5792x8688/767f58ac05/sayre_gomez.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sayre Gomez Untitled, 2019 Painting on monitor, looped video,courtesy the artist and Super Dakata",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"8e1e73bb-56d4-4e99-bdb2-a95cdf26a9d1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146708705975245,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3135x5439/054c0ed2a8/angelique_heidler.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Angélique Heidler Eugenisme, 2025 acrylic, graphite and collage on canvas, courtesy the artist and Super Dakato",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0642f6d9-256b-4188-a68a-ce27861d88a0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146730577647402,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8454x5648/615f8bc3f5/unseen_users_3.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Unseen Users, install shot,courtesy Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"7ada0983-4d19-42b2-8d33-5b2f2544a048",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146720364617438,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2404x1310/5b72365939/screenshot-2026-02-19-at-15-06-02.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Julia Wachtel The Execution of Abstraction, 2015, courtesy the artiste and Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6f8f44b8-7fae-4967-9af3-0b903e82b9d6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Angélique Heidler's \"Eugenisme \"(2025) deploys the visual vocabulary of fashion illustration to interrogate how media constructs and polices identity. The work overlays fashion sketches with the text 'ELIMINATION TOTALE', using the language of consumer desire to articulate a critique of social engineering. Heidler's method involves appropriating existing images and repurposing them to expose the ideological work they perform. The piece connects consumer culture's production of aspirational identities to more explicitly coercive forms of social control, suggesting continuities between market segmentation and eugenic logic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Arnaud Eubelen's sculptures, assembled from salvaged urban materialsârecycled metals, worn glass, discarded concrete, exposed electrical componentsâinsist on the materiality underlying digital systems. His aesthetic of deliberate decay refuses the ideology of the new that drives both consumer culture and technological development. The works embody what gets left behind, the physical residue of obsolescence cycles. In this context, Eubelen's practice serves as a corrective to dematerialization narratives, grounding the exhibition's concerns in the tangible infrastructure of production and disposal.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"628b2314-8108-40a9-a881-564e2e18f8dc",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146725234435295,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1530x1576/f3b63bbb05/screenshot-2026-02-19-at-15-20-35.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Arnaud Eubelen Forever Wrapped, 2019, courtesy the artist and Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f3d09b5c-074e-4aac-89e5-3652a11ebbe0",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146723631886387,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8159x5439/bd036eee27/unseen_users.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Unseen Users, install shot, courtesy Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"f68837b7-a829-44ba-a0a2-c1f4d2f7860d",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146720967773966,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3123x2591/5818a2c357/arnaud_eubelen.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Arnaud Eubelen After Seat (unique prototype), 2022, courtesy the artist and Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"534529a7-2fba-4908-a115-fec856f1bfd9",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146729275041420,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/5595x8391/a154e1e17d/neil_beloufa.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Neïl Beloufa Secured Wall Series, 2015, courtesy the artist and Super Dakota",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"6bb98ab9-55b5-4d9d-9249-06f7f7d70fb5",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Neil Beloufa's \"Secured Wall Series\" (2015) operates through studied ambiguity. These plush constructions of foam, pigment, and metal function as what Alicia Reuter terms 'intermediary objects', structures that invert spatial relations without clear rationale. The works are simultaneously seductive and industrial, inviting touch while suggesting containment. Beloufa's 'secured walls' literalize the barriers that structure access and exclusion, making visible the architectures of control that typically operate below the threshold of perception. The work's refusal of clear meaning becomes its strength, implicating viewers in systems of looking and being surveilled without offering the comfort of resolution.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The artists here are not Luddites. They understand that the digital is not a separate realm but a fundamental part of our material reality. By focusing on the mechanics of control rather than
77its symptoms, the show avoids the usual technophobic hand-wringing. The result is a rare thing: a group exhibition that treats its audience as capable of nuance, that trusts us to see the systems at work without needing them spelled out in neon. It's this restraint, this refusal to moralize, that gives the work its bite.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Super Dakota, Bruxelles ( European Union) until 2nd of May",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-19 00:00",name:"Unseen Users÷Feudal Livestock",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"f9177517-bfd2-4662-80a8-bb8f0317498e",color:"#181562",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"31d71a51-f7bc-4725-a8de-25d274bba645",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146711451028660,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2454x1550/f2d03c7662/screenshot-2026-02-19-at-14-30-00.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Still from Black Mirror series",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"unseen-users",full_slug:"directory/reviews/unseen-users",sort_by_date:null,position:-950,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"f7db70f6-f85a-4527-9999-2b0058151689",first_published_at:"2026-02-19T15:05:06.942Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Micro Management",created_at:"2026-02-18T20:09:28.234Z",published_at:"2026-02-18T21:16:57.461Z",updated_at:"2026-02-18T21:16:57.478Z",id:146455626717648,uuid:"72135441-0129-47b8-9b6c-48f0bfbad749",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"c7a777bf-f1f5-4a6d-92b1-8985ecc09d31",title:"Micro Management exhibition by Stine Deja",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:146458307887333,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3543x2363/f4bb931d57/stine-deja_micro-management_viborg-kunsthal_2026_photo-jacob-friis-holm-nielsen_jfh4286_srgb_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Stine Deja, Micro Management, Viborg Kunsthal, Tardigrade art, Bio-art, Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Immortality, Genetic engineering, Hybrid art, Contemporary art Denmark, Art and technology, Art and science, Exhibition review,",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"Stine Deja's Micro Management at Viborg Kunsthal explores the unsettling quest for immortality through a grotesque human-tardigrade hybrid, questioning our techno-capitalist future."}],_uid:"1d303616-64b8-4b05-8c40-e24ac194b957",body:[{_uid:"5644aaba-0179-4255-a6c5-a6865327fed2",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"heading",attrs:{level:4,textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The Unbearable Lightness of Being (a Tardigrade): Stine Deja âs Warning",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In her new exhibition, Danish artist Stine Deja uses the indestructible tardigrade to dissect human obsession with immortality. An incisive and disquieting critique of a future sold by tech gurus, where the dream of eternal life reveals our deepest fears.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"There is a creature, a microscopic marvel, that holds a mirror to humanity's most audacious and perhaps foolish dream: to live forever. This creature, the tardigrade, is the unlikely star of Stine Deja's unnerving new show, \"Micro Management\", at Viborg Kunsthal (Denmark). Here, in an installation that feels part laboratory, part genetic theatre, Deja stages a confrontation between our Promethean quest for immortality and the stubborn, unyielding realities of evolution. It is a sharp, critical look at a future that is rushing towards us, a world where the lines between human, animal, and machine are becoming increasingly blurred.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The starting point for this exploration is a laboratory with a strange and unsettling atmosphere. At its center, the tardigrade, a microscopic creature known for its ability to endure the most hostile conditions, becomes the prism through which Stine Deja invites us to reflect on the limits of life and humanity's desperate quest for immortality. The choice of the tardigrade is not incidental; this extremophile embodies a form of absolute resilience, a fantasy of survival that humanity, in its quest, seeks to appropriate.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}
77,{_uid:"5f5bfb56-1ad5-4366-ab0b-5c1f00715e58",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146460276216047,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2530x3543/25790d8ce7/stine-deja_micro-management_viborg-kunsthal_2026_photo-jacob-friis-holm-nielsen_jfh4313_srgb_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Micro management, install shot, photo Jacob Friis Holm Nielsen",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"fad5fa32-5fed-4d3a-ae34-4cb5179f1327",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146460716843249,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2365x3543/69a930c4c5/stine-deja_micro-management_viborg-kunsthal_2026_photo-jacob-friis-holm-nielsen_jfh4304_srgb_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Micro management, install shot, photo Jacob Friis Holm Nielsen",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"a3c046c9-f2b0-459f-a62b-f1c9c6e9071e",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Dejaâs work is a deft and disturbing fusion of science and fiction, weaving connections from ancient myths of eternal life to the most advanced contemporary experiments, from cryonics to genetic modification and stem cell research. The installation explores the idea of a human-tardigrade hybrid, a vision that, far from being a mere chimera, finds a concrete echo in current scientific research where tardigrade genes are already being tested on human cells. This speculative future materializes in the exhibition through a monumental human-tardigrade hybrid, a sculpture whose calculated grandiloquence and grotesque form imposes itself on the visitor, visible from both the ground floor and the first floor. Incubators containing tardigrade eggs reinforce this feeling of immersion within a scientific experiment where the boundaries between life and technology dissolve before our eyes.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"ac2fcfc5-8b1a-4a6d-9ff5-9509091ef057",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146463449239814,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3543x2365/e6a605c5ac/deja.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Micro management, install shot, photo Jacob Friis Holm Nielsen",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"b20806c3-e873-4e6f-ad7e-28c3ab9a6a13",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146463727591691,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2531x3543/c948621547/stine-deja_micro-management_viborg-kunsthal_2026_photo-jacob-friis-holm-nielsen_jfh4420_srgb_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Micro management, install shot, photo Jacob Friis Holm Nielsen",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"93277a41-422a-4fc8-952c-fdc9c2846d06",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146463562260743,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2531x3543/071e8f4d15/stine-deja_micro-management_viborg-kunsthal_2026_photo-jacob-friis-holm-nielsen_jfh4275_srgb_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Micro management, install shot, photo Jacob Friis Holm Nielsen",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"1cd33c61-a600-4ce7-8f2b-2f424b9f57e6",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Micro Management\" highlights the human dream of overcoming death, but also the dizzying ethical and existential questions that arise from it. What happens when we try to optimize life to the extreme? How does this frantic pursuit affect our understanding of what it means to be human? It is a pursuit championed by the masters of tech, who, while undoubtedly dreaming of their own immortality, also package and sell this fantasy, breeding disillusionment, all in the name of turning a profit. Through a combination of installation, sculpture, sound, and video, Stine Deja creates a laboratory universe where the tardigrade be
77comes the catalyst for a reflection on immortality, technology, and humanity's transgression of its own biological boundaries.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibition confronts us with a future that feels both distant and imminent. A future where the fragility of life and the apparent boundlessness of technology meet to give birth to a new form of existence, the contours of which we have yet to define and the implications of which we have yet to fathom. Deja isn't in the business of offering neat answers. Her work is a stark accusation, a mirror held up to our own technological hubris and our frantic, undignified scramble away from death. The exhibition doesn't gently invite reflection; it provokes. It forces us to stare into the incubator and question the very desirability of the future we are so relentlessly engineering. The question isn't whether we can become the tardigrade, but what we lose when we do.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Micro Management\", ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]},{text:"Viborg Kunsthal, (European Union) until ",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]},{text:"10.05.2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-18 00:00",name:"The Unbearable Lightness of Being ÷(a Tardigrade)",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"c0ac98b0-401a-4c9c-88b6-b0fddb657eaa",color:"#7e8264",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"a028f1c1-1df0-453d-b286-4212972d3bce",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146458307887333,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3543x2363/f4bb931d57/stine-deja_micro-management_viborg-kunsthal_2026_photo-jacob-friis-holm-nielsen_jfh4286_srgb_web.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Stine Deja, Micro Management, Viborg Kunsthal",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"micro-management",full_slug:"directory/reviews/micro-management",sort_by_date:null,position:-940,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"a7126aa5-291c-49b4-a818-7344f36e30c7",first_published_at:"2026-02-18T20:47:15.668Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null},{name:"Imaging after Photography",created_at:"2026-02-17T20:30:11.326Z",published_at:"2026-02-23T17:30:15.501Z",updated_at:"2026-02-23T17:30:15.516Z",id:146106824024316,uuid:"560eef26-8ab9-44e6-849d-29e8c2bc8fc1",content:{SEO:[{_uid:"d2a2b468-47df-4134-93e1-09ed93d16e7c",title:"Imaging After Photography",favicon:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},preview:{id:146108913411909,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/x/b2284eaf5e/imaging-alex_marks-_mg_5262.tif",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},keywords:"Imaging After Photography, art review, contemporary art, AI art, post-photography, algorithmic bias, machine vision, post-truth, visual literacy, Moody Center for the Arts, Trevor Paglen, Nouf Aljowaysir, Grégory Chatonsky, Sofia Crespo, Joan Fontcuberta, Lisa Oppenheim, synthetic images, generative art,, philippe Riss-Schmidt",priority:"0.5",component:"SEO",description:"A review of Imaging After Photography, an exhibition teaching visual literacy for a post-truth world co-authored by AI. A lesson in reading the biases of the machine."}],_uid:"63c82661-d73c-43e7-ad57-1fa2e7891eb3",body:[{_uid:"fe7b4512-db40-43a2-af23-e205e5430472",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"New Way Way of \"Seeing\"",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In an age of synthetic images and algorithmic truth, a new exhibition argues for a radical new form of visual literacy. \"Imaging After Photography\" is a training ground for negotiating our perception of a world co-authored by machines, a lesson in reading their biases and logic.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}
77,{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Photography was once a simple transaction with the physical world, giving us the illusion that a moment could be captured, that a single truth could be fixed. That era is over. The image has entered its afterlife, a turbulent state where it is perpetually remade, re-contextualized, and re-imagined by non-human intelligence. The Moody Center for the Artsâ exhibition in Houston (USA) \"Imaging After Photography,\" serves as a field guide to this new visual landscape and a lesson in perception.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The exhibitionâs didactic force comes from its careful dissection of the relationship between artist, archive, and algorithm. It proposes that we are all now curators of a sort, navigating a world of synthetic images, and that we require a new critical apparatus to do so. The artists included are presented as pioneers of this new literacy, each offering a distinct strategy for engaging with the intelligent machine.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"dd347635-2a7c-4ab9-9207-bfa252150620",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146138277501798,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1128x1392/e8bd366edf/8inchescourtesyofpacegallery.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Trevor Plagen, The Standard Head, 2020, Courtesy of Pace Gallery",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"50f89ec4-7e7e-42c1-bdb9-0ec9d55933c3",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146149402386062,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2076x1388/8c082784dc/trevor-lagen.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Trevor Plagen, install shots, courtesy the artist",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"eb25c589-c383-41c7-aff5-be32efe9e581",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Trevor Paglenâs work provides the foundational grammar. His projects, which expose the hidden political and economic structures of AI, reveal the coded biases at the heart of machine vision. His sculpture \"The Standard Head\" is not an object, but a diagram of a flawed logic, a monument to the ghosts of prejudice that haunt the dataset. Paglenâs contribution is to insist that this new way of seeing is not an immaculate perception, but a constructed one, with all the fallibility that implies.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"From this premise, other artists deploy more specific interventions. Nouf Aljowaysirâs practice could be described as a form of algorithmic archaeology. She directs the machineâs gaze towards colonial archives, using its own logic to excavate the latent biases within historical images of the Middle East. Grégory Chatonsky takes this exploration of the database a step further, presenting a floor-based screen that cycles through the vastness of ImageNet, accompanied by a synthetic voice that attempts to describe the cascading images. The effect is a chilling portrait of a machine talking to itself, attempting to make sense of the world it has consumed.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"2fb207b6-ef85-4f82-b76d-c4cc37d01b53",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146143814405514,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/798x1398/fd68304d14/nouf-aljowaysir-salaf-ancestors-2021-getty-dataset-generated-with-u2-net-courtesy-of-the-artist.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Nouf Aljowaysir, Salaf (Ancestors), 2021. Getty Dataset, generated
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77Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"9c0e0056-d459-4386-afaa-eb5303adf83b",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146148995403402,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1960x1388/d6b735d97f/screenshot-2026-02-18-at-00-20-37.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sofia Crespo, Temporally Uncaptured, 2023â2024. still, Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"84af7f6e-92cb-4308-955d-c3650ca77714",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146148995735179,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1962x1388/24da91ae6d/sofia-crespo-temporally-uncaptured-2023-2024-neural-networks-cyanotype-prints-digital-videos-courtesy-of-the-artist.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Sofia Crespo, Temporally Uncaptured, 2023â2024. still, Courtesy of the artist.",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"5e20bf94-9dc3-4c13-953f-dd63e6106827",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146155422604966,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2086x1302/c9f3f67b07/joan-fontcuberta.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joan Fontcuberta, What Darwin missed? (2024), install shot",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"0c0638e0-fcfa-43ac-b467-7a236a9d2622",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146156312424106,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1102x1376/219c61fd90/joan-fontcuberta.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joan Fontcuberta, What Darwin missed? (2024), still",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"62080b23-2289-4365-a8bb-8eccc720306a",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146156579401388,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1114x1398/f3cd197e1b/joan-fontcuberta-what-darwin-missed.png",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Joan Fontcuberta, What Darwin missed? (2024), still",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"e5e63df3-d4c5-42e7-97fc-a45ff05b50b8",content:{type:"doc",content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Imaging After Photography\" does not offer a simple verdict on our new algorithmic reality. It does not celebrate or condemn. Instead, it provides a space for a more nuanced and necessary inquiry. The exhibition's true subject is not technology, but the human capacity for interpretation in an age where the image has become untethered from a direct, physical referent. It equips its viewers with a set of critical tools for navigating a world in which the image has become a site of perpetual negotiation.",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, Onview : until 9th May 2026",type:"text",marks:[{type:"textStyle",attrs:{color:""}},{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-02-17 00:00",name:"Imaging After Photography÷Visual literacy for a post-truth world co-authored by AI",author:"Refresh Team",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"8289955a-0828-4351-8091-db390ce0c6fe",color:"#551a5b",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"071627ac-7ed3-4b06-b48e-cb2e0a263796",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:146134203644407,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/8156x5440/620bd03907/imaging-alex_marks-_mg_5262.jpg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{},is_external_url:false},caption:"Salaf (Ancestors), 2021 Archival image augmented with artificial intelligence (U2-Net) Archival source: Getty Museum, The Getty Research Institute, Ken and Jenny Jacobson Orientalist Photography",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"imaging-after-photography",full_slug:"directory/reviews/imaging-after-photography",sort_by_date:null,position:-930,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"dcd0f9f9-a367-42d2-9039-1b0ffe4b2224",first_published_at:"2026-02-17T23:58:31.029Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null}]},"uses":{"params":["lang"]},"slash":"always"},{"type":"data","data":{story:{name:"ali cherri",created_at:"2026-09-09T16:59:23.898Z",published_at:"2026-09-20T11:54:16.938Z",updated_at:"2026-09-20T11:54:16.954Z",id:218249477751291,uuid:"351d78e
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77,{_uid:"a5679e16-007f-4a5c-b92c-6f8e3a2cbc43",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cherri does not give us one more image of the world. He infiltrates us with its reality.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Authority first becomes visible in the body: a tension in the neck, a repeated gesture, an eye trained to expect danger. Before it hardens into a monument, a doctrine or a border, power is a habit of muscle and attention.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"A soldier watches an empty horizon. The enemy fails to appear, but the apparatus cannot afford to be embarrassed by reality. The landscape must remain suspicious. The soldier lends it danger; his spine keeps the frontier upright. Nothing happens, and an entire system is employed to preserve the threat of nothing.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Then he falls asleep.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"An eyelid is a very small thing with which to interrupt a military order. Sleep does not free the soldierânightmares have their own occupying forcesâbut it makes his body briefly unavailable. Neither hero nor corpse, he slips outside the two images through which armies prefer to possess their men. A monument knows exactly what a soldier means. A sleeping soldier does not cooperate. For one breath, the border loses the gaze that kept it true.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The mourner waits beside another absence. The guard must believe that someone will come; the mourner knows that someone will not return. One absence is cultivated by power, the other refuses to be administered by it. Grief takes up time and space. It prevents loss from being tidied into history and put away.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"6434fe19-d8be-4c77-b781-b392ac76e233",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253206565376,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x992/c1c58aa534/ali-cherri-the-seven-soldiers-detail-2023-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-galerie-imane-fares-c-photo-aurelien-mole_1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x992"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"7104ee9f-161f-4df9-a15b-9444835a605e",quote:"\"Soul Witness\" is sublime because it reaches us where explicit images now fail. It does not raise its voice above the noise. It lowers it",author:"",component:"quote"},{_uid:"7db8a9a2-49cd-449b-82a3-49a72afa6ab1",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218252924727797,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1152x1613/74c17c6fc5/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9a.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1152x1613"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"c4739171-df8e-490c-84c9-410857911f93",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218252924707316,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1152x1728/d406ba2a22/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9b.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1152x1728"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"8009e73d-aee1-4f38-9832-14bd793c0658",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253008232953,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/3072x2048/7b3a38d587/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c9e.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"3072x2048"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"87358e6a-a07c-4b0d-9a1c-f4793f6493bf",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The same disturbance passes through Cherriâs materials. Bronze has long spoken for victory, permanence and the official dead. Mud accepts the hand, keeps its pressure for a while, then cracks. It does not conquer bronze; it makes bronzeâs eternity look slightly anxious.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Bronze says forever. Mud waits for rain.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Mud may shelter or bury. Stone may remember or command. Cherri grants no material an easy innocence. He brings them close enough for their inherited meanings to become unstable: the hardness of authority, the elevation of glory, the supposed humility of earth. Fragility is not made virtuous. Permanence is simply revealed as labourâa pedestal, a ceremony, someone to keep the surface bright.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"The fragments within Cherriâs hybrid creatures have survived other forms of authority. Removed, traded, authenticated and renamed, they carry the touch of several acts of possession. Here Cherriâs question widens: not only what history remembers, but how power and its institutions decide what can be transmitted as history at all. A museum may protect an object and still edit its life. It can turn plunder into provenance by changing not the object, but the sentence around it. Under good lighting, a violent journey acquires excellent manners.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Cherri does not pretend to return these fragments to an untouched past. There is no untouched past left. Ancient stone enters new clay; inherited faces inhabit uncertain bodies. The seams remain visible. These creatures resist the calm coherence that display so often imposes upon damaged histories.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"This is the quiet movement of \"Soul Witness\": from the body trained by power to the structures that make such training appear natural; from vigilance to border, from exhaustion to monument, from displaced object to authorised memory. History does not simply pass from one generation to another. It is filtered through the nation, the army and the museum, each preserving certain traces while teaching others to disappear. The exhibition never turns this movement into a lesson. It lets us feel how command passes into flesh, how violence begins to resemble order, and how order eventually tells the story.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Its lightest touches are also its coldest. Armies, borders and museums possess formidable power, yet depend upon brittle performances: a man must continue looking, a statue must remain upright, a label must keep its authority. Perhaps powerâs deepest fear is not rebellion. Perhaps it is a loss of concentration.",type:"text"}]}]},component:"text_block"},{_uid:"c2a02ac7-b083-4d3d-9617-5a87f3dcf8de",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253008228856,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1536/fedaf88376/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c98.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2304x1536"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"}
77,{_uid:"5a31bca4-64dc-4188-9baa-1538326f762e",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218253154406909,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/1920x1440/0f27d3727e/ali-cherri-counter-monument-for-the-fallen-2025-c-courtesy-of-the-artist-and-almine-rech1_5f952dd96200cb7c35dc75903309cee7.jpeg",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"1920x1440"},is_external_url:false},caption:"installation view of Ali Cherri's solo exhibition 'Soul Witness', on view at WIELS, Brussels, Belgium from September 5, 2026 Photo: Eline Willaert",autoplay:false,component:"media"},{_uid:"4e97b997-08d9-4470-a18c-fffe435b7a69",content:{type:"doc",attrs:{backgroundColor:null},content:[{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Soul Witness\" is sublime because it reaches us where explicit images now fail. It does not raise its voice above the noise. It lowers it. We lean closer. By the time we understand what has reached us, it is too late to scroll away.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"To witness, here, is not simply to have looked. It is to lose the privilege of remaining outside what one has seen.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"I agree with Cherri: art may not possess power, but it is here to irritate, to disturb the serenity of dominant power. Soul Witness does precisely that. It leaves authority standing, yet makes its composure impossible to believe.",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"Everything here rings true. Everything is finely judged; everything reaches deep. I cried a great deal. Ali Cherri is a great artist, and his generationâs most eloquent witness to reality where peace remains absent",type:"text"}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"\"Soul Witness\" curated by Curator: Helena Kritis, Curatorial intern: Magdalena de la Barrera",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"With the generous support of: FABA Fundación, Almine y Bernard Ruiz Picasso, Mercedes Vilardell,, Peter & Nathalie Hrechdakian-Oghlian",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]},{type:"paragraph",attrs:{textAlign:null},content:[{text:"In collaboration with: Almine Rech Gallery, Galerie Imane Farès, Cherri Studio",type:"text",marks:[{type:"bold"}]}]}]},component:"text_block"}],date:"2026-09-09 00:00",name:"The Moment the Image ÷Stops Protecting Us",author:"Philippe Riss-Schmidt",component:"review",color_dark:{_uid:"5acbe40f-d7e8-453d-a68d-cf1ede2005a3",color:"#d0a873",plugin:"native-color-picker"},hero_image:[{_uid:"c17f03c7-e151-499d-8c7c-37e674663d1f",poster:{id:null,alt:null,name:"",focus:null,title:null,source:null,filename:"",copyright:null,fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{}},source:{id:218251121287591,alt:"",name:"",focus:"",title:"",source:"",filename:"https://a.storyblok.com/f/287172172093638/2304x1536/ad6964cd77/ali-cherri-wiels-2026_00000000-046c-7fc4-0000-000000024c96.webp",copyright:"",fieldtype:"asset",meta_data:{size:"2304x1536"},is_external_url:false},caption:"Ali Cherri, The Earth Heard Their Lament, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Imane Farès",autoplay:false,component:"media"}]},slug:"ali-cherri",full_slug:"directory/reviews/ali-cherri",sort_by_date:null,position:-1500,tag_list:[],is_startpage:false,parent_id:91168344582362,meta_data:null,group_id:"4f74592d-1424-40c7-85da-bf0d5a3b1520",first_published_at:"2026-09-09T17:49:41.625Z",release_id:null,lang:"default",path:null,alternates:[],default_full_slug:null,translated_slugs:null}},"uses":{"params":["slug"]}}]; 78 79 Promise.all([ 80 import("../../_app/immutable/entry/start.73efc197.js"), 81 import("../../_app/immutable/entry/app.2847fca1.js") 82 ]).then(([kit, app]) => { 83 kit.start(app, element, { 84 node_ids: [0, 24], 85 data, 86 form: null, 87 error: null 88 }); 89 }); 90 } 91 </script>
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