With the evolution of the web came the dream of a new frontier in human relations, one free from the usual identifiers of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and dis/ability. This fall, Wrightwood 659 questions that promise and its darker side of surveillance, erasure, and exploitation.
“In light of the sudden explosion of interest in digital art, we hope this exhibition will help raise awareness of its longer history,” explains curator Tina Rivers Ryan. “These artworks demonstrate that artists who work with digital technologies have long considered the complex relationship between technology and difference. Unfortunately, as is true across contemporary art, these artists often have not been valued beyond their communities, due to the systemic biases of institutions including museums and galleries.”
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Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art presents a diverse group of 17 artists and collectives who reimagine the digital tools shaping our lives. The exhibition includes projects spanning the last three decades, from software-based and internet art to animated videos, bioart experiments, digital games, and 3D-printed sculptures. Together, these works explore the aesthetic and social potential of emerging technologies and the essential question: What does it mean to live in a digital world?
The 20 works on view in Difference Machines exemplify different strategies for adapting technology to artmaking. The artists represented in the exhibition are Morehshin Allahyari, Zach Blas, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, A.M. Darke, Stephanie Dinkins, Hasan Elahi, Sean Fader, Rian Ciela Hammond, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Joiri Minaya, Mongrel, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Sondra Perry, Keith Piper, Skawennati, Saya Woolfalk, and Lior Zalmanson.
Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) and co-curated by Tina Rivers Ryan, PhD, Curator, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and Paul Vanouse, Professor, University at Buffalo. Difference Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art earned the 2022 Curatorial Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC), making it the first major survey of art and technology to be acknowledged by the AAMC.
This exhibition is presented by Alphawood Exhibitions LLC at Wrightwood 659.
To learn more, visit wrightwood659.org.
Source: Hyperallergic.com