not in, of, along, or relating to a line

Artists: Addie Wagenknecht, Cao Fei, Eva and Franco Mattes, Lee Blalock, Maryam Al Hamra, micha cárdenas, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, Hesam Rahmanian, Sophia Al-Maria, Zach Blas

In this exhibition, nine artists and art collectives employ technology for self-expression and self-fashioning. In making visible both the restrictions and the freedoms of digital culture, they explore how identities and histories are created, transformed, or invented. For some, technology is a means to an end: a memoir, a fictional history, an intimate view of a person’s life. Others interrogate the power relations of these same tools, from virtual gaming and ‘big data’ consumer portraits to facial recognition software. The artists appropriate technologies to narrate, alter, augment, or invent their identities and histories. The idea of individual context, of experiential relativity, threads together the works in this exhibition, and structures its form and its content. The visitor is invited to travel a branching, non-linear, virtual path through works by artists who explore the transformation of individual identity that digital tools and internet connectivity have co-produced in our lives.

Curated by

• Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Visiting Assistant Professor of Interactive Media, NYU Abu Dhabi
• Maya Allison, Executive Director and Chief Curator, NYUAD Art Gallery