Hackable Animals, a group exhibition about the influence of the internet, social media and artificial intelligence, is on this November at Casino Notabile. The participating artists – Elisa von Brockdorff, Ryan Falzon, Charlene Galea, Tom van Malderen and Letta Shtohryn – will explore how social media affects our consumer choices, our fashion sense and our tribal affiliations. Taking its name from a phrase coined by Israeli contemporary historian Yuval Harari, the exhibition will ask how, as we shift our lives online, our world-view, our self-perceptions, our interactions and our actions are affected.
Photographer Elisa von Brockdorff will be working outside her comfort zone, and producing a series of collages, exploring mundane conversations and gossip on social media. Her bold and colourful style is familiar to many, but this body of work will represent a departure from her photographic work. Painter and printmaker Ryan Falzon, better known for his expressionist and sometimes abrasive large-scale paintings, will also be showing a multi-disciplinary series of work. His work will explore freedom and post-truth in the hothouse atmosphere of an Instagram feed.
Performance artist and photographer, Charlene Galea will set up a feminist selfie-room within the exhibition. Working with twelve diverse women, she takes an ironic but assertive look at the female body on social media. Sculptor and designer Tom van Malderen will show work that plays with the problematic relationship between our so-called real and online lives, and how they have been taken over by new technology and a constant drive to achieve.
Last, but certainly not least, digital artist and researcher Letta Shtohryn will show a large-scale data self-portrait – an attempt to track the machines that are constantly tracking our every move on social media.
The exhibition will be the first group show produced by Unfinished Art Space, an independent, artist-run, nomadic space, working with artists to show experimental and contemporary art in Malta.
Hackable Animals, curated by Margerita Pulè will be on show from 15 – 28 November 2019, at Casino Notabile, Saqqajja Hill, Mdina Walls, with an opening night on 14 November. More info and opening hours on www.unfinishedartspace.org/hackable-animals.
Top image: Letta Shtohryn, What’s the word for the sound of infinite scrolling? 2019
