The virtual world once promised to expand how we imagine and connect. Shaped by our desires, avatars allowed us to re-create ourselves. By now, the virtual has become a place of invisible labour and consumption. Avatars can be used for control and exploitation. Our environments seem filled with digital and machinic proxies—figures presented as monsters, hollow vessels, sexualized props, or optimized assistants.
The artists in this programme explore the tension between artificial figures as uncanny doubles, and reality as entanglement of worlds and influences. Their works reimagine the virtual as a space for ritual, creativity, and change. In these spaces, the border between the real and digital blurs. Where does the human spirit end, and the digital interface begin? Are we tools, or are we twins?
The programme opens with a short video by Charmaine Poh. Made from found footage, it displays the artist as a preteen TV actor in the early 2000s in Singapore. Through the use of a deep-fake, it presents her avatar, E-Ching, an eternal 12-year-old version of the artist. The film directly addresses politics of the gaze, and questions agency, within today’s visual culture world.
This programme has been co-curated with curator and writer Astrid Korporaal.
