With the rise of artificial intelligence, social web, and gaming, the process of adopting newly invented personae is nothing unusual in popular culture and daily life. Immortal stand-ins for the self, for feelings and intelligence, and for values and beliefs have expanded our lives. After Us looks at the original personae that artists are animating: ones that amplify current social conditions and speculate on potential future states.
As the first major show that KAF and the New Museum co-present in China, the exhibition is ambitious to bring together an international group of artists and emerging artists from China, manifesting KAF’s role in promoting contemporary Chinese art and cultural exchange. Featured artists layer virtual or imagined states onto the present through the use of surrogates, proxies, and avatars – which appear in works of sculpture, installation, photography, performance, video or in the form of augmented reality or virtual reality.
The exhibition is curated by Lauren Cornell, Curator and Associate Director of Technology Initiatives at the New Museum, who is supported by Chinese curator Chen Baoyang, appointed by KAF as Assistant Curator.