Artists and scientists alike have long explored the mindbending possibilities of creative production. While the two disciplines are often cast in opposition to one another, art and science come together in several exhibitions throughout 2022, as curators draw on new technology and belief systems to question the limits of our perception.
In Human Brains at Milan’s Fondazione Prada, everything from neurobiology to philosophy to psychology, linguistics to artificial intelligence, is explored in a year-long series of exhibitions and debates. Meanwhile, the first UK solo exhibition by artist Amitai Romm at Spike Island in Bristol (July to Sept 2022) investigates how scientific modelling relates to more open-ended forms of world-making, using encrypted data drawn from a Danish forest to create new sound and sculpture works.
A solo outing from Guyana-based artist Tabita Rezaire at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg will see the artist navigate digital and ancestral memory through quantum and cosmic mechanics, using “art as a means to unfold the soul.”
At the 59th Venice Biennale, Melanie Bonajo represents the Netherlands with a new site-specific film that explores the psychic power of intimacy, using the body to unravel new modes of connection. For Bonajo, “feeling is a form of intelligence.” It is a sentiment that also guides Mindscapes, an international cultural programme initiated by the Wellcome Trust, which aims to transform how we understand, address and talk about mental health. Highlights include Kader Attia at Berlin’s Gropius Bau and Yuki Iiyama at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.
Those looking to expand their mind should enter the Sensodrome by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster at London’s Serpentine Galleries, a “maison de rendez-vous to stimulate our somatosensory system”, promising new technologies of consciousness this spring.
