While AI has dominated the conversations of ethics, policy, copyright and creativity for the past 18-months, data as a topic for artists has long been on the table.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s major summer exhibition, Data Dreams: Art and AI, couldn’t be any more timely. Curated by the MCA’s Jane Devery, Anna Davis and Tim Riley Walsh, it opens 21 November as part of the Sydney International Art Series.
Data Dreams brings together 10 artists exploring the profound impact of artificial intelligence as an artistic collaborator and it is the first of its kind to be staged by an Australian institution.
Art and AI – five artists to alter your world view
Anicka Yi (South Korea)
Anicka Yi’s practice is informed by scientific research, biology and perfumes. Over the past decade her work has explored the intersection of politics and macrobiotics, questioning the increasingly hazy taxonomic distinctions between what is human, animal, plant and machine.
In Radiolaria (2023–25), a series of luminous suspended sculptures undulating like deep-sea creatures, she looks to possibilities for intelligence and collaboration beyond human and organic life. Presented in Sydney next year, Each Branch Of Coral Holds Up The Light of The Moon (2024) is a 3D animation generated using custom AI software designed to carry on her art practice after her death.
Agnieszka Kurant (Poland)
Agnieszka Kurant investigates collective and nonhuman intelligences, the future of labor and creativity, and the exploitations of digital capitalism.
In her sculptural work Chemical Garden (2021/2025), plant-like crystals grow in an aquarium from the same metal salts found in computers and deep-sea vents, while in her ongoing work, In Conversions, a liquid crystal painting morphs in response to emotional data collected from millions of social media accounts using a custom AI system.
Christopher Kulendran Thomas (UK)
Christopher Kulendran Thomas uses artificial intelligence technologies to examine the foundational fictions of Western individualism and the complex legacies of imperialism. He is an artist of Eelam Tamil descent, who spent his formative years in London.
For Sydney, The Finesse (2022) is a monumental video installation that transports audiences into a simulated forest. Melding pop culture and political science, it combines archival footage with AI-generated avatars to questions the role AI technologies play in a world where real and fake messages are indistinguishable. Kulendran Thomas invites us to discern the truth for ourselves.
Corresponding with Data Dreams at MCA Australia, he will also present the exhibition Safe Zone at Artspace from 14 November to 15 February 2026.
Read: AI and artists: will anyone care when human creativity is usurped?
Hito Steyerl (Germany)
Hito Steyerl integrates communications media into cinematic installations, blending documentary film techniques, speculative fiction and first-person narrative. She asks: ‘Are people hidden by too many images? . . . Do they become images?’
For Data Dream, the acclaimed artist will present an expansive new installation blending documentary footage, AI-generated imagery and sculptures of digital forms. Mechanical Kurds (2025) examines the sinister worlds of AI-led warfare and surveillance, and the hidden human labour behind these powerful systems.
Lynn Hershman Leeson (USA)
Logic Paralyzes the Heart (2021) and Cyborgian Rhapsody: Immortality (2023) from Lynn Hershman Leeson’s acclaimed Cyborg film series (1994–2023) will be a highlight of Data Dreams, tracing the radical ways that AI and other technologies are reshaping our lives, societies and the environment.
As a foundational innovator in the field, Leeson has been exploring the relationship between technology and humanity since the 1960s. She says: ‘I think that we’ve become kind of a society of screens, of different layers that keep us from knowing the truth.’
