This selection of artworks reflects an urgent and meditative impulse to muse and think about questions that, for many, appear difficult, polarising, and extremely uncertain. Ranging from the unsettled relationship with the medium itself, the image and its making, to the endless (and in some cases mindless) generation of visual material. The works traverse a fine line between the virtuosity of technological tools and their limits and pitfalls. With a wide range of stylistic approaches and methods, the artists imbue contemporary experiences of exile, alienation, climate doom, political disenchantment, and creative anxiety with sincerity and ingenuity that have become increasingly difficult to attain. By balancing urgent and challenging questions with formalistic ambition, the works allow for a possibility of seeing and thinking about the image in meaningful and touching ways, but simultaneously, with critical distance and even dark humor. The selection invites the audience to experience various aesthetic choices and methods, as well as critical conceptual engagements that revel in the ephemerality of the image and its haunting presence.

Selection & Program: Ismail Fayed