What’s transhumanism? Transhumanism in its essence is advocating using refined applied sciences and synthetic intelligence to boost the human situation (and cognition) within the type of enhancing talents and overcoming organic constraints. Transhumanism typically will get a unfavourable depiction in media and is typically pigeonholed as being a post-apocalyptic, post-human “nightmare”. That is what modern artist Joanna Grochowska tries to unpick in her newest exhibition with its motto: “What Future Do We Need? What Should We Do To Get There?”, which is a quote from Klaus Schwab’s “The Nice Narrative: For a Higher Future”. The exhibition is the continuation of her earlier venture dubbed “Opening the Future” that was introduced in Munich in 2021.

Learn Extra: Artwork and Transhumanism: Humanity as a Mission within the work of Joanna Grochowska

In 2020 LUXUO coated the work of Joanna Grochowska highlighting how she utilised the idea of “a Doll of Hans Bellmer” to depict eroticism, ache, and energy in a posthuman modified physique. That is what we see immediately, subversive imagery represented by unclothed human our bodies. Her haute images depicts eroticism, ache and energy throughout faceless figures in lifeless poses with out sexual organs and identifiable options.

Her 2024 showcase equally explores transhumanism and human enhancement applied sciences as a part of an ongoing dialogue about how the long run will view morphological freedom. Utilizing the notions of “transgression” and “singularity” because the conceptual foundation of her artwork with transhuman and posthuman figurativeness being dominant themes, Joanna highlights the development of technological evolution with the emergence of recent paradigms in gender, physique, and id.

Creator Natasha Vita-Extra writes that the philosophy of transhumanism offers with the elemental nature of actuality, data, and existence. She states “as a worldview, it presents a cultural ecology for understanding the human integration with expertise. As a scientific research, it supplies the strategies for observing how expertise is shaping society and the apply for investigating moral outcomes.” She goes on to delve into how a social narrative emerges from people overcoming odds and the continued want to construct a world value dwelling in. The processes that come out of it require vital considering and visionary accounts to evaluate how expertise is altering human nature and what it means to be human in an unsure world.

German thinker Stefan Lorenz Sorgner debunks widespread myths about transhumanism stating “transhumanism is broadly misunderstood as a result of the media has exaggerated present applied sciences and branded the motion as harmful, main many to consider that hybrid people could quickly stroll amongst us and that immortality, achieved via mind-uploading, is imminent”.

There is a component of the grotesque within the work of Joanna Grochowska however finished purposefully and artfully. Grotesque in itself is a visible artwork style that arguably began with the Romans however achieved notoriety within the 18th-century Renaissance period so it’s attention-grabbing to see how Grochowska reinterprets his style to incorporate a futuristic take. Paying particular consideration to gender fluidity, a lot of Grochowska’s work delineate the physique after a intercourse reassignment surgical procedure. Her work of merging human and expertise to indicate hybrid varieties isn’t merely an suave absurdity. Purposefully incongruous, distorted, and barely disturbing imagery is meant to make the viewer cease, assume, and query perceptions of delight, ache and sweetness.

Joanna Grochowska’s Transhumanism exhibition will happen from 18 February to 17 March 2024 on the Galerie Verbeeck – Van Dyck in Antwerp, Belgium.

Head to Joanna Grochowska’s web site and or take a look at her Instagram account @facelesshumanforms for extra info.

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