What Will It Mean To Be Human In The Future? An Art Exhibition In Portugal Aims To Find Out

Through their artworks, sculptures, and installations, each artist raised questions regarding the effects of technology on the human race, and how advances in capitalism have influenced our relationships with ourselves, and with the world. “The exhibition delves into the collaboration between the human and non-human, the boundaries of natural and artificial, organic and synthetic, real and fictional, and the aesthetic and the practical”, explains a statement from the gallery. Included in the exhibition is Estonian installation artist Katya Novitskova’s ‘Earth Potential (E. Coli)’. The public artwork is a 2.3 by 2.4 meter digital print on aluminum, with a steel and aluminum armature. To create the visual imagery of this installation, Novitskova scanned a microscopic photograph of E. coli, a common bacteria; magnified at a rate of 10,000. In recent years, E. coli has assisted groundbreaking scientific research, enabling new prospects for the future of human biology.

Additionally, Greek visual artist Eva Papamargariti created a digital installation titled ‘But for now all I can promise is that things will become weirder’. Unlike the scientific lens put forward by Novitskova, this work probes the experience of being human on a more sociological and behavioral level. “The acceleration of scrolling” is the first place the viewer’s eyes are drawn to; reminding us conceptually of how much our lives are spent online. Alongside the main exhibition program, Galeria Duarte Sequeira runs a curated public program and an artist residency to encourage the critical exchange of ideas.