
Memory in Transformation — Bodies and Posthuman Imaginaries
Friday, September 18, 2026 · 6:00 PM CDT · The Research House for Asian Art · Chicago, IL
Get more events like this
Free daily picks for live events around Chicago. No account needed.
Unsubscribe any time.
About this event
An art exhibition bringing together 18 artists whose works reflect critically and imaginatively on memory, the body, and the changing boundaries of the human in an age of technology and AI. Drawing its point of departure from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the exhibition considers transformation in relation to the body, memory, artificial intelligence, robotics, and emerging posthuman conditions. More than two thousand years ago, Ovid brought together stories in which human and divine figures became animals, plants, stars, stones, and beings endowed with powers beyond ordinary human capacity. Today, technology once again asks us to reconsider the limits and possibilities of the human body. As genetic technologies, machine intelligence, autonomous vehicles, conversational robots, caregiving machines, and AI-generated content enter everyday life, they alter not only what we encounter but also how experience is formed and remembered. The human, the humanlike nonhuman, the posthuman: where do the boundaries lie? The exhibition considers whether artists working today may belong to one of the last generations whose memories of childhood or youth were formed before generative AI became a pervasive presence in everyday life. Life moved differently then. These artists carry the imprints of that earlier world while remaining highly sensitive to the technological realities now emerging around them. From this perspective, Memory in Transformation — Bodies and Posthuman Imaginaries carries a certain melancholy. Facing the future, we move forward with imagination and longing; at the same time, we look back, summoning memories and ghosts. Under the illumination, pressure, and provocation of posthuman conditions, imagination and memory continually pull at one another, generating new forms of transformation and new visual languages. The exhibition does not seek definitive answers. Instead, it creates a space for attention, understanding, and questioning. The participating artists…
Description from choosechicago.com