Superfutures

Selfridges’ new exhibition transports us to a hybrid future where nothing is as it seems
By Alex James Taylor | Art | 13 July 2022
Above:

Sevdaliza, ‘Raving Dahlia’, 2021

Selfridges has gone futuristic, teaming up with Berlin’s Reference Festival for a new, immersive exhibition titled Superfutures.

Step foot through the department store’s iconic doors – the exhibition is also available to view digitally, obvs – and find yourself in a new landscape: a hybrid future and “generative portal between the world-as-is and world-yet-to-come.” What was once a shopfloor is now surreal terrain. Curated by Agnes Gryczkowska, this strange world is populated by works by the likes of Monira Al Qadiri, Katja Novitskova, Sevdaliza, Gentle Monster, Ottolinger and William Darrell. Estonian artist Katja Novitskova examines the relationship between tech, biology and ecology, while Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s video Liminal Lands proposes a future where data and biology interconnect.

GALLERY

“Superfutures is a reaction to a moment in history,” says Gryczkowska. “A moment in which the future and diversity of our planet is pulled into questions. As socio-political shifts attempt to increase hierarchies and homogeneity, the exhibition suggests a future that is a hybrid – a rhizomatic queerness and a desiring machine.”

Mumi Haiati, founder of Reference Studios and Reference Festival adds: “The Superfutures exhibition will present past and future universes, full of mutation and cohabitation, blurring boundaries between the organic and crafted, between human and machine, and challenging existing outlooks and normative gestures into reshaping our future.”

Superfutures runs at Selfridges 14th July – 16th October – book a guided tour here.


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