New Museum’s ‘New Humans’ Comeback Show Looks to the Future

Summary

• The New Museum in New York is set to open New Humans: Memories of the Future
• Opening on March 21, the expansion’s inaugural showcase features over 700 that reimagine the relationship between humanity and technology

In an era drunk on algorithmic prophecy, the presence (and fear) of the mechanized nonhuman is ever-present. Yet with every new technology that comes our way, we’re forced to face the same question that artists and scientists have been wrestling with for centuries: what does it mean to be human?

With excitement high for the long-anticipated reveal of the New Museum’s OMA-designed expansion, the institution has announced the full artist list for its expansive comeback show, New Humans: Memories of the Future. A fitting theme for the newly revamped building, the exhibition explores an obsession with mechanical, biological and spiritual invention through the lens of 230 artists, writers, scientists architects and filmmakers.

From the nightmarish distortions of H.R. Giger and Francis Bacon to cyborg lifeforms from contemporary makers, like Cao Fei, Hito Steyerl, Lee Bul and Meriem Bennani, the exhibition resists the myth of linear progress, staging itself as a “series of leaps, returns and reversals” across time. The avant-garde’s “New Man” and “New Woman,” for example, prefigure our contemporary obsession with augmented bodies, optimized selves and digital avatars. Surreal provocations have always mapped bodies under pressure.

A future belongs to everyone, luddites and techno-optimists all the same. If humans have met their technological match, New Humans suggests we’ve been rehearsing the encounter for over a century. Perhaps the real disruption isn’t a digital one, but an enduring dream to reinvent the human altogether.

New Humans: Memories of the Future is set to open on March 21. Check out the full list of featured names on the museum’s website.

New Museum
235 Bowery,
New York, NY 10002