"ILLUSION" Exhibition

The proliferation of digital communication technologies over the past two decades, through social media and now the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, has contributed to an era increasingly exposed to disinformation, notably through deepfakes, leading to the parallel realities in which many people currently live. Those who consider facts irrelevant risk having a significant impact on future generations.

The works in the ILLUSION exhibition echo this issue of the perception of truth and falsehood, while addressing the realm of speculative fiction and the idealized parallel life in the Metaverse, prompting us to question the very concept of reality with the idea that we are living in a simulation. Finally, we cannot escape the presence of AI, its uses, and its subversion by artists, as it becomes a predictive tool or even a creative assistant.

As Philippe Hupp, translator of Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner, Minority Report), noted during an interview broadcast in 1991 on France Culture:

"We live, beyond reality, in a universe that is nonetheless quite unsettling and paranoid, and which in many ways resembles the one Philip K. Dick described: we live in a world of illusions. We live increasingly in a world of images, and images that are completely illusory, and most people in our society have no connection to the real except through a screen."

2024 marks the 25th anniversary of ELEKTRA. Hosted since 2016 by Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal, the Biennale's main exhibition strengthens the convergence between visual arts and digital arts by presenting a new generation of artists working with these new tools, whether visibly or transparently. This 7^th Biennale aims, once again, to reflect on our societies, which are increasingly enveloped and infiltrated by the digital.

Alain Thibault
Exhibition Curator

Exhibited Works

• Reversing, Adad Hannah
• Rough Beast, Adam Basanta
• Mirror series, Boris Eldagsen
• Pseudomnesia, Boris Eldagsen
• Skin Deep, Chun Hua Catherine Dong
• Could you take a picture?, Cinzia Campolese
• Persistence of Fiction, Hidden Edges Collective (Lucas Paris, Myriam Bleau)
• Illusive Appearance / Elusive Essence, Obvious Collective
• Voice Scroll, David Rokeby
• MEETING PHILIP, Eric Vernhes
• Mary, Kent Monkman
• The Transfiguration, Kent Monkman
• Animal Locomotion, Kurt d'Haeseleer
• Face of City, Lee Jaehyung
• Manhattan Project Revisited, Lorraine Oades and Ryan Clayton
• A Monocular Dialogue, Louis-Philippe Demers
• Veillance, Louis-Philippe Rondeau
• A QUICKIE IN THE BOUNCY HOUSE, Pierce Warnecke and Matthew Biederman
• Who is Afraid of Dreaming of Red, Yellow and Blue, Pierce Warnecke and Matthew Biederman
• Organism + Excitable Chaos, Navid Navab, in collaboration with Garnet Willis
• Communicating Vessels, Nicolas Baier
• Climatic Death, Oli Sorenson
• Posthuman Cinema, The PHC collective (Mark Amerika, Will Luers, Chad Mossholder)
• Immersion, Robbie Cooper
• Empty Forms, Sébastien Lacomblez and Emmanuel Pire
• Virus Becoming, Shu Lea Cheang
• I'm Feeling Lucky, Timothy Thomasson
• Slow Track, Timothy Thomassion