Things Don't Have to Be Like This
Morehshin Allahyari, American Artist, and Mimi Ọnụọha · Morehshin Allahyari · American Artist · Mimi Ọnụọha
In an age where all aspects of our lives are mediated through technology, contemporary artists are crucial voices in defining how we engage with these new tools. Over coffee at a Brooklyn cafe, artists and friends Morehshin Allahyari, American Artist, and Mimi Ọnụọha gathered to explore the complex relationships between technology, knowledge, power, and identity. “It’s clear that a lot of the world orders that we have inherited won’t work,” says Ọnụọha. “But that’s the space where artists are most needed.” From American Artist’s interrogation of social media and surveillance technologies, to Ọnụọha’s work calling attention to the data that is missing from our technological systems, to Allahyari’s resistance against the techniques of digital colonialism, these artists offer new possibilities for navigating our digital world through an artistic practice.
Produced with support from the Ford Foundation, “Things Don’t Have to Be Like This” builds on the learnings of the JustFilms New Media Leadership cohort, conceived to further explorations of technology, community, and making through a critical lens.
Featured artists
About the artists
Morehshin Allahyari was born in 1985 in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and works between New York and San Francisco, California. Allahyari received her BA from the University of Tehran in 2007, her MA from the University of Denver in 2009, and her MFA in new media art from the University of North Texas in 2012. Through video, sculpture, and installation, Allahyari calls attention to colonial power dynamics present today and discovers new ways of archiving and interpreting the history, myths, and artifacts of the Middle East and North Africa. Using virtual reality, simulation software, 3D scanning, digital fabrication, and multimodal artificial intelligence, the artist considers how technology can be used as a tool of extraction and erasure alongside demonstrating its liberatory potential.
American Artist was born in 1989 in Altadena, CA, and currently lives and works in New York, NY. The artist received their BFA from California Polytechnic State University in 2011 and their MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2015. Through photography, sculpture, video, and software, Artist investigates the development of our contemporary technological landscape and considers how our identities are filtered through and shaped by such technologies. By working within the structures they critique, such as social media or surveillance technology, the artist addresses the intertwined histories of systemic racial discrimination and technological advancement in order to imagine alternative ways of living within this paradigm.
Mimi Ọnụọha was born in 1989 in Parma, Italy and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Ọnụọha earned her B.A. in anthropology from Princeton University and later her MPS from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Through her multimedia and archive-based practice encompassing code, installation, video, and performance, the artist investigates the power dynamics inherent in data collection and technology and how data shapes and limits our understanding of the world. Her work often highlights patterns of absence or “blank spots” that emerge from reducing complexities to finite data sets, drawing attention to the biases embedded in the data collection processes.
