#RETOUCHED

Drops June 20th | Curated By Raina Mehler & Olive Allen | CADAF Marketplace Powered by Tezos blockchain

Featured Artists:

Stacie ant, Karmimadeebora McMillan in collaboration with Sena Burns, Yulia Shur, Anne Spalter with sonic landscape by The Josh Craig, Emma Stern, Addie Wagenknecht

#Retouched explores the disparate meanings of touch and the act of something being retouched.

Touching a person’s body can be comforting, empathetic and a form of connection; however, it can also be unwelcoming, forceful, and demeaning. Retouching is a technique that makes alterations to an image, eliminating an imperfection and implying that an improvement has been made. We have the ability to change ourselves and our environments in the physical and digital spaces, but who are we ameliorating for?

Using AI powered or synthetic intelligence to use different techniques such as clone stamping, zoom quilting, liquifying, photo compositing, and digital matte painting, the artworks use a hybridization of recognizable signs, pop culture symbols, and androgynous figures that shift between the familiar and uncanny, the primordial and the futurist, nostalgia and hope. 

Given the recent events of the leaked roe vs wade documents, women's bodies are once again being politicized. “Re” in the exhibition title alludes to the meanings of “again” and “backwards”: why are we talking about a women’s right to choose again in the 21st century? It feels like we are regressing, rather than progressing.

The omnipresent tension and division about politics, identity, sexuality, authority, and increasing climate concerns, present new forms of chaos, dissent, and anxiety.  The shifting of shapes and metamorphosis of forms causes us to question how we navigate this environment and escape the infinite loop that continuously disenfranchises women and minorities. 

Without the constraints of gravity or time, these artists create contemporary artifacts that critically question and challenge the rules, systems, and logic of today. With unprecedented access to instant information and disinformation, rapidly ever-changing technological tools, and planetary-scale computation, artworks suggest varying paths to empowerment and cause us to question the future at large: what does it look and feel like in the real-world and the metaverse? How will humanity interact, connect, touch, and be retouched? And how will we make it different than it is now?