Starting from the Russian war against Ukraine, curators Lesia Kulchynska and Catinca Tabacaru focus on ongoing emergencies around the globe and their possible techno-driven futures, proposing the consideration of empowering alliances between those who have lived through or are still living in these states. The exhibition places artists from Europe, Lebanon, Suriname, the United States, and Zimbabwe in conversation with Ukrainian artists.

State of Emergence welcomes viewers with the presence of strange and dangerous creatures: the Dancing Rubble by Slinko personifies in absurdity the destruction of war; while The Siren, a painting by Nikita Kadan reverberates with the seduction of death. As an audience, we try to adapt to their eerie presence despite having no reason to trust or understand them. Looking at the dead ends of hope, the artists call in the liberating overtones of gloom.

Alaa Mansour explores AI’s hallucinations of digital domination, while the art streaming collective UKRAïNATV invites viewers to surrender to the intoxicating messiness of being together in the digital trenches of the ongoing cyberwar.

Maria Kulikovska and Ksenia Hnylytska reflect on their war-induced nomadism: strangers cut off from their endangered or destroyed homes who are learning to become their own islands. Will these islands form new archipelagos? Through the archeology of images and matter, Terrence Musekiwa and Xavier Robles de Medina find a way to reassemble colonial subjectivities into incommensurable heterogenous agency. All this takes place under the stunning and bizarre synthetic sunset of Lesia Vasylchenko, raising questions about the predictability of our future.