ONX Showcase Athens 2026: Exploring Art After the Algorithm
Athens, May 24 – The Onassis ONX Showcase Athens 2026, an exhibition titled ‘Human in the Loop,’ opened yesterday, May 23, 2026, at Onassis Ready (2 Strati Tsirka, Agios Ioannis Rentis). The exhibition, which runs until May 24, 2026, explores the intricate relationship between the body, machine, memory, and desire through a series of installations, performances, and interactive environments.
Organized by Onassis ONX, the exhibition transforms the Onassis Ready space into a testing ground for how we perceive, move, remember, and imagine in a world where technology functions not merely as a tool but as an encompassing environment. The central theme, ‘Human in the Loop,’ aims to map the often-invisible line between the human and the algorithmic, the body and the system, desire and automation.
A Deep Dive into Digital Art and Human Experience
The showcase brings together works by artists from the Onassis ONX and Onassis AiR ecosystem, new commissions from the ONX Seeds program, and pieces from the Onassis Collection. This creates an immersive environment where digital art is presented not as a technological spectacle, but as a realm for existential and political negotiation.
In this context, artificial intelligence is treated neither as a threat nor a promise, but as a condition-something that has already permeated language, work, relationships, memory, image, and daily experience. The exhibition’s works do not seek definitive answers; instead, they focus on the fissures and cracks where machines fail to grasp emotion, where the body resists the algorithm’s speed, and where handmade creations re-emerge as a form of survival.
Diverse Artistic Approaches and Themes
From interactive installations and video art to performances and immersive environments, the ONX Showcase proposes a space where the digital is not intangible. It possesses weight, energy, and materiality. It consumes resources, creates dependencies, and generates desires, while simultaneously opening new realms of imagination.
On the first floor of Onassis Ready, nestled between the Onassis ONX/AiR studios and the historic Onassis Archive, visitors can explore works that navigate artificial intelligence, collective narrative, biotechnology, tactile experience, and post-digital performance. Highlights include Marc Da Costa & Matthew Niederhauser’s ‘The Golden Key,’ which transforms generative AI into an endless storytelling machine; Adam Cole’s ‘Kiss/Crash,’ connecting image violence with desire and self-representation; and Andrew Thomas Huang’s ‘Deer of Nine Colors,’ a dreamlike, handmade sci-fi universe where technology appears more mystical than innovative.
Other works imbue technology with an almost ritualistic character. Gregor Kuschmirz constructs a rain machine from cutlery and family traces, while Ivona Tau transforms family archives into fragile memories that dissolve and reassemble through AI. Gabriel Barcia-Colombo and Sarah Rothberg position the human body against the incessant conversations of avatars, where loneliness and hyper-connectivity become almost inseparable.
ONX Seeds: New Commissions Exploring the Physicality of Technology
A significant part of the exhibition features new commissions from ONX Seeds, works specifically created for the showcase that treat technology as something profoundly physical. George Papafigkos creates organisms that breathe like alien ecosystems. Giannis Kranidiotis transforms the energy of a mobile phone into the possibility of life for a plant. Playfool sets up a ritualistic bot farm that mirrors the economy of attention, and Dionysios proposes a nearly metaphysical allegory for generative artificial intelligence through an automatic vending machine-altar.
In parallel, performances by Sister Sylvester and Ontroerend Goed extend the exhibition’s concerns into the realm of collective experience. Without sensationalism or technological fetishism, these creative approaches reintroduce the question of human participation: who acts, who decides, and who bears responsibility when the rules remain the same but the outcomes constantly change?
Onassis ONX: A Platform for Artistic Innovation
The ONX Showcase marks the first major presentation of Onassis ONX in Greece and serves as a culmination of the activities of a platform that, since 2020, has supported creators working at the intersection of art, research, and emerging technologies. With a presence in Athens and New York, ONX strives to shape not only new works but also new ways of collaboration, production, and artistic survival.
Accompanying the exhibition is a program of talks and professional meetings focusing on generative AI, intellectual property, ethics, and the changing conditions of cultural production. Creators, technologists, theorists, and cultural professionals gather to discuss not only what technology can do, but also what kind of world it produces.
‘Human in the Loop’ is not merely a technological slogan. It is a reminder that, in an increasingly automated environment, the human element is not a given. It is something we constantly renegotiate: through the body, memory, care, conflict, narrative, and art.
Contributing Artists and Creative Team
The exhibition features works by a diverse group of artists including Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Adam Cole, Marc Da Costa, Andrew Thomas Huang, Gregor Kuschmirz, Dionysios, Giannis Kranidiotis, Marion Lasserre, Zisis Bliatkas, Matthew Niederhauser, George Papafigkos, Sarah Rothberg, Ali Santana, Sister Sylvester, Ivona Tau, Ontroerend Goed, and Playfool (Daniel Coppen & Saki Maruyama). The Onassis Collection also contributes works by Andreas Aggelidakis, Noemi Iglesias Barrios, Spyros Poros, and Teo Triantafyllidis.
The creative team includes Artistic Director Aphrodite Panagiotakou, Executive Director Dimitris Theodoropoulos, and Curation & Management by Prodromos Tsiakavos, among others. The exhibition design is by Loukas Bakas, with lighting design and programming by Vangelis Moudrichas and Pavlos Pappas.
The ONX Showcase Athens 2026, ‘Human in the Loop,’ is open from Thursday to Sunday, 18:00 – 23:00, with talks and workshops on Saturday from 10:30 – 16:00.
Source: https://popaganda.gr/art/onx-showcase-athens-2026-i-techni-meta-ton-algorithmo/
