The World Through AI – Schirn Frankfurt, DE
The World Through AI
The comprehensive thematic exhibition occupies both exhibition spaces of the SCHIRN with around 40 works, including video installations, prints, sculptures, and photographs.
Introduction
AI technologies are fundamentally transforming how images are created, edited, shared, described, and perceived.
Running from June 11 to September 20, 2026, the SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT’s major summer exhibition features artworks that explore the cognitive, psychological, political, and ecological dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI). AI technologies are fundamentally changing how images are created, processed, disseminated, described, and viewed. Their influence on visual culture and contemporary art practice is one of the most visible manifestations of AI, which is governed by opaque technical processes. The wide-ranging, thematically organized exhibition will occupy both of the SCHIRN’s spaces with around forty works from the past ten years to the present, including video installations, graphic works, sculptures, photographs, and several new works produced specifically for the exhibition. The SCHIRN will host around thirty international artists, including Nora Al-Badri, Nouf Aljowaysir, Julian Charrière, Grégory Chatonsky, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, Agnieszka Kurant, Trevor Paglen, Hito Steyerl, Sasha Stiles, and the collective Taller Estampa.
The show will examine a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from resources and environmental concerns to perception, machine vision, face and emotion recognition, and memory. The works of art address microwork, the establishment of alternative historical narratives, and visions of the future, as well as “AI slop” and “slopaganda” (the use of AI-generated images as a new form of political propaganda).
These works are accompanied by a series of time capsules, forming a secondary register in the exhibition that links the present to the past, thereby embedding today’s technological transformations in a historical context.
„Artificial intelligence has become an integral part of public discourse, and its growing reach extends across all areas of society. Within this broad thematic field, artworks that engage with AI offer a unique perspective.”
Antonio Somaini and Katharina Dohm, curators
The presentation of the artworks, organized into seventeen thematic sections, spans both of the SCHIRN’s exhibition spaces in the former Dondorf printing works. The tour begins in Hall 1 in the main building, with a focus on the fundamental structures that lie at the core of artificial intelligence. In Hall 2, located in the building’s annex, the exhibition shifts to examine the wider social implications and profound effects of a present shaped by AI. Texts about the individual artworks and the exhibition’s thematic groups provide background information throughout the visit; a glossary accessible via QR code explains key terms from the field of AI.
A series of TIME CAPSULES along the route situates the artworks within a longer historical context. On view are media-archaeological objects, technological devices, archival materials, photographs, and historical prints and written documents from Frankfurt’s museums, archives, and libraries, as well as the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. These explore, among other things, the history of data storage and machine vision, the origins of face and emotion recognition systems in physiognomy, the genealogy of text and image processing operations, and the history of psychological warfare. One capsule also brings together historical documents relating to the Jewish Dondorf family and the former Dondorf printing works, a site where images and texts were industrially reproduced, and which currently serves as a temporary venue of the SCHIRN.
The exhibition in Hall 2 is open until September 6. The sections in Hall 1 can be visited for two more weeks, until September 20.
Exhibition organized by Jeu de Paume, Paris, in collaboration with SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT.
Curators
Curated by Antonio Somaini with Katharina Dohm and Cornelia Eisendle, SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE FRANKFURT
Research assistants
Jules Conchy and Samuel Solé
Artists in the exhibition
Nora Al-Badri, Nouf Aljowaysir, Timo Arnall, Érik Bullot, Julian Charrière, Grégory Chatonsky, Kate Crawford & Vladan Joler, Harun Farocki, Daniel Felstead & Jenn Leung, Joan Fontcuberta, Adam Harvey, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Andrea Khôra, Agnieszka Kurant, Occitane Lacurie & Barnabé Sauvage, George Legrady, Meta Office, Marina Otero Verzier with LOCUMENT (Francisco Lobo & Romea Muryń), Trevor Paglen, Jacques Perconte, Julien Prévieux, Inès Sieulle, Hito Steyerl, Sasha Stiles, Ania Szczepańska, Taller Estampa, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Gwenola Wagon