III. The Mirrored Ghost

The third axis of the exhibition investigates the staging of the subject across the reflective surfaces of digital culture, where self-image continuously oscillates between commodified discipline, algorithmic masking, and the sacred reactivation of ancestral memory. Far from existing as a passive mirror, the contemporary interface operates as an active theater: within it, rituals of visibility and social conformity demand a relentless performance of the Self, while cultural archives and diasporic experiences are translated into new visual codes and conduits of healing. Bringing together audiovisual satire, animated silhouette drawings, post-human mythologies, and digital painting, this section explores what remains irreducible in human subjectivity when identity is projected online, framing the interface as a dynamic site of becoming where heritage and future potentiality intersect.

Adopting a stance of critical distance from digital culture while bridging animated film, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, and Baudrillardian simulacra, Claudia Ungersbäck investigates the origins of portraiture as the inscription of a loss. In INTER, animated shadow drawings echo the flat silhouettes of social media profile pictures, turning the digital space into an arena of friction and spectral projections. By manipulating the tactile qualities of direct scanner art alongside the infinite circulation of images, the artist explores the threshold between the interiority of private experience and the rapid consumption of public identity across global networks.

Dutch interdisciplinary duo HeresAndHolti mobilizes artificial intelligence, satire, and immersive storytelling to construct contemporary fables that mirror human fears, desires, and the primal urge to belong. Through the inquisitive outsider gaze of the fictional creature Zeefluweel, their works dismantle the absurd commodification of the body and the algorithmic reinforcement of tribal scapegoating. Confronting the viewer with the pressures of aesthetic optimization and digital conformity, the duo shows that generative AI does not introduce novel pathologies, but rather accelerates ancient social behaviors, preserving a poignant plea for empathy, humor, and vulnerability.

Exploring the visual ambiguity and tension between freedom and restriction, Herbert Neuwirth deploys AI-assisted moving imagery to construct an impossible paradoxical garment: the fusion of a psychiatric straitjacket with a classical ballet tutu. In Straitutu, a headless, ungendered torso rotates endlessly within a clinical void, visualizing the claustrophobic discipline imposed by aesthetic perfection and validation loops on digital platforms. Periodically disrupted by static glitches and surveillance-like scanning bars, the work turns delicate visual elegance into an anatomy of internal paralysis, asking whether digital visibility is an avenue toward liberation or a self-imposed cage.

Working from the Ugandan diaspora in the United States, Raymond Ssekajigo abstracts the iconic Ankole longhorn form, reorganizing it into intricate geometric structures through digital painting. In Silent Heritage and Ancestral Emblems, rhythmic, structured repetition functions as an ancestral code that safeguards collective memory against cultural homogenization. Rejecting the static confinement of heritage to the past, the artist layers crisp, recognizable cultural emblems over chaotic, kinetic fields, celebrating the borderless mobility of cultural memory and asserting its vital capacity to endure and evolve within post-digital environments.

Embracing a poetic synthesis of fine-art photography and digital compositing, Victoria Ogunleye approaches the human body as a living archive and a spiritual interface between ancestral lineage, formative trials, and self-actualization. In Heritage, Light & Becoming, a radiant female figure is framed by floating panels that emulate contemporary digital UI widgets, connecting memories of childhood, rural origins, pain, and healing through luminous threads. By merging traditional ritual aesthetics with algorithmic luminosity, the artist transforms the screen into a sacred portal of cultural continuity, inviting international viewers to project their own journeys of rebirth and identity.