Suzanne Treister: Prophetic Dreaming
"Suzanne Treister: Prophetic Dreaming" at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź is the first retrospective in Poland dedicated to the work of this pioneer of digital art, new media, and net art. The exhibition spans over four decades of the artist’s interdisciplinary activity, presenting a practice that is visionary, radical, and critical, yet not devoid of humor. Throughout her body of work, Treister reveals relationships between technology, global surveillance networks, power, science and mysticism. The presentation also includes the artist’s latest works, which draw upon quantum physics and prompt a critical look at artificial intelligence, simultaneously visualizing solutions to the climate crisis on Earth. A central focus of the artist’s work is the issue of saving the world for future generations. Exploring alternative belief systems, building grassroots communities, and creating alternative worlds are just a few of the strategies Treister employs in pursuit of this goal.
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This exhibition guides the viewer along a chronological path through the work of Suzanne Treister (b. 1958, London), showcasing the diversity of her activities across the internet, interactive technologies, painting, video, photography, and drawing. The artist began creating projects involving video games, virtual reality, and software as early as the late 1980s. Among her early works, the exhibition presents the series "Video Game Paintings" (1989–91), "Fictional Videogame Stills" (1991–92), and "SOFTWARE" (1993–94). The last of these presents hypothetical software applications, anticipating the apps through which we now mediate our daily lives.
The monumental cycle "Time Traveling with Rosalind Brodsky" (1995–2006) explores the twentieth and twenty-first centuries from the perspective of the artist’s alter ego. Brodsky, who shares the artist’s Polish roots, believes she is employed at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality (IMATI) in London. The exhibition at Muzeum Sztuki presents the fantastical costumes and devices Brodsky used for time travel, as well as documentation of fictional research projects: "GOLEM/LOEW: Artificial Life" (2001–2), which explores the desire to create artificial life on Earth, "Operation Swanlake" (2003–4), and "HEXEN" 2039 (2004–6), investigating the military’s use of occult practices in psychological warfare. This project exemplifies Treister’s artistic strategy of constructing multi-layered, fictional universes that offer profound insights into our contemporary reality.
Treister’s critical perspective on the internet, grounded in an understanding of its history and modern-day usage, is contextually illuminated in the series "HEXEN 2.0" (2009–11), a project including original alchemical diagrams and a tarot deck shee designed herself. These works reveal connections between the post-World War II development of cybernetics, the military origins of the internet, and the emergence of new systems of global manipulation and control. Treister highlights the points of intersection between these phenomena, juxtaposing them with parallel histories of grassroots and countercultural social movements. Prophetic Dreaming also showcases large-scale, post-futurist projects created by Suzanne Treister over the past decade, such as "SURVIVOR (F) and The Escapist" ("Black Hole Spacetime").
One of the artist’s latest projects, "HEXEN 5.0" (2023–25), which also employs tarot cards and alchemical diagrams, analyzes the workings of artificial intelligence, the climate crisis, and quantum physics. This project seeks hope for the world’s future in the building of grassroots communities, counterculture, and an ethics of care. Presented for the first time as part of "Prophetic Dreaming, The Institute of Mystical Earth System Science" (2025) series proposes a new, holistic field of research, visualizing the activities of over 200 global institutes dedicated to the Earth’s restoration and planetary survival.
"Prophetic Dreaming" reveals numerous astonishing, often unsettling, predictions of future events, made possible through an insightful and critical analysis of history and contemporaneity that have been constants throughout Treister’s career. Suzanne Treister’s practice developed through the twenty-first century, primarily utilizing traditional techniques such as painting and drawing, situates contemporary technological inventions within the realm of dreams and spirituality, sources from which mystical practices have drawn for millennia. In this context, the artist’s tarot decks serve not so much to predict the future as to engage viewers and encourage them to critically re-evaluate both the past and the future. Treister’s latest original tarot deck, titled "HEXEN 5.0", offers a hopeful, participatory proposal for envisioning the sustainable and ethical shaping of a world that may come to be.
This retrospective of Suzanne Treister continues the long-standing interest in the artist’s work by Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, whose collection holds numerous pieces of her art, previously showcased in group exhibitions. "Suzanne Treister: Prophetic Dreaming" is presented at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź in cooperation with Modern Art Oxford, where it was first shown in the fall of 2025. It will be reimagined by MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK in 2027. The exhibition at Muzeum Sztuki will be accompanied by an extensive public program and an extended educational agenda.
The related events programme is co-funded by the British Council
Partners:
Museum Modern Art Oxford, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, British Council, Fundacja Rodziny Staraków
Media patronage:
