By wielding introspection as a crucial tool for understanding oneself and one’s context, or by reflecting on the world through fiction, the 12 artists in the group exhibition “Chronicles of the Future Superheroes” offer considerations of the present, reckon with the past, and contend with evolving toward the future. This multivalent gathering of artists, curated by Anca Verona Mihuleţ, unfolded across the expansive hall and intimate pockets of Timișoara’s Kunsthalle Bega within an episodic framework, such that the exhibition functioned like a non-linear narrative made up of a constellation of chapters and moments.

A prominent idea was that of looking inward. Submerging himself into a void with nothing but his own thoughts, Heecheon Kim records his deep-diving training in a sensory-deprivation chamber, in the film Deep in the Forking Tanks (2019). Using digital technology to edit this footage—at times applying pretty filters to mirror-selfie shots or adding a steady voiceover narration—Kim reveals his reactions and physical changes, and demonstrates how to adjust bodily sensation in order to concentrate on the mind.   

Beside engaging in self-reflection themselves, other artists encouraged visitors to do the same. Hyunjin Bek’s K-Meat Restaurant’s Restaurateur (2018–21) comprises a room resembling a Korean pork-belly restaurant, replete with plastic table and chairs casually placed in the center, and synthetic food laid out under bright neon lights. Taped on the walls were lyrics to a song that Bek’s grandmother sang when he was a child. During the exhibition’s opening, Bek sat in the corner, repetitively humming the tune. Slowly raising his hand for emphasis, he charged the space with an unsettling energy that brought audiences to question what soothes us, how we recreate those comforts, and how these comforts may or may not be passed on to others. Similarly putting forward delicate propositions for introspection, Adriana Chiruta’s text works (all 2021) enveloped the empty spaces between installations in the gallery. Her words, whether serving as curious instructions (“whisper the sound oooooooo/melting yourself/like a piece of black chocolate”) or meditative provocations (“life blooms in an empty space”), have a magnitude as earnest appeals to the viewer.

Elsewhere, in the series of videos and an installation Being Nina (2019–21), Adina Mocanu channels Nina Kulagina—a Soviet-era mystic who became known for her supernatural and psychic powers—levitating objects, manipulating nature, and carrying out daily tasks. During the exhibition’s opening weekend, Mocanu performed live as Kulagina, pacing the room as she recounted her biography. In enacting uncanny alterations of daily routines, both artist and subject shifted their experiences of their own worlds.  

Mocanu conjures up the artist as envoy, demonstrating how to drift between real and imagined space. The same can be said of Lawrence Lek, whose film AIDOL (2019) tells the epic tale of a fading AI singer who enlists the help of an AI songwriter to mount a comeback at the finale of the eSports Olympics, where humans compete against bots, in the year 2065. By using video-game aesthetics to render traditional and contemporary iconography from across Southeast Asia, such as pagodas and high-tech casinos, lush mountainous forests and dense streetscapes, Lek subverts a familiar visual language to evoke a not-so-perfect future—one where humans and machines alike struggle to understand and overcome the world’s hegemonic sociopolitical structures. 

The show also included calls to address the precarity of our present through collectivity. For their project Metakitchen (2021), Stardust Architects invited five other architects to join them as cooks in a series of experiments that explore how small-scale personal actions can respond to the global ecological crises, while removing pressures on the individual to solve climate change. The group’s circular table holds the natural materials employed in these experiments, from plants used for dyeing fabric to jars of fermenting fruits and vegetables. Additionally, as part of Metakitchen, the collective held workshops on methods such as fermentation and fabric dying in Timișoara’s public gardens and green spaces.

What distinguished the stories in “Chronicles of the Future Superheroes” was the mission to transcend the real while not lingering too much in fantasy, displaying a tension between what can be imagined, what has been, and what is possible. 

“Chronicles of the Future Superheroes” is on view at the Kunsthalle Bega, Timișoara, until March 20, 2022. 

• Romania
• speculative fiction