About the Exhibition

The distinction between data consumption and production is narrowing. Today, commonplace activities like voting, ordering takeout, boarding a flight, or solving a CAPTCHA now entail being captured and folded into algorithmic systems, built by corporations whose priorities carry no obligation to the social values of the people routed through them.

Artificial Intelligence may well be the defining technology of our lifetimes. As a breakthrough, it is less like the internet (which it is often compared to) and perhaps more like electricity. It is already wired into so many surrounding systems that move power: energy grids, healthcare, transit, law enforcement, customer service, cartography, and so on. AI might best be understood as an accumulation of digital dependencies decades in the making, arriving now as infrastructure. And while nearly every technology of record—from the knotted cord, to the woven cloth, to the photographic negative—has shaped how memory and history are retained, generative systems infer rather than retrieve. What is offered as recall is closer to a forecast.

Dear Data, operates in the space between aggrandized promises of disruption and salvation and the routine experience of being processed, analyzed, and consumed. Artists examine how databases can preserve lost and overlooked histories while also reckoning with generative software that fills gaps in our recollection with fabricated memories—making false generalizations and amplifying harmful biases. Other work reflects on the practical benefits of efficient systems while also examining urgent concerns in human development, such as disordered attention spans, “unreal” performance expectations, and mental short circuiting. The exhibition moves between the intimacy of personal devices and photographs, to the impossible reckoning of planetary-scale computation. Dear Data, invites audiences to interrogate the consequences of leasing our selves to our screens, and to consider how we might demand more equitable and supportive systems amid the ever-increasing weight of accelerated technology.

Dear Data, is the fifth installment of Getaway!, a multi-year exhibition series that explores the power and pitfalls of escapism as a reaction to the question, “What do we do in response to our current crises?” These group and solo exhibitions explore various topics within the broader theme of escapism, examining both the complex impulses that drive us away from challenging circumstances and the destinations and activities we pursue when we do. Through diverse research and artistic practices, this series aims to provide a space for imagination, enabling us to equip our communities, both within and beyond MECA&D, with new tools to create the worlds they envision.

Exhibiting Artists: Nouf Aljowaysir, Alice Bucknell, Sarah Friend, Claudia Hart, Heesoo Kwon, Maya Man, Amor Muñoz, NOCELLCOVERAGE, Analia Saban, Tianyi Sun, Vickie Vainionpää, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Anna Zhang

Dear Data, is curated by ICA Director Iris Williamson and independent curator Eileen Isagon Skyers, with support from Curatorial Assistant Katie Devlin '27. Production management by Exhibitions Manager Sarah Sawtelle '19 and Exhibitions Assistant Caroline Kouba '22. Design by Omnivore.

Generous support for the exhibition is provided by the Jeremy Moser and Laura Kittle Fund.