From blueshiftgallery by SHIFTED

Darkness. Then light. Your eyes are drawn to the single glowing screen. You get closer, look, feel. For a minute, it’s just you and this artwork. It feels intimate to face the screen so closely, just like it was attracting you, like an addiction. Then, it’s gone. Another screen lights up, pulling you across the space.

One screen, one moment, one artwork.

What do you feel when there’s nothing to distract you? When it is just about one visual, one artwork at a time? How does it feel to feel space taking on importance again? To feel ourselves inhabiting the void that separates us from walls and screens? What happens when you spend a full minute, in focus, with a single piece of art? Can a digital exhibition be meditative? Can it ask you to slow down, to linger, to care?

Curated by myself through Blueshift Gallery, SOFT MUTATIONS is an exhibition dedicated to imagining a multispecies future, where empathy and connection transcend the boundaries of living and non-living entities. With artworks by 10 international artists, the exhibition celebrates hybridization and transformation—of bodies, species, and identities. It presents a vision of a positive, inclusive future, where respect and understanding weave through every interaction.

But for me, the real insight came from the scenography, a deliberate move away from traditional norms in digital art exhibitions.

‘Pride and Refuse of the Universe’ by Ganbrood, as on view at the SOFT MUTATIONS exhibition at the Artverse Gallery (Paris, France)

Breaking the Rules

Why do we assume every screen needs to be on, all the time?

In most digital art exhibitions, the goal is maximal visibility. Every screen competes for your attention, every moment is full of light and sound. It’s overwhelming. And worse—it’s unsustainable.

In curating this exhibition, I decided to challenge one of the unspoken rules of digital art exhibitions: never have a black screen. But what if the darkness of the screens are not an error? What if it is not empty? It’s a pause. A rhythm. A breath. A space to reflect and connect.

This decision wasn’t purely aesthetic; it was also ecological. If I had used all 15 screens in the gallery at once, running continuously over the 13 days of the exhibition, the carbon footprint would have been huge: 1600 CO2 e (Kg). This is the equivalent to 17,2% of the annual carbon footprint of a french citizen, the production of 17 computer monitors or 220 roundtrips in train Paris / Berlin. That’s not the kind of future this exhibition is about.

Here’s what we did:

‘Pluralis’ by Kira Xonorika, as on view at the SOFT MUTATIONS exhibition at Artverse Gallery (Paris, France)

A Choreography of Movement and Attention

The result is an experience that’s both intimate and meditative. Each artwork has its moment, displayed in full, uninterrupted glory. Visitors move from screen to screen, their bodies engaged in the act of following the sequence. It becomes a choreography, a performance in its own right—an interaction between the viewer, the screen, and the space.

It is surprising to see how long visitors stay in the room. While the entire show lasts only 12 minutes, people don’t hesitate to look at it multiple times, waiting for their favorite artwork to come back, taking the opportunity to look at one artwork from a different perspectives. And then they start discussing the entire show, the artworks order and the story between them. It is such a contrast with the way visitors normally behave in an exhibition space, might it be with digital art or not. We are so far away from the few seconds of attention all gallery owners can experience. Some visitors described it as meditative, others as addictive in the best way—a kind of flow state that’s hard to pull away from.

‘Before the Looming Shadows’ by Harriet Davey, as on view at the SOFT MUTATIONS exhibition at Artverse Gallery (Paris, France)

A Celebration of Transmutation

The artworks themselves are windows into a future of hybrid beings and interconnected worlds.

In Botania, Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes imagines orchids pollinated by human touch, blending bio-mechanical forms with themes of desire and domination. In The Evolutionary Value of Mistrust, Sam Clover reimagines the dodo as a symbol of resilience, surviving and adapting to human interference.

Alfacenttauri’s Sol infinito evokes cycles of cosmic rebirth, where petrified plants and fossilized eyes merge with light and sound to reimagine creation as relentless and chaotic becoming. Connie Bakshi’s past is prologue blurs the boundaries of time, presenting species that are part plant, part machine, and entirely transformative, existing in a mystical, post-human ecosystem.

Ganbrood’s Pride and Refuse of the Universe invites introspection with its hybrid portrait, where identities dissolve and reassemble, creating forms that feel both ancient and futuristic. Harriet Davey’s Before the Looming Shadows introduces a living creature from her game exhibition Whole Hearted, where biomineral skins and androgynous forms reflect a world of fluid species and materials.

Kira Xonorika’s Pluralis celebrates a post-human vision of harmony, where the central figure—a hybrid of plant, mineral, and human—exists in complete connection with its dense, toxic forest environment. Ines Alpha’s Bi(Hazard)²O questions the future of beauty and survival, imagining breathing accessories as both functional and ornamental in a hazardous marine or aerial future.

Micah Alhadeff’s Spined Venus offers a solitary figure marching toward an unknown horizon, embodying the resilience of a mythical goddess thriving in a toxic, insect-filled landscape. Finally, Scerbo’s Narrative Underdevelopment explores evolutionary glitches, starting with a chicken and morphing into hybrid animal-human forms entangled with the materials and technologies of their own creation.

Each piece is an act of speculation, asking: What happens when humans and non-humans merge? What does it mean to belong to more than one world?

In myths, creatures like the Minotaur or fauns have long embodied the tensions and harmonies of hybrid forms. SOFT MUTATIONS builds on these ideas, using digital media to explore fluid identities and multispecies coexistence. It’s a celebration of transformation. Here, aliens are welcomed.

‘Sol infinito’ by Alfacenttauri, as on view at the SOFT MUTATIONS exhibition at Artverse Gallery (Paris, France)

A Future Rooted in Care

SOFT MUTATIONS wasn’t just about showing digital art; it was about rethinking how we experience it. Slowing down. Paying attention. Moving with intention. And perhaps, in doing so, rediscovering a sense of care—not just for the artworks, but for the world they reflect and reimagine.