Nguyen Wahed Gallery is pleased to announce its debut participation at Art Dubai 2025, presenting a curated exhibition titled "Autonomous Worlds" that explores how artists are reimagining digital ecosystems as sites of cultural production.
Highlights include "DOKU the Creator" - the third film work of Lu Yang's virtual digital persona, DOKU, in which DOKU debuts in both the material and virtual worlds as a creator. In this virtual world, DOKU projects artworks through a unique form of meditation. This world poses questions: Did the creator or the artwork come first? Is the identity of the creator fixed? Are there truly original ideas that completely transcend all human conceptual frameworks from start to finish in this world? What is the relationship between the value system and the collective karma discussed in Buddhism? It seems that DOKU has found some clues from the Buddhist philosophy of Madhyamaka.
The exhibition also features Sarah Meyohas' "Bitcoin Hologram" series – selected analog holograms created nine years after her first artistic engagement with cryptocurrency. An image of each hologram is inscribed as an ordinal onto block 9 sats, with the physical hologram available exclusively to the initial collector of the corresponding ordinal. "I felt that holography — which is hyper-physical yet completely virtual — was a perfect way to embody Bitcoin," says Meyohas. "I was very inspired by Bitcoin in 2014. It was a radically creative act. The fact that it wasn't the effort of a startup or a government, but the creation of an anonymous individual, and then a community, to create its own system of value — this was deeply inspiring to me as a young artist."
The gallery will also present works by FAR, an artist whose practice examines the material history of computer-generated graphics and the influence of interfaces on cultural techniques. FAR's multifaceted approach to digital imaging demystifies technical processes and philosophical perspectives on media operations, with a particular focus on computer simulations and representations of natural phenomena that shape our understanding of the physical world. His practice, informed by his background in engineering and doctoral research in Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University, offers visitors a critical perspective on the technical systems underlying contemporary visual culture. The new body of work - OFFSHORE explores the intersection of islands, blockchain technology, and digital property, questioning ownership in decentralized systems. The project materializes island maps through CNC machining while inscribing digital island renderings on the Bitcoin blockchain, bridging the physical and virtual. By juxtaposing offshore paradises with immutable blockchain spaces, OFFSHORE reflects on sovereignty, anonymity, and value in the digital age.
Nguyen Wahed's presentation brings together artists who interrogate how digital infrastructure gives rise to new forms of value, meaning, and community. Through distinct approaches to materiality, computation, and virtuality, these works reveal the aesthetic possibilities emerging from blockchain networks and decentralised systems.
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About Nguyen Wahed Gallery
Founded in 2024, Nguyen Wahed is a contemporary art gallery dedicated to exploring the relationships between human, natural, and digital realms. The program features artists whose practices span multiple media and conceptual frameworks through idiosyncratic commentaries on societal changes. Whether through algorithmic constructs, painterly or enveloping installations, we cultivate a space where established narratives are deconstructed, and new dialogues emerge.