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.
Autonomous Worlds 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.
Art Dubai 2025
Madinat Jumeirah
Dubai, UAE
18 - 20 April 2025
Booth X18
About the artists:
Lu Yang (b.1984) is a Tokyo-based artist who creates work exploring themes and formats that combine traditional Chinese medicine and spirituality together with contemporary digital cultures. Through the medium of video, installation and performance, his works explore the fluidity of gender representation through 3D animated works inspired by Japanese manga and gaming subcultures. With a fascination with the human body and neurology, Lu Yang’s work bridges the scientific and the technological with aesthetics drawn from popular youth culture creating new visions of China in the face of modernity. Lu Yang graduated with a BA and MA from the New Media Art department of the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. He often collaborates with performers, designers, illustrators, and composers. His work has been featured in exhibitions internationally including solo exhibitions, Electromagnetic Brainology, Spiral, Tokyo, Japan; Lu Yang: Encephalon Heaven, M WOODS, Beijing, 2017; Delusional Mandala, abc gallery night, Société, Berlin, 2016; Delusional Mandala, Beijing Commune, 2016; and KIMO KAWA CANCER BABY, Rén Space, Shanghai, 2014. His work has been featured in major group exhibitions at the UCCA, Beijing; Centre Pompidou, Paris; 56th Venice Biennale 2015 China Pavillion; The Arsenale at the Venice Biennale 2022; 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial; Liverpool Biennial 2016; Shanghai Biennale 2012; Montreal International Digital Art Biennial 2016; MuseĢe d’art contemporain of Lyon; Momentum, Berlin; Tampa Museum of Art; and The 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale.
FAR (b. 1983) is an artist and engineer who explores the intersection of visual arts and technology. His research delves into the material history of computer-generated graphics, examining digital imaging from historical and conceptual perspectives. He investigates computer simulations and visualizations, focusing on their impact on our understanding of the physical world through film, video games, and virtual worlds. FAR's work has been exhibited at the Harvard Art Museums, Ars Electronica, Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, A+D Museum in Los Angeles, SCI-Arc Gallery, and the Druker Design Gallery at Harvard University, among others.
Sarah Meyohas (b. 1991) is a French-American visual artist working across multiple disciplines including film, photography, virtual reality, performance art, and sculpture. In her work across media, she uses networks of information, power, value, and communication. Most spaces are shaped by the flow of desire through matrices of thought; this is the site of her work. Meyohas’s ambitious 16mm film Cloud of Petals, two Bitchcoin NFTs, and an original Bitchcoin certificate were acquired by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France in 2023. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK; the Warehouse, Dallas, TX; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; the Barbican Centre, London, UK; the Jameel Arts Center, Dubai, UAE; and the Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, China. Her immersive installation, Dawn Chorus was presented at the New Museum in 2020 and Rockefeller Center in 2022. Her film Cloud of Petals has been screened at various film festivals around the world, including the Slamdance Film Festival and the Locarno Film Festival. She has been featured in W Magazine, Whitewall, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Vice, and Artforum. Meyohas holds a B.A. in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in finance from the Wharton School, and in 2015 received an M.F.A. from Yale University.