The Dream

On view: 22 Jan – Jun 2023

The unconscious, the illogical, the irrational – what is it about dreams and their uncanny nature that drives us towards conjuring fantastical explanations and mystical reports on their meanings? The depths of the internet have become a repository for dreams, hopes, irrational thoughts and vents – but are we asleep or awake? Sleepwalking or stationary? Is this a dream or a nightmare?

Concept: Gabriella Gasparini

Selection and Curation: Dr Işıl Ezgi Çelik

Curator’s words

Dr Işıl Ezgi Çelik | 1 November 2022

Dreams don’t exist. Still, it’s all a dream. We’re all sleepless, all hyper-woke and dreaming. When does a dream start, and where does it end? Aren’t dreams real, or, is waking life made of dreams? Am I awake? Am I dreaming? Whose dream am I in? You know, we could have closed the door and slept like the others, despite the cities engulfed by the fires. At dawn, we could have watched the dream drape the mind like a fog, descending on mutants frozen by the smoke. In the end, aren’t the dreams to forget what we can’t remember and to remember what we can’t forget? This is the Möbius loop, the unfathomable sleep closing in on waking life. I am asleep, awake; I am in a dream. The vision of a new world ruled by technocrats crippled the consciousness of the old one through two devastating wars. Surrealists retreated into the dreams to gaze at and praise them for the knowledge hidden in their maze. Dreams are deceptive and illusory. They are the sleeping vision and soliloquies of the mind. Dreams are desires, they are to desire for all. Dreams are deceptions that come true. The poet had warned: “Life is not a dream. Beware! Beware! Beware!” Nobody is asleep; yet one and all are captured by a dream. The philosopher had warned: “Beware of the dreams of others, for if you are caught in their dreams, you are doomed.”

The sleepless cyberspace is oneiric; the dream of technocrats unfolds in speed. An old dream comes true, and a world once again comes to an end. The collision of technology with life renders the once deceptive dream more real than the real. We are all haunted by a dream and are all in it. But, what do we dream of herein? The Dream exhibition brings together twelve global non-binary and women artists to share their versions of dreams and dreaming within dreamy cyberspace.

The 12 international New Media artists Agora Digital Art has brought together under this unreal dome are:

Guest Artwork: Danielle Lebbos  Phy.gital (2022)  @Danielle_Lebbos  or @idesign.dl

Guest Dreamer: Kaori Endo  Dream Teller (2021) physical installation  @_kaori_endo_

Maybe of interest

Toyen: The Baroness of Surrealism – 55 min. © Courtesy Arte TV  24/03/2022 to 25/04/2022

Luis Buñel, Un Chien Andalou (1929 – remastered 2021) video 4k 21:25 min. @ Courtesy of Solo Han

Women Surrealists list. And, maybe Frida Kahlo, even if she did not consider herself a surrealist artist.

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