How does our self change when the first thing others know about us is the content of our social media profile? What does it mean 'to be' online today?
Within the framework of ART CITY Bologna, on the occasion of Arte Fiera 2025, CUBO once again proposes das - experimental artistic dialogues, the transversal exhibition dedicated to artistic and cultural dialogue on contemporary themes, a territory of confrontation on the contents, techniques and languages of the new generation of artists.
In its eighth edition, das presents UNI, DOUBLE, COLLECTIVE. Identity in the Age of Metaverse, a dynamic project curated by Federica Patti and Claudio Musso, in which LaTurbo Avedon, Auriea Harvey, Kamilia Kard and Mara Oscar Cassiani are engaged in leading the spectator along a changing path of declination of the self in the era of the Metaverse. The exhibition explores identity as a balance among unity (UNI), complexity (DOUBLE) and relationship (COLLECTIVE), offering a space to reflect on the interaction between self and others in the digital universe.
International artistic research has always developed simulations, alternative and fantastic worlds with very different aims, experimenting at the same pace as the development of the technosphere and reflecting on its aesthetic and political implications.
The rise of metaverses represents, in this context, a fundamental shift in the current notion of digital presence, towards mass interconnectivity, universal interoperability and persistent synchronicity. Today, metaverses can be described as interrealities, social spaces characterised by a constant influence of experience and identity between online and offline contexts, where individuals have the possibility to choose with whom and in what way they share and present their social identity and history.
Metaverses, also referred to as 'identity playgrounds' for the possibility they offer of playing and experimenting with one's online identity, allow one to explore repressed aspects of one's ego, using them in the construction of virtual individuality and having complete control over one's online self-representation. This can lead to a dissociation of the seemingly inseparable (at least in offline contexts) link between body and ego and, as first highlighted by the American sociologist, psychologist and technologist Sherry Turkle, can lead to a saturation of the self and create a multifacetedness of identity that frees one from social conventions and responsibilities. In addition, studies of netnography (networked ethnography) have also revealed an on/offline relational need that is more urgent than the desire to escape from the embodied self to put on the mask of a desired self.
Along with self-representation, social medias, platforms and metaverses have reintroduced a performativity of the individual, partly as a specific field of action for the extroverted investigation of identity, but increasingly as a boundless possibility for the creation of alter egos, avatars, dolls, mannequins, beings and hybrid entities that cross the boundaries of humanity by crossing the mirror.
LaTurbo Avedon, Auriea Harvey, Kamilia Kard and Mara Oscar Cassiani present a multifaceted series of events, formats and works that are arranged in the exhibition spaces according to aesthetic, dynamic and thematic dialogues, accompanying visitors on a journey between art, psychology and technology.
