The second MUNCH Triennale explores the spaces between the real and the virtual, old and new technologies, dystopian and hopeful visions of the future.
Working in many different formats, the 20-plus artists featured in Almost Unreal open portals to other realities: parallel universes, mystical realms, alternative ways of seeing. They appropriate and hack existing technologies, such as music boxes, holograms and weaving looms. They create new worlds using advanced gaming engines and generative machine learning tools.
As in the previous edition of the Triennale, this year’s overall theme centres on art and new technologies. The title of the 2025 edition, Almost Unreal, refers to the time we live in, in which the division between the real and the unreal is becoming increasingly fluid.
About the MUNCH Triennale:
The MUNCH Triennale is part of the museum’s ambitious contemporary art programme, and takes place every three years. Through the Triennale, MUNCH puts Norway-based and international artists in dialogue with each other. The exhibition consists of both existing works and new productions.
Together with MUNCH curator Tominga O’Donnell, Mariam Elnozahy is the exhibition’s co-curator. Elnozahy works as director of Konsthall C in Stockholm as well as being a writer and researcher.
Emilija Škarnulytė, Sculpture, installation view from Riparia
Artists:
Photo: Marina Cavazza
Born in 1993 in the UK. Based in Los Angeles.
Bucknell work as an artist, writer and educator, and is particularly interested in game engines and speculative fiction. Their recent work has focused on creating cinematic universes within game worlds, exploring the affective dimensions of video games as interfaces for understanding complex systems, relations and forms of knowledge.
Exhibitions include Ars Electronica with transmediale, LUMINEX in Los Angeles, LEV in Madrid, Serpentine in London, the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale, Gray Area in San Francisco, and the Singapore Art Museum.
In 2025, Bucknell is a Creative Capital Awardee, a Year 11 Member of NEW INC, and a resident at Art Explora x Cité internationale des arts in Paris. In 2024, they completed the Collide residency at CERN/Copenhagen Contemporary. They are currently faculty at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, where they teach courses on worlding, video games, and philosophies of technology.
Alice Bucknell is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new video game and film.
Photo: Anders Sune Berg
Born in 1962 in Norway. Based in Copenhagen.
Lislegaard’s work uses science fiction as a lens for reimagining politics, gender roles, and cosmologies of the future. She engages with the genre’s subversive potential, using it to challenge contemporary political and psychological norms. Science fiction becomes a laboratory for critical reflection and a space to speculate on the influence of non-human forces in shaping events.
Solo exhibitions include Raven Row (London), SMK/National Gallery of Denmark (Copenhagen), MOCAD Museum of Contemporary Art (Detroit), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), Moderna Museet Project (Stockholm), Esbjerg Art Museum (Esbjerg), Kyoto Art Center (Kyoto).
Ann Lislegaard is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with In the shadows of trio A.
Photo: Lotten Pålsson
Born in 1943 in Malmö, Sweden. Based in Skanör.
Trained as a weaver, Johannesson began making tapestries as art in the 1960s, often with a satirical slant on mainstream politics. Johannesson’s works with both the craft technology of the loom and the digital technology of computer programming, exploring their formal and conceptual connections.
In 1981 she established the Digital Theatre with her partner, Sture Johannesson, in Malmö, Sweden. As Scandinavia’s first digital arts laboratory, the Digital Theatre functioned as an independent platform for both research and artistic projects and has been described as one of the most advanced Apple systems of its time. In recent years, Johannesson’s work has been included in the biennials of São Paulo (2016) and Venice (2017, 2022), had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg in Switzerland, Nottingham Contemporary and Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
Charlotte Johannesson is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with several textile works.
Photo: Visvaldas Morkevicius
Born in 1987 in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Working between the realms of the documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures. She works in realms that range from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political.
Exhibitions include Louisiana MoMA PS1, Palais de Tokyo, Villa Medici, MORI Art Museum, Kiasma, Gwangju Biennale, Helsinki Biennale, Penumbra. Her work was recently presented in solo exhibitions at Kunsthall Trondheim (2024) Canal Projects, NYC (2024), Kunsthaus Göttingen (2024) Ferme-Asile, Sion (2023). Her solo exhibition at Tate St Ives opens in October 2025.
Škarnulytė is the recipient of the 2023 Ars Fennica Award and the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize. She is a founder and currently co-directs Polar Film Lab, a collective for analogue film practice located in Tromsø, Norway and is part of the artist duo New Mineral Collective with Tanya Busse.
Emilija Škarnulytė is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new installation.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Palestinian artist, born 1988.
As an artist and researcher, Shehadeh’s work engages with worldbuilding, meaning, aesthetics, and identity after/on the Internet. He is interested in post-colonial effects, technology, and history.
Exhibitions include London Short Film Festival (2025), Images Festival (Toronto, 2024), Centre d’Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona, 2023), Filmforum (Los Angeles, 2023), Unsafe+Sounds (Vienna, 2023), Qattan Foundation (Ramallah, 2023), Singapore Biennale (2022), the 7th Cairo Video Festival (2017), and Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014). He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Firas Shehadeh is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a commissioned film.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Born in 1987 in New Delhi, India. Based between London and New Delhi.
Soin uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of interferences and entanglements. In doing this, she thinks through ecological loss and the loss of home, seeking shelter somewhere in the radicality of love.
Exhibitions include Serpentine, Whitechapel and Mimosa House, London; Khoj, Delhi; Venice Biennale and Dhaka Art Summit among others. She has had solo shows at The Art Institute of Chicago, TBA21 in Madrid, and this year at Somerset House and Tate Britain as part of her collective, Hylozoic/Desires.
Himali Singh Soin is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with the video work How to Startle the Unbelieving (2019).
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Born in 1977 in Bogotá, Colombia. Based in Oslo.
Zorbar’s work encompasses different fields, researching the creation of hybrid machines, made with old and newfound parts and with obsolete and current technologies. It directs our attention toward reproduction devices (turntables, music boxes, slide projectors, sound systems) and their bizarre ability to freeze time and keep it frozen almost indefinitely for as long as the electricity permits.
Combining his personal experiences with literary and cinematographic references, Zorbar questions the relation that humans establish with what surrounds and transforms them, what encourages or limits them, making multiple readings possible at different levels, all of them capable of transmitting fallibility, the feature that lies behind every human action.
Icaro Zorbar is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new commission.
Photo: Istvan Virag
Founded in 2019. Based in Oslo, Norway.
Infopsin consists of Ayatgali Tuleubek, Ignas Krunglevičius, Ragnhild Aamås and Istvan Virag. Viewing the collective as the fundamental unit of production, they utilize both digital and physical to investigate how patterns of meaning in language, infrastructure, and other built environments influence the body.
Infopsin are participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new commissioned video installation.
Photo: Niclas Warius
Founded in 2015. Based in London, UK and Berlin, Germany.
Keiken is an artist collective consisting of Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori and Isabel Ramos. By blending technology with real-world elements, Keiken explores themes such as consciousness, existence, and speculative futures. Through immersive installations, the collective creates fantastical worlds that visitors can interact with. In this way, they are collaboratively building and imagining speculative futures to test-drive new ways of existing. They do this through installation, games, films, performance & new technologies.
Keiken are recipients of The Lumen Prize BCS Award (2024) and the Chanel Next Prize (2021), and are artists in residence at Somerset House, London. Recent selected exhibitions include: Amos Rex, Helsinki (2024), 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, KANAL–Centre Pompidou, Brussels, Helsinki Biennial, HAU, Berlin (2023), CO Berlin; Wellcome Collection, London; ARKO Art Centre, Seoul; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf; Onassis, Athens (2022).
Keiken are participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new chapter of the video game Morphogenic Angels developed in collaboration with deafblind artist Hayato Tabato from Japan.
Photo: Lumir
Born in 1978 in Lithuania. Based in Bergen, Norway.
Austi’s practice focuses on digital jacquard weaving, textiles, and installations. Her work bridges traditional craft and contemporary technology, exploring the woven surface and its construction. By using artificial intelligence to generate new weaving patterns based on images of her own handwoven works, she challenges notions of originality and authenticity and explores the relationship between machine and artist.
Austi has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including the Textile Triennials in Riga (Latvia) and Łódź (Poland), the Textile Biennials in Rijswijk (Netherlands), Vilnius (Lithuania), Guimarães (Portugal), and exhibitions in the USA, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Sweden.
Austi is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with the textile work The Game of Life (2023).
Photo: Courtesy of the artists
Founded in 2014. Based in Berlin, Germany.
Mazenett Quiroga is a Colombian artist duo composed of Lina Mazenett and David Quiroga. Their work seeks to bridge Western science with cosmological, ritual, and Indigenous knowledge. Their practice oscillates between past and present, science and mythology, encompassing installations, sculpture, and painting. Central to their work is the question of how humans can relate to the non-human in a respectful and ethical manner.
Mazenett Quiroga are participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new edition from the series work Motherboard Motherearth (2020–2024).
Photo: Marina Cavazza
Born in 1975 in Denmark. Based in Copenhagen.
Debois Buhl’s work materializes as weavings, generative algorithms, photographs, installations, films, public commissions, and artist’s book. She has a conceptual and experimental approach to her chosen media, and by combining historical and new technologies she connects what is addressed in her works to how they are made. A significant focus of her practice, which she regards as time travel through matter and meaning, is the materiality of objects and element of storytelling.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and is part of collections such as the MIT List Visual Arts Center (USA), Hasselblad Foundation and Malmö Konstmuseum (SE), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art (DK).
Nanna Debois Buhl is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with the textile work Lunar (2023).
Photo: Mona Namer
Born in 1996 in South Africa. Based in Johannesburg.
Paneng is a transmedia artist and digital worldbuilder, crafting surreal narratives through installation, performance, and creative technology. She blends self-taught digital skills with her theatre background to explore the role of the alternative Black woman in shifting narratives.
Exhibitions include Galerie Eigen + Art, Stevenson Gallery, and Kunsthalle Bremen, among others. She has presented at HKW and major digital art festivals like MUTEK Montreal and IDFA, where her VR project Natalie’s Trifecta won the 2023 Special Jury Prize for creative technology. A past resident at Studio Quantum and Gasworks London (2024), she continues to explore the intersections of science, art, and spirit.
Natalie Paneng is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new video installation.
Photo: Leandro Quintero
Born in 1989 in Indonesia. Based between Yogyakarta and Jakarta.
Tontey’s artistic practice predominantly explores the fictional accounts of the history and myths surrounding ´manufactured fear´. In her practice, she observes any possibilities of other futures that are projected not from the perspective of major and established institutions, but a subtle and personal struggle of the outcasted entities and beings. She is interested in power relations between living human and non-human creatures, indigenous practices and forms of knowledge, cultural heritage, and environmental preservation.
Exhibitions include the solo show Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre (2024), commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, and Garden Amidst the Flame (2022) at Auto Italia, London. Selected group exhibitions include the Singapore Biennale (2023); KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2023); De Stroom, The Hague (2022); Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (2022); and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2021).
In 2020, she received the HASH Award from ZKM | Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Akademie Schloss Solitude. She was a fellow on the Human Machine programme at the Junge Akademie of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2021–2023). In 2024, she was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation Video Production Grant.
Natasha Tontey is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new commission.
Photo: Marina Cavazza
Born in 1984 in Chile. Based in Puchuncaví, Chile.
Domínguez is an artist, organic technologist, and Earth defender. Assembling experimental research on ethnobotany, extractivism and healing practices, her art traces digital and spiritual relationships between living species in an increasingly corporate cosmos. She proposes a poetic vision of contemporary life as deeply connected to the earth – addressing the consequences of climate change and capitalist exploitation on our planet.
She is the founder of Studio Vegetalista, an experimental platform for ethnobotanical research. She holds an MFA from Hunter College, NY (2013) and studied a Botanical Art Illustration Certificate at the New York Botanical Garden (2011).
Patricia Domínguez is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with the installation Three Moons Below (2024).
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Born in 1992 in Singapore. Based in the Netherlands.
Dia works with time-based media and installation. Her practice braid themes of Southeast Asian labour histories, speculation of the tropics, and ancestral memory meeting machine logics. Through archival and field research, she explores nonlinearity and practices of refusal against dominant narratives.
Exhibitions include 4th Bangkok Art Biennale (2024); Manifesta 15, Barcelona (2024); 60th La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2024); Arts House, Melbourne (2024); Diriyah Biennale, Saudi (2024); Frieze Seoul (2023); Singapore Art Museum (2023); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala (2022); La Trobe Art Institute, Australia (2022); National Gallery Singapore (2020); and Art Science Museum, Singapore (2019). She was an artist-in-residence at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in 2022 and the SEA AiR—Studio Residencies at the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands in 2023.
Piyageetha Dia is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with the video installation Spectre System.
Photo: Nihar Desai
Born in 1988 in India. Based in Mumbai, India.
Rahal weaves together fact and fiction to create counter-mythologies that interrogate narratives shaping the present. Rahal’s myth world takes the shape of sculptures, performances, films, paintings, installations, video games, and AI programs, that he creates by drawing upon sources ranging from local legends to science fiction, rendering scenarios where indeterminate beings emerge from the cracks in our civilization.
Exhibitions include the Biennial of Moving Images at Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva, the Gwangju Biennale, the Liverpool Biennial, the Kochi Biennale, the Vancouver Biennale, MACRO Museum Rome, Kadist SF, ACCA Melbourne, and CCA Glasgow. He is the recipient of the Cove Park/Henry Moore Fellowship, Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship, the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation Installation Art Grant, the Digital Earth Fellowship, the first Human-Machine Fellowship organized by Junge Akademie ADK, the Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellowship 2024, and ‘Enter the Hyperscientific’ fellowship program organized by EPFL Pavilions in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sahej Rahal is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new commission.
Photo: Thibaut Grevet
Born in 1994 in France. Based in Marseilles.
Sadik's work explores the narrative and visual dimensions of video, installation, and interactive practices. Blending fiction and documentary, she stages initiatory journeys where protagonists confront their desires, vulnerabilities, and aspirations in worlds where the screen becomes a playground and natural or virtual landscapes turn into dreamlike settings. Rooted in contemporary popular culture – video games, science fiction, French rap, manga, and reality TV – her work transforms everyday gestures, objects, and symbols into a poetic reinterpretation of reality.
Exhibitions include Luma Arles, Villa Medici, the Singapore Art Museum, the MACRO Museum, as well as the Manifesta Biennial 13 and the Lyon Biennale.
Sara Sadik is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a new commission.
Photo: Courtsey of the artist
Born in 1935 in Italy. Based in Los Angeles.
Simone Forti is a dancer, choreographer, artist and writer. Born in Florence, Italy, she emigrated with her family to Los Angeles in 1938. In 1955 she began dancing with Anna Halprin, who was doing pioneering work in improvisation. She later moved to New York to study composition with Robert Dunn at the Merce Cunningham Studio, where she connected with key figures of postmodern dance. In 1961, she premiered her influential Dance Constructions at Yoko Ono’s loft. Her work has influenced a number of artists and dancers, and shaped movements such as Fluxus and postmodern dance. Her practice encompasses not only choreography and dance, but also works on paper, video, holograms, performance ephemera and documentation.
Forti has appeared at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Louvre Museum, Paris; and Danspace, New York. She has had solo exhibitions at Centro Pecci, Prato (2021); Galleria Raffaela Cortese, Milan (2018); Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich (2017); Kunstmuseum, Bonn (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015); as well as her first major retrospective at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria in 2014. In 2023, Forti was awarded The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance by La Biennale di Venezia.
Simone Forti is participating in the MUNCH Triennale with a 120º multiplex hologram from the mid-1970s.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Born in 1965 in Lund, Sweden. Based in Oslo.
Påhlsson works in various techniques, primarily with electronic art, exploring areas such as human understanding and experience of the virtual, the physical, modelling and investigating alternative synthetic worlds and the natural forces of physics and the environment. Following the emergence of artificial intelligence he also works on projects that explore art and its function and role in an AI world. Påhlsson also works together with performers from other art fields, exploring related themes live in electronic art projects/performances.
Påhlsson was Norway's representative at the Venice Biennale in 1997, and has exhibited at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, Almine Rech Gallery, The New Museum (NYC), Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, MGM, Trafo Kunsthall and Kunstnerforbundet. His works have been acquired by Astrup Fearnley, the National Museum, Oslo Municipality, Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, and a number of private collections nationally and internationally.
