Exhibition Hito Steyerl. Mechanical Kurds

Video still, Hito Steyerl, Mechanical kurds, 2025 ; Courtesy the artist, Andrew Kreps, and Esther Schipper Berlin / Paris / Seoul.

Opening on February 19, 2026, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

From February 20 to May 31, 2026, the Villa Arson art center presents Mechanical Kurds, an exhibition by Hito Steyerl, in resonance with Magnanorama. Portraits, Networks and Contemporary Resonances of Nathalie Magnan.

A leading artist, filmmaker and theorist of the contemporary scene, Hito Steyerl has, for more than two decades, developed a critical reflection on the circulation of images in the digital age, the militarization of technologies, and the invisible infrastructures that shape our regimes of perception.

With Mechanical Kurds, a recent video installation combining documentary investigation, fiction and critical speculation, the artist explores invisible chains of micro-labor, the geopolitics of the image, and the mechanisms of delegation at work in so-called “autonomous” technologies. By reactivating the historical figure of the “Mechanical Turk” — the eighteenth-century chess-playing automaton concealing a human operator — and transposing it to the age of digital platforms, Hito Steyerl reveals the bodies, territories and conflicts obscured by the contemporary fabrication of artificial intelligence.