Data Dreams: Art and AI at MCA Australia

 What does artificial intelligence see when it closes its eyes? It’s a strange question to ask, but it’s exactly the kind of inquiry driving Data Dreams: Art and AI, one of Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s latest exhibitions and part of the Sydney International Art Series 2025–2026.

The first of its kind staged by a major Australian institution, Data Dreams brings together 10 visionary artists from around the world to explore AI’s profound impact on contemporary life through immersive installations, hallucinatory images and mind-expanding sculptures. It’s less Silicon Valley techno-optimism, more critical examination of the systems reshaping our reality now.

German artist Hito Steyerl’s sprawling video installation Mechanical Kurds examines surveillance, AI-mediated representation and digital labour in conflict zones, blending documentary footage with AI-generated imagery and sculptures of digital forms. Meanwhile, Palawa Trawlwoolway artist Angie Abdilla’s Meditation on Country brings Indigenous knowledge systems into dialogue with Western astrophysics, and French artist Fabien Giraud premieres The Feral, described as a 1000-year-long film shot and edited entirely by artificial intelligence.

There’s a question lurking beneath Data Dreams that every visitor will have to answer for themselves. It’s not just about how artists are responding to our technological moment, but whether the artistic response can help us navigate what’s coming. The exhibition doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable truths, exploring themes including algorithmic bias, the environmental cost of data centres, and the hidden human labour behind supposedly intelligent systems.

Elsewhere, Korean-born artist Anicka Yi looks beyond human intelligence entirely with her Radiolaria series, luminous suspended sculptures that undulate like deep-sea creatures, while Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler’s Anatomy of an AI System traces the raw materials and infrastructure required to fabricate and dispose of “smart” devices.

Tickets can be purchased here – entry is free for MCA members and anyone under 18. Head to the official website for more details.

This article was produced by Broadsheet in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Exclusive to Sydney, Data Dreams: Art and AI is supported by the NSW Government through Destination NSW.