Olga Jürgenson. Le Bordel Synthétique

Le Bordel Synthétique, an exhibition by Olga Jürgenson, will open at Tallinn Art Hall Gallery on 2 December at 6 pm. The exhibition is part of her ongoing artistic research project on sexuality, romantic love and social relations at a time when the development of electronic communication technology has led to the “birth” of artificial intelligence (AI) that is capable of learning. Jürgenson places the viewer at the intersection of highly complex ethical, socio-sexual and philosophical issues. The curator of the exhibition is Anders Härm.

Le Bordel Synthétique touches on one of the most burning topics around posthumanism— several disruptions have fundamentally changed, or are changing, the position of humans towards nature and the universe — in our changing contemporary world. One of the starting points of the exhibition is hyper-realistic sex robots (sexbots), which began to make their mark in 2017. Since 2018, Jürgenson has consistently used the motifs of sexuality, romantic relationships and artificial intelligence in her work as a sex-positive feminist and woman. The artist’s most important sources of inspiration have been books by legendary feminist author Nancy Friday on sexuality and the sexual fantasies of both women and men, such as My Secret Garden (1973) and Men in Love (1980). Indeed, the central image of this exhibition is a sexbot with artificial intelligence reading a book by Friday in Emma’s Secret Garden, against the backdrop of a wallpaper featuring excerpts from Friday’s writings. The audience can chat with the doll to test her artificial and their own human intelligence, and take selfies with her.

Although one of the topics of the exhibition is the commodification of sexuality, the artist focuses her attention more on the motif of pleasure and erotic fantasies and everyone’s equal right to sexuality, regardless of gender, age or physical characteristics. Jürgenson does not lecture us, but rather encourages us to think about the questions presented at the exhibition as well as the accompanying questions: Do we enjoy? How do we enjoy? What do we enjoy? According to Anders Härm, the curator of the exhibition, Jürgenson’s project could also be seen as a remarkable continuation of Tallinn Art Hall’s major exhibition this summer, Modern Love (or Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies). “The exhibition prompts us to raise important questions about the relationship between humans and things and between humans and machines. This is at a time that can increasingly be described as posthumanist, and which clearly shows that both the status of humans (Anthropocene and other afflictions) and the concept of humanity may be going through one of its most dramatic changes since the triumph of humanism, individualism and Capitalism that began with the Renaissance,” says Härm.

You are welcome to the curator’s tour at the exhibition on 4 December at 1 pm. The exhibition will remain open at the Art Hall Gallery until 30 January 2022.