Art Dubai Digital: Solimán López

On the occasion of Art Dubai Digital 2026, five artists were invited to respond to a shared set of questions about their practice, their planned project for Art Dubai Digital, and the curatorial framework “Myth of the Digital”, which considers how technology shapes contemporary narratives of authorship, spirituality, and the body. This text presents the answers of Solimán López who exposes the mineral, energetic, and economic infrastructures that sustain the so-called immaterial realm.

What themes or questions are guiding your practice right now?

Solimán López. The digital world has always been based on the technique that an algorithmic compilation is capable of storing precise information which can later be retrieved by our memory devices.

Finding a relationship between the digital and physical worlds through a material that establishes a bridge has been of particular interest to me. This is why I immersed myself in studying DNA as a storage medium.

Understanding and studying relationships between the digital and the physical inevitably leads to a reflection and a clear affirmation: the digital still does not exist without the natural. Files and their holders, archives, have now become constructs of the machine rather than references to the real world.

This leads us toward a new intelligent nature, where the digital begins to emancipate itself from human action and becomes an autonomous entity with its own rules and self-regulated logics.

This giant we are creating requires enormous amounts of energy, and without the resources of this planet, it will be very difficult for it to survive. These concerns are currently at the core of my work, in which I am trying to connect artificial intelligences with collective intelligences in a shared space.

What defines the project you’re presenting at Art Dubai Digital?

Solimán López. IRIDIA is the result of recent investigations in my practice. I began to delve deeply into what we call “green technologies.” Nature is not green, nor are the technologies we are using.

There is a broader reflection on the value system of society, on the economy and faith in money; human beings and their societies need to trust a value system in order to organize themselves. The problem lies in the fact that we have built a belief system based on a finite planet.

The only thing that truly belongs to humans is what we are creating digitally. This new world is intellectually created by us.

IRIDIA is based on a single kilogram of iridium, the second-hardest material in the periodic table. The idea is to begin international collaborations to create a new table—one whose elements are not minerals or gases, but AI agents with a single mission: to change the world we live in.

These agents continuously ask questions about issues that will emerge and be proposed by these partners. Each participant proposes a topic, and together we build that AI agent.

"Now we must once again propose the myth of the human—return to our principles as a species and use our technology and digitality to better understand our world, understanding our past and giving voice to art, artists, humanists, and thinkers of our generations in order to design a future where politicians are not protagonists, but executors of these advanced ideas."

How does Myth of the Digital resonate with your practice and thinking?

Solimán López. I believe that the myth of the digital is beginning to disappear because it is becoming reality. We are closer to living the myth than reality itself, and this is happening at a dizzying speed. Now we must once again propose the myth of the human—return to our principles as a species and use our technology and digitality to better understand our world, understanding our past and giving voice to art, artists, humanists, and thinkers of our generations in order to design a future where politicians are not protagonists, but executors of these advanced ideas.

Now we must once again propose the myth of the human—return to our principles as a species and use our technology and digitality to better understand our world, understanding our past and giving voice to art, artists, humanists, and thinkers of our generations in order to design a future where politicians are not protagonists, but executors of these advanced ideas.

Art Dubai Digital 2026: Solimán López

_artists on "Myth of the digital"