New Humans: Memories of the Future is a landmark exhibition at the New Museum that brings together over 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers to examine what it means to be human amid waves of technological change, from mechanization and automation to artificial intelligence.
Working against a linear narrative of progress, the exhibition stages encounters across time, linking avant-garde visions of the “New Man” and “New Woman” with contemporary imaginings of cyborgs, bioengineered bodies, and posthuman forms. Rarely seen historical works by figures such as Salvador Dalí, Hannah Höch, and Vera Molnár appear alongside new commissions by artists including Ryan Gander, Camille Henrot, Wangechi Mutu, Hito Steyerl, Alice Wang, and Santiago Yahuarcani, revealing how each generation has responded to waves of mechanization, war, computation, and networked media.
Through an array of mechanical life forms, medical diagrams, speculative architectures, and AI-adjacent image worlds, New Humans maps how machines and scientific advances have reshaped ideas of labor, gender, collectivity, intelligence, and creativity. From prosthetic devices for injured World War I soldiers to contemporary visions of transhumanist futures and chimeric beings, the exhibition assembles prototypes of bodies and environments that might navigate an uncertain future, opening up multiple possibilities for the humans we may yet become.
%2C%202021_2025.png)
